Reboot: How to Manage Career Breaks and Return with Greater Success penned by “Issac John”
Pages- 200
Publisher: Harper Business (Unit of HarperCollins)
Language – English
Genre- personal transformation and analysis.
About Author:
Issac John has led large direct-to-consumer teams spanning marketing, product, design, and tech functions, with stellar consumer brands such as Discovery and PUMA. A big believer in re-shaping careers, he has taken two breaks throughout his career of sixteen years, one of which took him back to school at the New York Film Academy at the age of thirty-three. Both his breaks, while leading to short-term pain, turned out to be game-changing for his personal and professional growth. Issac is currently building his own company as an entrepreneur-in-residence with Antler India, an early-stage VC firm.
About Book:
It’s hard for me to say this, knowing the great feedback most of my peers had for you, but at this stage for our business in India, we just require someone with some more entertainment marketing experience than you do. Hence, we wouldn’t be taking your candidature forward for this position. When Issac quit his dream job as Head of Marketing at PUMA in 2015 and took a career break to study screenwriting in New York, little did he know what he had signed up for.
Over the next eighteen months, he would face over a hundred rejections from famed brands, headhunters, publishers, talent agencies, and producers. After being rejected in the final interview rounds of brands like Uber, Netflix, and Airbnb, he slowly and steadily clawed his way back into a mainstream career. Issac went on to lead a team of over a hundred people at Discovery, having built their direct-to-consumer OTT business in Asia-Pacific (discovery+), and has authored two books – all in five years since that career break.
Over the past two years, Issac spoke to more than fifty working professionals, all of whom went through a break in their careers for various reasons. Reboot is an intimate, honest, and rich compendium of all those experiences, mistakes, lows, and highs that people confronted with a career break go through. It shares the message that no matter the odds you are up against, a career break is always temporary, and, in many cases, it can even prove to be life-changing.
My view:
This book is particularly noteworthy for those people who take a career break in their life, but after taking a career break, they are often unable to come out of it. Some people are afraid of taking a career break. They think that if we take this break, we will not be able to get these golden opportunities again. Some people take a career break, but after that, they have to confront difficulties like repudiation and they do not find golden possibilities easily again. The author also confronted all these things in his life. He also got a lot of rejection, especially from the companies which were his dream companies like Netflix, Uber, etc. But he did not give up, he kept attempting again and again and finally, he got his dream job.
I have not endured so many rejections in my life. That’s why I can’t interpret this pain. But I presume this will prove to be a very beneficial book for many people. According to me, this is a remarkably useful book because in this the author has elucidated it in the easy vernacular and the language is easy to discern. The never giving up the belief of the author has impressed me a lot which inspires me that I too can take a break in my career and come back successfully.
Quote Picks:
- Regret leads to stasis. Go and focus on action, not nostalgia
- Pivoting while soliciting requests is a powerful tool
- Failure is better than inaction and/or hesitancy
If you are a working professional and looking to re-building your career after a BREAK, this book is very much for you. Don’t miss the part that talks about “Leaping For A Come Back”. An applaudable effort by Mr. Issac John who took time to pour in his opinions, views, and experience tidbits to reshape your career after a “REBOOT”. Adorable cover, uncomplicated verbiage, and prestigious publishing house are big PLUS to count in this book triumph.
Regards
Kiran K Adharapuram
