Taking a career timeout could be the window of opportunity you’ve been looking for.

Taking A Career Break For Dummies shows you that a career break could be life-changing. Career breaks give us a chance to pause to identify opportunities and dreams, focus on the things we’ve been missing, and develop new skills. This book empowers you to take the leap into your next chapter. There are dozens of reasons you might want to do it, but whatever your circumstance, this friendly Dummies guide will help you value your own well-being, give yourself permission to grow and explore, and reclaim your time, your life, and your happiness.

• Develop your plan for taking a break from your career and for transitioning back when you’re ready
• Set a budget for your break, create a realistic timeline, and make it happen
• Access practical tools and resources to help you on your career break journey
• Build a positive mindset so you can enjoy your break and return to your career feeling renewed

For anyone looking for a new direction, feeling burned out, or longing to reignite that inner spark, Taking a Career Break For Dummies is a must. If you’re looking for help structuring your planned time off, you’ll also love the hands-on guidance and examples inside.

The simple guide to managing your personal brand, a vital element of success in the professional world Personal Branding For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is your guide to creating and maintaining a personal trademark by equating self-impression with other people's perceptions. This updated edition includes new information on expanding your brand through social media, online job boards, and communities, using the tried and true methods that are the foundation of personal branding. Marketing your skills and personality, and showing the rest of the world who you are, gives you a competitive edge. Whether you're looking for your first job, considering changing careers, or just want to be more viable and successful in your current career, this guide provides the step-by-step information you need to develop your personal brand. Distinguishing yourself from the competition is important in any facet of business, and the rise of personal branding has evolved specifically to help candidates stand out from the global talent pool. Establishing a professional presence with a clear and concise image, reputation, and status is a must, whether you're a new grad or an accomplished executive. Personal marketing has never been more important, and your personal brand should communicate the best you have to offer. Personal Branding For Dummies, 2nd Edition, leads you step by step through the self-branding process. * Includes information on how to know the "real" you * Explains how to develop a target market positioning statement * Helps you make plans for your personal brand communications * Instructs you with ways to make your mark on your brand environment The book also discusses continued brand building, demonstrating your brand, and the 10 things that can sink your brand. A personal brand is more than just a business card and a resume. It should be exquisitely crafted to capture exactly the image you wish to project. Personal Branding For Dummies, 2nd Edition provides the information, tips, tricks, and techniques you need to do it right.

Assessment and Development Centres are very resource intensive, both in terms of time and money. Poorly trained assessors, resource people and role players can all have a huge adverse impact on the results of an Assessment and Development Centre. To ensure consistency in the performance of assessors, resource people and role players, they must all be well briefed and properly trained. This manual provides a practical guide, with everything you need to train assessors, resource people and role players. Parts One to Three of the manual deal with the behavioural assessment skills of observing, recording, classifying, summarizing and evaluating (ORCSE). There are exercises for learning and trying out the techniques needed for each stage of the process. There is also a collection of mock simulations, which allow potential assessors to put all of the skills together and practice for real. Part Four covers training for resource persons and role players, an area which is often overlooked. Training for Assessors is an essential resource for anyone running, or planning to run, assessment and/or development centres.

Today's job market is tough; it's dog-eat-dog, ruthless and competitive. Preparation is essential if you want to get the edge. As psychometric testing becomes standard for blue-chip companies to one-man bands this For Dummies guide could mean the difference between success and failure. As the world of HR embraces psychometric testing, more and more people are faced with the daunting prospect of having to sit these mysterious exams. The tests have become the standard way in which employers judge abilities - your capacity to work with numbers, words and diagrams; your attainment - what you actually know; and your personality - how you're likely to act. Psychometric Testing For Dummies is the essential tool for being prepared and calm. The book takes readers step-by-step through each type of test, what to expect and how to prepare for them. It also offers over 850 sample questions to practice on. Psychometric Testing For Dummies makes these notoriously difficult and confusing tests easy. Psychometric Testing For Dummies includes: understanding why psychometric tests are used; detailed examination of numerical, verbal, technical and abstract tests; full explanation of personality tests; how to deal with feedback; and, over 850 sample questions. About the Author: Liam Healy is a British Psychological Society registered Chartered Occupational Psychologist. He is the Managing Director of CareerPsychologyCentre.com, a successful career guidance web site, and is a senior consultant with Liam Healy & Associates. He has written numerous books and articles on the subject of psychometric testing. He develops and publishes psychometric tests for corporate clients globally, and helped to pioneer the use of the Internet in psychometric testing in the UK.

Reflecting on almost three decades of postsocialist transformations, the second edition of Globalization on the Margins explores continuities and changes in Central Asian education development since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, with a particular focus on the developments that took place since the production of the first edition in 2011. Rather than viewing these transformations in isolation, the authors place their analyses within the global context by reflecting on the interaction between Soviet legacies and global education reform pressures in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. This new edition, in addition to a revised introduction and a newly added conclusion, consists of four thematic sections, each reflecting a key theme in the educational life of the Central Asian states. These thematic sections, introduction and conclusion collectively update our understanding of the recent developments and challenges in education of the five Central Asian states. They, however, go beyond mere information update, so as to complicate, re-engage, re-form and re-define the margins, taking up 'margins' a conceptual, geographic, cultural, and geo-political construct. Notwithstanding the diversity of local and international authors, variety of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and conceptual lenses, the essays reveal the complexity and uncertainty of the post-socialist education transformations. Instead of portraying the transition process as the influx of Western ideas into the region, Globalization on the Margins provides new lenses to critically example education as a contested field of diverse perspectives, competing forces, and multidirectional flow of ideas, concepts, and reforms in Central Asia.

In the highly competitive business environment of today, organizations are continually making attempts to stay one step ahead of their competitors by implementing various stratagems to improve their employees' competencies and capabilities, as human resources are one of their most important assets. By investing in employees' career development through training, coaching, mentoring, and counseling, the employee will undoubtedly become much more effective. Workforce Coaching, Mentoring, and Counseling: Emerging Research and Opportunities elucidates, examines, and explores theories, practices, and research-based human resource development (HRD) strategies that have proven to be effective in enhancing various aspects relating to the performance of individual employees and the organization as a whole. Featuring research on topics such as adult learning, management science, and work-life balance, this book is ideally designed for practitioners, educators, managers, and researchers.

This book advances the theory of action research, analyzing how it can be used to develop autonomy among language teachers. Although acknowledging that the research process is not always linear, the authors proceed according to a clear progression which teachers can adapt to their needs. They provide examples, narratives, questions and tasks, and give multiple ideas for establishing research questions, choosing appropriate methodologies, adapting to existing contexts, and collecting data. They also suggest possible instruments, and give clear instructions for carrying out the most common kinds of statistical procedures, and ideas for presenting, discussing, and writing up research findings. In spite of its practical bias, the book is theoretically and ethically rigorous, and contains an extensive glossary for quick and easy reference. It will appeal to trainee teachers, in-service teachers wanting to expand their own professional horizons or working for a higher qualification, and is an invaluable reference for teacher-educators and scholars.

A practical guide for actors who want to find work in the corporate sector, by a veteran with over 1400 corporate events to his credit. Thousands of actors in the UK make their living not from treading the boards but in the conference centres and training rooms of the nation's corporate sector. In this, the first book to be published about the increasingly accessible and lucrative business of corporate acting, Paul Clayton shows how this sort of work - training, coaching, role-plays, Forum Theatre and live events - can keep you in paid employment, and your skills sharp, whilst you look for other acting opportunities. He takes you through every aspect of the industry, with a series of practical examples and invaluable tips at every stage, including: What sort of work is available - and how you can get it The various role-play techniques you'll encounter The dos and don'ts for offering constructive feedback to your clients What Forum Theatre is - and how to do it How to handle live events - and escape with your dignity intact Written with humour and great insight, So You Want To Be A Corporate Actor? encourages you to look at your skills from a business point of view, enabling you to take control over your own career. It is a must-read for any actor wishing to broaden their skills and make themselves more employable at all stages of their career. 'For actors wishing to utilise their theatrical skills within the corporate world, this book should be their bible. It is crystal clear, informative and irreverent - and lays out in simple terms how actors need to think and present themselves to be employable.' Janet Rawson, Co-founder of Steps Drama Learning Development

Give your LinkedIn profile the makeover it deserves--and get the attention you deserve Look at your profile: you know it could be a little better. Too many LinkedIn users are just posting a basic resume and hoping for the offers to come flooding in, missing out on the incredible opportunity the platform offers to properly showcase their talents, products, and services to 610 million professionals in over 200 countries. LinkedIn is way more than a resume tool--to display your professional past and present--it's also your career future and personal brand. Used to its fullest extent, it helps you demonstrate the unique value and culture you provide, the skills and aspirations that make you different, to get the outcomes you truly want. But how's it done? Profile branding expert Donna Serdula pioneered the concept of LinkedIn Profile Optimization and through her Website, LinkedIn-Makever.com, has helped over 5000 professionals use LinkedIn to achieve increased success. In this guide she applies that experience to help you use all of LinkedIn's capabilities to meet your goals, whether they be job search, reputation management, or sales--including how to: Create a memorable, successful profile Optimize personal keywords Showcase your experience, accomplishments, and unique value Use LinkedIn features to grow your network and more You never get a second chance to make a first impression--and people are Googling you right now: Get a fresh online look and get results!

This book explains and demonstrates how creative writing can be used successfully in the context of professional education where traditionally a more distanced approach to reporting on professional experience has been favoured. It is based on many practical examples, drawn from several years' experience of running courses for social workers, nurses, teachers, managers and higher education staff, in which participants explore their professional practice through imaginative forms of writing. The participants experience of the work is presented through a discussion of interviews and evaluative documents. The book includes a set of distance-learning materials for those wishing to undertake such work for themselves or to establish similar courses, as well as a full analysis of the link between professional reflection and the artistic imagination. The book makes available a new and more broadly-based approach to the process of professional reflection, and the concept of the patchwork text has general relevance for debates about increasing access to higher education qualifications.

Advances in simulation technology have enabled an interesting amount of training and instruction to be conducted on training simulators instead of on real systems. However, experiences with the procurement and use of training simulators has not always been as successful, often owing to a lack of knowledge of didactics and of training programme development, and also to inadequate simulator specifications. The Handbook of Simulator-based Training represents the first comprehensive overview of the European state of the art in simulator-based training. It also comprises a well-founded and systematic approach to simulator-based training and the specification of simulator requirements. The multi-disciplinary research project described in this book combines the expertise of specialists in human factors, information systems, system design and engineering from 23 research and industrial organizations from five countries - France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK. The authors have synthesized and documented the project results to ensure that this handbook provides not only many valuable guidelines, but more importantly a common frame of reference. It will be a key resource for the many specialists who are concerned with simulator-based training: researchers, engineers, and users; military training institutes and training system development departments; military staff responsible for the procurement of training devices and simulators; the simulator industry; the training research community; and the human factors and ergonomics community.

Selling is a skill that should not be limited to sales staff. Customer service, or other support staff, could all benefit from developing an awareness of and an ability to sell to customers. Also, the opportunity for developing those skills should not be limited to sales training workshops. Here, at last, is a mix of over 80 games, exercises and ideas that can be used to develop sales, customer service and other staff. They range from simple 'skill boosters' for coaching sessions or team meetings, through icebreakers, energizers and selling quizzes to full blown role plays and case studies. The principle at the heart of all the material is that games and exercises should be generic - transferable across different organizations and sales situations - and that they should use an 'open content' approach. This means that participants must supply their own examples and experiences, to make the material immediately and completely relevant. This collection of games and exercises will enable sales managers or trainers to: c develop their people with confidence, secure in the knowledge that all of the material has been thoroughly road-tested on courses and seminars; c ensure a flexible approach, varying their pace or style in response to the subject matter and their audience; c reinforce the learning, using different formats of exercise to cover the same learning points; c train (rather than talk), using the material to encourage people to start using what they already know.

Now in its 50th edition, British Qualifications 2020 is the definitive one-volume guide to every recognized qualification on offer in the United Kingdom. With an equal focus on both academic and professional vocational studies, this indispensable guide has full details of all institutions and organizations involved in the provision of further and higher education, making it the essential reference source for careers advisers, students, and employers. It also contains a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the structure of further and higher education in the UK, including an explanation of the most recent education reforms, providing essential context for the qualifications listed. British Qualifications 2020 is compiled and checked annually to ensure the highest currency and accuracy of this valuable information. Containing details on the professional vocational qualifications available from over 350 professional institutions and accrediting bodies, informative entries for all UK academic universities and colleges, and a full description of the current structural and legislative framework of academic and vocational education, it is the complete reference for lifelong learning and continuing professional development in the UK.

Series Information:
Garland Studies in Entrepreneurship

This book is for users of comparisons in health care and for researchers. More clinicians managers and patient groups are using research to make comparisons. Information technology and new databases make comparisons easier but not necessarily better. Comparisons can help us discover the causes of disease whether a treatment is effective if it is worth the cost whether a service is performing badly and the value of a health reform or policy. Comparisons can help us learn from other cultures and understand the implications for our own health services. Yet it is all too easy to misinterpret or uncritically accept a study and reach invalid conclusions. This book encourages decision-makers to make more use of comparative research but with an awareness of the limitations of comparisons. Its practical approach enables researchers to plan and carry out better comparative research and to develop new methodologies for this fast growing field of research.

As technological change and digital disruption becomes normalized in the fourth industrial revolution, workplace leaders are seeking new solutions to evolving problems. Managing Technology and Middle- and Low-Skilled Employees is an illuminating study of workplace leadership for improving the employee experience and adjusting the organizational culture to reduce tensions between technology and people at work. Reliance on artificial intelligence has created apprehension and anxiety among some employees and the general public as they try to understand whether or not employees will be replaced by new technologies. This book examines technological developments, such as artificial intelligence and big data, and reveals the practical implications of how people and new technologies can co-exist, harmoniously, within the workplace through virtual teams. Managing Technology and Middle- and Low-Skilled Employees offers routes to new solutions for scholars and professionals in the fields of business, human resource development, human resource management, information systems, and workforce development.

Assessment and Development Centres offer a detailed and objective way of assessing your people's potential, whether you are trying to: c establish training and development needs c identify potential for promotion c assess and select new recruits to your organization or using the centre in some other way. To make this assessment possible involves a huge investment in time, money and effort to plan, design, administer and run each centre and to effectively analyse and use all of the data it will generate. These three volumes are designed to help you set up and run your own assessment and development centres within your organization. Alternatively, if you already run centres, the manuals will allow you to evaluate and improve your administration, planning and assessment as well as to introduce new exercises. Volume 1: Planning and Administration contains important programme information such as: c a range of reproducible assessment documentation c sample programmes for an assessment and a development centre c guidance on how to introduce and publicize your centres c 'lecture notes' for briefing participants and assessors c an administrative blueprint, including flowcharts, to help you run your centres c ideas for evaluating the success of your centres. Other Volumes: Volume 2 Assessment Activities Volume 3 In-Tray Simulations Each volume is available separately or as a three volume set.

Assessment and Development Centres offer a detailed and objective way of assessing your people's potential, whether you are trying to: c establish training and development needs c identify potential for promotion c assess and select new recruits to your organization or using the centre in some other way. To make this assessment possible involves a huge investment in time, money and effort to plan, design, administer and run each centre and to effectively analyse and use all of the data it will generate. These three volumes are designed to help you set up and run your own assessment and development centres within your organization. Alternatively, if you already run centres, the manuals will allow you to evaluate and improve your administration, planning and assessment as well as to introduce new exercises. Volume 2: Assessment Activities contains full documentation for the participants, the assessors and the programme manager for running a range of assessment simulations of: c meetings where co-operation is called for c meetings where participants have conflicting aims c activities where participants must plan for contingencies and handle interruptions c presentations and talks c one-to-one interviews c report and proposal writing exercises. Other volumes: Volume 1 Planning and Administration Volume 3 In-Tray Simulations Each volume is available separately or as a three volume set.

Assessment and Development Centres offer a detailed and objective way of assessing your people's potential, whether you are trying to: c establish training and development needs c identify potential for promotion c assess and select new recruits to your organization or using the centre in some other way. To make this assessment possible involves a huge investment in time, money and effort to plan, design, administer and run each centre and to effectively analyse and use all of the data it will generate. These three volumes are designed to help you set up and run your own assessment and development centres within your organization. Alternatively, if you already run centres, the manuals will allow you to evaluate and improve your administration, planning and assessment as well as to introduce new exercises. Volume 3: In-Tray Simulations contains full documentation for the participants, the assessors and the programme manager for running in-tray simulations of varying levels of complexity. Each exercise contains: c briefing papers to explain the exercise to participants c background information c items of correspondence, reports, messages and so on for participants to deal with c guidelines to help assessors evaluate the actions taken and relate these to assessment criteria. Other volumes: Volume 1 Planning and Administration Volume 2 Assessment Activities Each volume is available separately or as a three volume set.

1) This is a comprehensive handbook on social work field education in the Global South. 2) It contains case studies from various countries of global south such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Chile, and Barbados 3) This handbook will be of interest to departments of Social Work, social service, development studies, social anthropology, sociology, education, South Asian studies, and Global South studies across the world.