Each chapter of Alexandra Levit’s new book, How’d You Score That Gig?, opens with a snippet of a story from someone in an interesting career. Levit then weaves the stories of several people who share each career (60 in total are profiled) throughout the chapter. Sidebar quotes from some of these folks in cool careers add to the narrative. The Web page for the book states:
On the college recruiting scene, the story is always the same. Despite a major that you thought was going to prepare you for a career in the real world, by the time you’re a senior you still have no idea what you want to do with your life. You visit the campus career center and are introduced to a bevy of consulting and banking firms, Fortune 500 staples, and advertising and public relations agencies that employ the “creative” types. You don’t want to go to graduate school right away and might not know what to go to graduate school for, so you interview for these jobs and inevitably accept one.
But what if there was another way? HOW’D YOU SCORE THAT GIG? features 60 cool jobs, divided into seven categories based on the broad personality types that are generally best-suited to those jobs. Author Alexandra Levit selected the cool jobs via an online survey in which she asked nearly 500 twenty and thirty-somethings to tell her about their dream careers. Based on the responses, she generated a list of the top 60 careers and constructed a comprehensive profile of each using the information she gathered from written sources and in-depth interviews with more than 100 real-world individuals currently holding the jobs.
Then, Levit researched various personality type measures to develop her seven “passion profiles” – adventurer, creator, data-head, entrepreneur, investigator, networker, and nurturer. Which one are you? Take the quiz at the beginning of the book to find out!
Mini-stories from the book also appear on the Web site. Levit has started a Facebook page for the book.