New
The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
Pages
199
Published
2020
Career Growth
✨ New
The Squiggly Career
A practical guide to navigating a non-linear career with confidence and clarity
Build the self-awareness, skills, and support network to own your career in a world where straight-line progression no longer exists.
The Squiggly Career is a practical guide for anyone who feels their career path doesn't follow the old rules. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis argue that non-linear careers are not a problem to fix but an advantage to develop. Through tools for identifying your strengths, clarifying your values, and building genuine networks, the book gives you a concrete method for navigating uncertainty and making deliberate moves — wherever your career takes you next.
About this book
The traditional career ladder is gone. Most people today will change roles, industries, and even professions multiple times. That is not a crisis — it is the new normal, and it rewards those who know how to work with it rather than against it.
Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis built their careers, their podcast, and their company around one insight: the people who thrive are the ones who understand themselves clearly, stay curious, and treat their network as a long-term asset rather than a last resort. The Squiggly Career translates that insight into a structured, repeatable process you can start using today.
The book is organised around five core areas of career development. Each chapter gives you a framework and a set of exercises you can complete on your own or with a trusted colleague. You will identify your signature strengths — not a generic list but the specific things you do that others notice. You will surface your values so you can use them as a compass when opportunities feel ambiguous. You will confront the fears and unhelpful beliefs that keep you stuck, and replace them with more honest stories about what you are capable of. You will map the skills you have and the ones you need. And you will build a network that is diverse, reciprocal, and genuinely useful — not a contact list but a real support structure.
The tools here are not theoretical. Tupper and Ellis draw on years of running career workshops with people at every level, from new graduates to senior leaders, and the exercises reflect what actually works when someone is facing a real decision or a real setback. Each one is designed to be finished in a single sitting, and many are built for conversation — with a manager, a mentor, or a peer.
- Map your strengths with precision and learn how to talk about them without sounding rehearsed
- Use your values as a practical filter for decisions, not just a poster on a wall
- Identify the beliefs that limit your choices and replace them with evidence-based alternatives
- Build a skills inventory tied to where you want to go, not just where you have been
- Develop a network that supports you through change rather than just connecting you to jobs
If you have ever felt that your career is harder to explain than everyone else's, or that the advice you were given no longer fits the world you work in, this book was written for you.
🎯 What you'll learn
- Identify your signature strengths with enough precision to use them in interviews, reviews, and everyday decisions
- Clarify your personal values and apply them as a real-time decision-making filter
- Recognise and challenge the limiting beliefs that narrow your sense of what is possible
- Audit your current skills and build a deliberate plan to close the gaps that matter most
- Construct a diverse, reciprocal network that functions as genuine support rather than transactional contact-gathering
- Develop resilience practices that help you recover from setbacks and maintain momentum through uncertainty
- Articulate your career story in a way that makes a non-linear path feel intentional and coherent
👤 Who is this book for?
- Early-career professionals who sense the traditional progression model does not apply to them and want a clearer framework for making choices
- Mid-career workers facing a pivot, a redundancy, or a growing sense that their current path is the wrong one
- Managers and team leads who want practical tools to run better career conversations with the people they support
- Freelancers and portfolio workers who need to articulate their value across multiple contexts and audiences
- Anyone returning to work after a career break who wants to reframe their experience rather than apologise for it
Table of contents
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01
The Squiggly Career
Tupper and Ellis introduce the concept of the squiggly career and make the case that non-linear paths are not a liability but the dominant reality of modern work. You will reframe your own career history through this lens.
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02
Super Strengths
You will identify your signature strengths — the specific capabilities that energise you and that others consistently notice. The chapter provides a structured exercise to move beyond generic self-descriptions to precise, usable language.
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03
Values
You will surface and rank your core values, then learn to use them as a filter when evaluating opportunities, managing conflict, and deciding what to say no to.
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04
Confidence
This chapter examines the fears and limiting beliefs that constrain your choices. You will audit your own unhelpful narratives and work through exercises designed to replace them with more accurate, evidence-based perspectives.
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05
Portfolio of Skills
You will build a map of your current skills and identify the gaps between where you are and where you want to go. The framework distinguishes between skills you need to develop, maintain, and let go of.
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06
Squiggly Networks
You will learn how to build a network that is diverse in perspective and generous in structure. Practical tools help you audit your existing connections and make deliberate moves to strengthen them.
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07
Your Squiggly Career Action Plan
The final chapter brings together all five areas into a personal action plan you can revisit as your circumstances change. You will leave with a concrete set of next steps rather than a list of good intentions.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need any prior knowledge of career development theory to get value from this book?
No prior knowledge is needed. The book is written for a general audience and explains every framework as it introduces it. The exercises are designed to be accessible whether you are thinking about careers for the first time or returning to the question after years in the workforce.
Is this book relevant if I am happy in my current job?
Yes. The tools are equally useful for people who want to grow within a role as for those considering a change. Understanding your strengths and values helps you perform better and communicate your contribution more clearly, regardless of whether you are planning a move.
How long will it take to work through the exercises?
Most exercises are designed to be completed in a single sitting of 20 to 45 minutes. The full book is 199 pages, so a motivated reader can finish the content and complete the core exercises in a few focused sessions over a weekend.
Is there a companion workbook or downloadable resources?
The book includes exercises throughout each chapter that you can complete with pen and paper or a notebook. Check the authors' website for any additional resources they may have published alongside the book.
Is this book aimed at a specific industry or type of role?
The frameworks are intentionally industry-agnostic. Tupper and Ellis draw examples from a wide range of sectors, and the exercises are designed to work whether you are in tech, creative industries, public sector, or any other field.
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