Test-Drive Your Dream Job
by Brian Kurth with Robin Simons
Published by Hatchette Book Group
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Reviewed by Beth Cummings
Subtitled: A Step-by-step Guide to Finding and Creating the Work You Love
In 2004 Brian Kurth launched an innovative company he called Vocation Vacations. The company helps people who are considering career changes to “test-drive” the dream job before signing on the bottom line to commit to a new life. Test-Drive Your Dream Job is the story of how his new venture came about and also the stories of others who have tried his vocation vacations with varying results.
Kurth’s plan to start this type of business came as the result of fantasizing while making a 90-minute commute to work each day in Chicago. He was daydreaming about all of the kinds of jobs he wished he had rather than the one he was headed to. While waiting in traffic he thought up the name Vocation Vacations, and almost on a whim, registered the domain name. Eight years later he started his new company.
The book describes the vocations/jobs that some of his clients have tried out. They have been as diverse as opening a bakery to becoming a dog trainer. Some have blossomed into successful careers. Others have discovered that the realities of their dream job were more like a nightmare. So trying out the career move saved some real agony in the long run.
While interesting in part, I found the book a bit simplistic. Kurth seems to think he is giving readers all of the tools they would need to leave an unsatisfying job and move into a “career for which they feel a deep sense of passion and purpose.” But nearly all of his examples are well-educated members of the corporate world who are bored with the day-to-day work.
He tends to romanticize the “joys” of small business ownership, but assumes a lifestyle that doesn’t have multiple financial responsibilities.
I just couldn’t take his methodology seriously. And the book dragged on too long for a light look at how to find the perfect job.
Armchair Interviews says: Heed the reviewer’s comments.