Put this into practice

TRY · 8 MIN

Career Gap Reframer

TAIU

One honest sentence about a gap, said without flinching.

Turns a gap into one honest sentence you can say without flinching.

LEARN · FREE SERVICE

National Careers Service

Department for Education

Free, impartial, and more useful than most paid career content.

Free careers advice in England, including skills assessments and a telephone adviser.

LEARN · COURSES

Free courses

The Open University, OpenLearn

If curiosity needs somewhere to go, this is free and genuinely substantial.

Several hundred free short courses, from business and money to psychology and history.

LEARN · SERVICE

Find a job

GOV.UK

Practical, and free, when the search itself is the next step.

The government job service, free to search and apply.

READ · RESEARCH

Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioural change

Albert Bandura

If you have ever described yourself as not a confident person, read this and then rewrite the sentence with a context attached. The result is usually much more accurate and much more useful.

The paper that broke confidence into pieces. Bandura's argument is that belief in your capability is built for a specific domain, mostly out of things you have already done, and that it transfers far less than people assume. That is why a person can chair a board and dread a party without either being a contradiction. It also names the strongest source of confidence, which is not encouragement but mastery experience.

READ · BOOK

Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

William Bridges

Read this if something has already ended and you are embarrassed that you still have no idea what comes next.

Bridges separates change, which is the external event, from transition, which is the slower internal business of letting go of who you were while it happens. His most useful claim is that the empty middle stretch is not a failure to move on. It is the part of the process where the next thing actually gets worked out, and rushing it usually produces a decision you reverse later.

READ · BOOK

Off-Ramps and On-Ramps

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

The research behind what actually happens to careers interrupted by caring, illness or family. Clear about the penalties and clear that they are not evenly distributed.

READ · RESEARCH

Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?

Shelley Correll, Stephen Benard and In Paik

An audit study showing identical applications rated differently once motherhood is visible. If re-entry feels harder than it should, some of that is measurable and external.