The Career Code: Must-Know Rules for a Strategic, Stylish, and Self-Made Career

By Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power

“They get down to the nitty-gritty of the workplace in twenty-seven ‘life hacks’ . . . (Think: Where Sophia Amoruso’s #Girlboss left you hanging.)” —The Hollywood Reporter
 
In The Career Code, the third book in the smash-hit Who What Wear series, fashion and digital entrepreneurs Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr bring you the Everygirl’s guide for creating your own professional success, on every level, flawlessly. The book is filled with insightful, pragmatic “career codes” to follow, as well as all of the practical, how-to advice they’ve learned while building their company from zero employees in 2006, to the thriving, multibrand, multiplatform, multi-million-dollar company it is today. 
 
In this approachable, authoritative, and inspirational book, you will find the most useful and accessible tips and tricks to strategically build your career into exactly what you want it to be, from negotiating your salary to avoiding the biggest mistake most people make when they quit. Chapters include advice on résumé building, dressing for the job you want, and how to effectively communicate at work—even with the most difficult colleagues—all done with the Who What Wear girls’ practical and polished signature style. It gives you total insight into how you can excel at work in every arena, whether you’re just starting your very first job, contemplating switching fields, or finally a boss who’s building her own team. The Career Code also includes over twenty of Hillary and Katherine’s best “life hacks” to ensure your out-of-office life runs just as smoothly as your career.
 
This is the must-have handbook for every woman at every stage of her career, no matter where she sits in the boardroom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781613128237

Book preview

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We’ll be the first to admit it: Finding a job, whether you’re starting your career or transitioning from one field to another—is unquestionably among the most daunting, time-consuming, and stressful of undertakings. It’s up there with death, taxes, and buying a home: anxiety-inducing on every level. There are so many aspects to consider! Figuring out what you want to do, finding the right job to apply for, crafting the perfect cover letter and résumé, not to mention all the pressure that comes with getting an actual interview: It’s enough to paralyze anyone with fear, which is exactly why we’re here to help.

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First Things First: Figure Out What You Love

There is so much to consider when you’re trying to figure out what career field you should pursue, but one of the easiest ways to get started is to simply think about what you love to do, and then reverse engineer that into a job. Hillary, for example, always loved reading magazines. In fact, she adored them so much, she ended up getting her first job in high school so that she could support her magazine addiction.

She studied British literature in college, wanted to be a writer, eventually, and was trying to figure out what she was going to do for work when she graduated, when suddenly it hit her. She could be a writer right away, not by graduating and becoming a novelist at twenty-one—which seemed cool, but impractical—but by working as a writer in the features department of a magazine. In fact, it was such an obvious answer, it was amazing she hadn’t thought of it sooner. Even better: There are tons of different jobs at a magazine, so even if the features department hadn’t worked out, she could have done something else in the publishing world and probably been very happy at it, too.

She could have gone into the sales side of things at a magazine, or joined the marketing team, or looked for an opening in the events or public relations department. Or, she could have figured out what it is she liked best about magazines—in her case: finding, curating, and sharing cool new things with people—and then looked for jobs that required a similar skill set. Maybe she would have ended up as a trend forecaster, or working for a travel company, or as Brian Grazer’s "personal attaché*". The point is, there are things you love and love to do, and once you figure those things out, the process of deciding what the right job and company are for you becomes significantly easier.

* Yes, this is a real job. The New Yorker wrote a great piece about it in the March 10, 2008