Kristin A. Sherry’s wonderful book YOU MAP: Find Yourself. Blaze Your Path. Show The World! begins by saying its audience is high school and college students, career changers, ambition careerists, etc. And that’s true. YOU MAP is a vital, necessary guide for anyone looking for a entrance, a shift, a promotion, or an entirely new career. Actually, it may just be a necessary guide for anyone looking to get to know themselves better and, specifically, to find their core strengths and to learn how to apply them.
Sherry cherry-picks incredibly useful tools for self-examination and self-actualization from only the best of the best. She uses, for example, the Clifton Strengths Finder, a test that isn’t included in the book (she’s provided a url, however), but is a cogent and comprehensive analysis of what the four strength categories are—reflecting, influencing, executing, and thinking themes—and how they impact people as workers. But Sherry doesn’t just borrow from and then analyze their components. She elaborates on them and uses them as jumping-off points for her own insights and rigors. She uses what she calls “strength personas” to help readers realize what they value most. YOU MAP takes all the meta information reader’s glean and shows them how to couch it to create their own YouMap (yes, that’s a registered trademark) and to assess what is basically a professional profile. It then teaches them how to translate that into a one-page branding statement.
YOU MAP gives readers a painstakingly, possibly revelatory summation of their strengths, values, motivating skills, and career interests. Once a reader follows all the book’s directives, they’ll find themselves armed with an arsenal of ammunition, ready to fire at any potential boss or hiring manager. Sherry also includes insightful quotes from sources as diverse as NBA star Larry Bird and actress Juhi Chawla. YOU MAP is a must-read for anyone who’d like to know themselves a little better and then translate that self to potential or present employers. And it’s a brilliant coaching session for everybody else. YOU MAP is almost guaranteed to put readers in a good direction.
YOU MAP is a terrific guide to all those who are struggling in their 9-5 life and, beyond that, a terrific guide for anyone interested in getting to know themselves better.
~Steven Foster for IndieReader