Product Description

Now a finalist in the careers section of the Foreword Awards!

Are you looking for a career with professional rewards and personal satisfaction? Perhaps you'd like to find meaningful employment in the field of international relations? Working World is the perfect resource for making sound career choices, and is particularly valuable for those interested in a career in international education, exchange, and development.

Sherry Mueller, head of a large nonprofit organization with an international focus, and Mark Overmann, a young professional on his way up, serve as spirited guidance counselors and offer valuable insight on launching a career, not just landing a job. The two authors--representing contrasting personalities, levels of experience, and different generations--engage in an entertaining dialogue designed to highlight alternative approaches to the same destination: making a difference in the world.

With a rich mix of anecdotes and advice, the two authors present their individual perspectives on career development: identifying your cause, the art of networking, the value of mentors, and careers as "continuous journeys." Mueller and Overmann push job seekers to challenge assumptions about what it means to pursue a career in international relations and to recognize that the path to career success is rarely straight.

To help the job seeker chart the best course, Working World provides specific resources including annotated lists of selected organizations, websites, and further reading. Profiles of twelve professionals, from promising young associates to presidents and CEOs, illustrate the book's main topics. Each professional provides insight into his or her career choices, distills lessons learned, and offers practical advice about building a career in international affairs. All of these resources were chosen specifically to help job seekers map the next steps toward the internship, job, or other opportunity that will give shape to the career they envision.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48234 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 246 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781589012103
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
Mueller, an experienced association executive, teams with Overmann, her former intern, to offer intergenerational perspectives on building careers in international education and humanitarian sectors. Chapters give their disparate perspectives on job seeking, networking, and mentoring, which will prove valuable to anyone wanting to shape a meaningful career. Readers will likely identify with the job attitudes of one author more than the other. Mueller, active in her profession for four decades, sees the book as a way of mentoring her younger colleague, whereas Overmann rejects the notion that he has ever had a mentor. Nevertheless, their brief essays reveal a strong bond.

Chapter 4, "The Continuous Journey," is the most reflective. In it, both authors stress that one builds careers until the day one retires. Five of the 12 chapters provide annotated, current print and Web resources dealing with volunteer opportunities and with working for nonprofits, the federal government, and multinational associations. Many entries are broad enough to be useful to job seekers outside the book's emphasis. A dozen interviews of people who have built successful careers illuminate points the authors make; one association executive states, "If you have a career choice to make, always take the one that's going to give you a steeper learning curve." This is a first-rate resource for anyone entering the working world. Excellent subject index. Summing up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, professionals/practitioners, and general readers. --C.B. Thurston, University of Texas at San Antonio, CHOICE-Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

Mueller, an experienced association executive, teams with Overmann, her former intern, to offer intergenerational perspectives on building careers in international education and humanitarian sectors. Chapters give their disparate perspectives on job seeking, networking, and mentoring, which will prove valuable to anyone wanting to shape a meaningful career. Readers will likely identify with the job attitudes of one author more than the other. Mueller, active in her profession for four decades, sees the book as a way of mentoring her younger colleague, whereas Overmann rejects the notion that he has ever had a mentor. Nevertheless, their brief essays reveal a strong bond.

Chapter 4, "The Continuous Journey," is the most reflective. In it, both authors stress that one builds careers until the day one retires. Five of the 12 chapters provide annotated, current print and Web resources dealing with volunteer opportunities and with working for nonprofits, the federal government, and multinational associations. Many entries are broad enough to be useful to job seekers outside the book's emphasis. A dozen interviews of people who have built successful careers illuminate points the authors make; one association executive states, "If you have a career choice to make, always take the one that's going to give you a steeper learning curve." This is a first-rate resource for anyone entering the working world. Excellent subject index.

Summing up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, professionals/practitioners, and general readers. --C.B. Thurston, University of Texas at San Antonio, CHOICE, January 2009

Review
The format of this new volume includes profiles and informal interviews conducted with experienced professionals in all fields; it discusses a range of key career issues and dilemmas; and provides an excellent listing in its chapters of both print and online resources. It is a very good book that I think should be part of every campus career services library. Any young international education professional contemplating a career change or transition to another field will benefit from reading the book.

About the Author
Sherry L. Mueller had her first international experience as a student on an Experiment in International Living program in Germany. Several years later she led an Experiment group to the then-USSR. Her work abroad ranges from serving as a State Department speaker on NGO leadership in Saudi Arabia to teaching English in Brazil. She currently serves as president of the National Council for International Visitors, a national network of program agencies based in Washington DC, and more than 90 community-member organizations throughout the United States.Mark Overmann made his first trip abroad during college to study in France. Following his graduation from the University of Notre Dame, Mark spent a year in Northeast China teaching English and studying Chinese. He subsequently earned his master's degree in International Communication from American University, and then worked as a program associate at the National Council for International Visitors. Mark currently serves as the Director of College Communications at Georgetown University, where he works closely with the university's international exchange programs, specifically those with China.

Customer Reviews

For those who need a bit of direction in their lives
Reading this book led me to meet incredible people. Going to networking events, voluntering and finding mentors seemed more real. I found some websites and print that helped to figure out what I really want to do in life :)

Simply Awesome
Once I was a lost young soul living in Washington, DC who knew that I wanted to use my college degree. I knew that I wanted to perform some service for others and work somewhere with a global reach. Basically, I wanted to work in a in a non-profit in the international field.

Sounds easy, but where to start? And how to follow through and make my goal a reality? I won't go into the answers for you because this book takes care of all of that for me. I highly recommend that anyone interested in working in the international field (not only non-profits like me) take a good look at this book. It will help guide your way.

Excellent Resource
I highly recommend this resource. This is not a guide to "how to get a job", but rather an engaging discussion of "how to build a career". Although the focus is on international exchange, development, etc. -- the concepts are broadly applicable to most career journeys.