There are two key elements to The Gifted Way to Manage Your Career. The first is The 5-Phase Career Model developed by the author. The second is the set of faith-based principles that should guide you throughout your career, and your life. Most importantly, these two elements are applicable at every stage of your career from a graduate just beginning a new career to a seasoned executive who will find value in planning the remainder of their own career while also guiding others in their developing careers. Most standard career models take you from a growth phase and into a mature phase through gains in your knowledge and experience. This would not be a misleading representation of a career; however, it leaves out some important issues, challenges, questions and opportunities you will face in your own career. The 5-Phase Career Model looks deeper into your activities and challenges as a contributor to the business. How the company views your motives and your contributions varies dependent upon the phase of your career at any point in time. How you see yourself in your specific role also varies. The 5-Phase Career Model is defined based upon your role and your value within the overall business organization over time. It is key to understand that this is your value within the business, not your value as a human being. It is the value that you represent to the business in which you are working as a productive employee. Looking at a career in this manner, one could be within any of these phases for a varying amount of time based upon their experience and maturity as well as on their personal and professional goals. Underlying all of this are the faith-based principles that will provide a solid foundation upon which to build your successful career. Strengthening and maintaining this foundation is critical for the rest of your career journey. The author begins with a set of basics as a foundation, then takes the reader through the five career phases with personal insights and faith-based support along the way. The author's approach is not only unique, but it is also enlightening and refreshing. It is a hopeful look at how each of us can use the gifts and talents with which we have been blessed in all aspects of our life, including our careers.
About the Author: Jim Barber was born in La Porte, Indiana, to working class parents. From them he learned the value of hard work, responsibility and benevolence. Always a top student, he also excelled in athletics. Jim attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, on a full-ride scholarship. He was a three-year letter winning student-athlete starting as an offensive guard on Ball State's football team. His interests guided him to a double major in mathematics and computer science with a minor in business marketing. Upon graduation, Jim was employed at a major telecommunications company where he would end up working for 32 years. He grew through various technology positions into upper-level management with nationwide responsibilities. His strengths in organization, planning and servant-leadership were highly recognized and awarded as he often breathed new life into struggling areas of business. Challenging his entrepreneurial skills, he became a partner in a start-up business/technology integration firm. The business earned national recognition as one of the top 100 new businesses in America in 1997. In his career, Jim was many times placed in circumstances that required him to fix a broken situation. Over time, he learned how to do this with a firmness and compassion that he credits to Christ who showed him the same in his own times of brokenness. While his growth as a Christian did not come early to him, he feels his parents instilled in him the guiding principles that provided a sound foundation.