CLS Staff Members Recommend Career Books for Students

Career resources come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, curling up with a book can help you to think through your career goals, values, and ideas. CLS team members are excited to share books that spark our thinking about professional growth, leadership, and lifelong learning. These recommendations are curated with students in mind as you explore opportunities for your first destination and beyond.

What Color Is Your Parachute?

What Color Is Your Parachute?, Richard N. Bolles, New York: Ten Speed Press, 2022.

Fifty-five years ago, Richard Bolles published What Color Is Your Parachute? The granddaddy of career books, updated each year, focuses on self-assessment and career planning. Plenty of writers have followed in the wake of this best-selling career guide.

Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter—and What Really Does

Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter—and What Really Does, Net Scott Laff & Scott Carlson, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025.

Asking students to think about the problem they hope to solve and to ponder their academic and co-curricular experiences as a “field of study” are two of the concepts that Laff and Carlson illuminate in this new book. Hacking College will give Grinnellians new frameworks to think about their accumulated experiences.

You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a “Useless” Liberal Arts Education

You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a “Useless” Liberal Arts Education, George Anders, New York: Little, Brown, 2017.

Qualities like curiosity, creativity, and empathy are highly sought after. Anders provides strategies for liberal arts graduates to find and succeed in a wide range of cutting-edge jobs by telling their story and focusing on their transferable skills.

Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career

Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career, by Suzy Welch, New York: Harper Collins, 2025.

The activities and discussion in Becoming You are based on Welch’s course by the same name. She helps readers build a bridge from the life they’re living to the life they want to be living, based on developing an understanding of their values and aptitudes. This book has one of the best discussions of values (they are not the same as virtues) available.