10 Podcasts and Audiobooks That Will Boost Your Career
Published: Oct 21, 2020
Below you’ll find a wide range of podcasts and audiobooks that will inspire and advise you as you conduct your job search and grow your career. Of course, podcasts are great because you can listen as you complete household chores like cooking, cleaning, and washing dishes. Note that the podcasts below are all great resources regardless of your industry or role preferences.
Meanwhile, the audiobooks below are all packed tightly with helpful content, so you’ll want to listen closely. Long car rides, long train rides, and long walks are perfect for listening to audiobooks. And if listening to books isn’t your thing, all of the books below can also be read via Kindle or, the old-fashioned way, on paper.
Podcasts
This podcast has an excellent slew of guests, who thoughtfully examine how individuals can lead better. Also, listening to the host of this podcast will help you become a better leader of informational meetings.
This is an outstanding resource to learn more about different business roles from the people currently working in those positions. It’s as though the host decided to conduct informational meetings with nearly every business function and record them for the world to hear.
This is a great podcast for insights across industries. It’s for more than just those people seeking consulting roles.
It can be difficult to keep up to speed on global events while maintaining a busy work (and job search) schedule. Use this daily podcast to make sure you’re up to date as you’re engaging with contacts.
5. How I Built This with Guy Raz
In this fascinating, instructive, and inspiring NPR podcast, host Guy Raz interviews major business leaders to discover how they grew their organizations into national or global empires.
Audiobooks
1. The 2 Hour Job Search: Using Technology to Get the Right Job Faster
This incredibly helpful book by Steve Dalton will maximize your outreach efforts. Dalton is regarded a a job search strategy expert among career services professionals and jobseekers alike. He also has some great insights on answering a variety of common interview questions.
2. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
If you’re looking for a new career path, there are many excellent activities in this book by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans that can help you find the right one to pursue.
3. The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism
This book by Oliva Fox Cabane does such a great job of illustrating how to be charismatic, it would be dangerous in the wrong hands. If you find you’re already charming, this book will have tips to take your skills to a spellbinding level. If you’re someone who feels awkward around others, this book will share practical insights on how you can uncover your most charming self during the job search.
4. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't
Many concepts in this book by Jim Collins are helpful as you consider what you can do to grow your career and expand your leadership skills. The Hedgehog Concept is particularly helpful when thinking about career paths. It’s a simpler form of the ikigai model for finding a good career path, which some people can find overwhelming.
5. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
This book by Marshall Goldsmith will help you see why employers are focused on your behavior and interactions with others throughout the job search. It illustrates how people who have produced incredible results aren’t going to be good leaders unless they possess the behavioral skills that make others want to work with them.
This post was excerpted from the forthcoming Vault Job Search Guide for MBAs and B-School Grads.
David Solloway is a career consultant, life coach, and cross-cultural training/development specialist. He works as the assistant director for Daytime MBA Career Services at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He is the author of the Vault Guide to Behavioral Interviews and a co-author of the Vault Guide to the International MBA Job Search.