Back in Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive and Inspired in Your Career Transistion by Diane Grimard takes a holistic approach to the job hunt, not found in many books in the career field. While many of us looking for a new job or a career change may look for books targeting a very specific part of the process - resume & interviewing guides, guides to finding jobs in your specific field, or perhaps skill assessments to figure out what field we should even be looking in - but Wilson touches on all of those areas, as well as focusing on the often neglected emotional side of the job search.

Having recently gone through a job search myself, I was amazed at how often I felt like Wilson was reading my mind. I was having the same thoughts and feelings she talked and I really did wish there was somewhere I could turn to help deal with them. It was incredible learning how universal the feelings of shame, impatience, and frustration are in job searches, and Wilson provides numerous tools for dealing with these feelings, first by figuring out exactly what they are and where they're coming from, then addressing the sources of these feelings and developing more useful outlets for your concerns.

The only complaint I have about this book is that it's a little long, but it's jam-packed with information, and I found myself pulling several helpful pieces of information out of each chapter. The chapters I found most generally helpful were: the first few chapters explaining the basic emotional responses to career change and also helped you explore your own emotional reactions; the chapter on maintaining your general health and welfare so you can be more effective in your job search; and the chapter on helping those around you be more effective for you in your career change (ie. how to politely explain to your nagging mother that you would appreciate it if she didn't talk to every Tom, Dick, or Harry about your need for a job).

I highly recommend this book for anyone going through a career transistion who'd like a little extra help with coping with the process.

—Books for Dummies

Whether your career transition is voluntarily or involuntarily, Back in Control helps you mold the crisis of change into the wisdom of transformation. Teaching you to manage yourself rather than your resume while you nestle into your next rewarding career, Diane Grimard Wilson uses her extensive experience as a psychologist to help you embrace this transitional time that demands the redefinition of yourself and your perceptions of the world. Unfortunately, few of us are willing to confront the “emptiness we must allow ourselves to experience to create the new” because it can make us feel downright crazy. Rejection, ambiguity, deep frustration and anger are all normal parts of career change, which most people can expect to undergo five to seven times in a lifetime. Expertly demystifying the workings of transition, Wilson guides you in understanding what you are experiencing, assists you to make successful decisions, and fosters a sense of control in the midst of what feels like chaos. Relaying the personal stories of others in career fluctuation, Wilson removes the sense of isolation that intense change often brings and manifests clarity for your individual situation, skillfully leading you into your dream job which motivates you and uses the full range of your exceptional skills.

—Alec Franklor, Spirit of Change magazine
Fall 2005

Back in Control offers much more than information. Career management professionals and job-seekers alike are often inundated with a surplus of ‘How to Get Your Dream Job’ myths and advice prescribed by ‘those-in-the-know.’ Unfortunately, those in transition are often left struggling to put the information to use, or strugging to reap benefit from the information.

Recognizing that job transitioners can be overwhelmed by "information overload" and slowed down by "paralysis and over-analysis," Back in Control is a practical book that effectively cuts through the chaos and zeroes in on the true experiences and emotions of real people in real job and career transitions. Not only will the reader instantly identify with the candid and gut-wrenching emotions documented by journaling 21st century job seekers, but the reader will quickly begin to understand that transition is a learning process to be embraced not battled.

Diane artfully combines simple action steps and ideas with otherwise complex theories and frameworks from the behavioral sciences to aid the reader in taking small steps toward career transition goals. It is refreshing to have a career book that offers a holistic approach to career transition and highlights the importance of the mind-body-spirit connection, the value of applying principles of Feng Shui, the four behavioral dimensions of the DISC Model, William Bridge’s three stages of Transition, and Dr. Kubler-Ross’s five stages of loss in just over 200 pages of engaging text!!

I encourage all professionals to read this book and to recognize the opportunity it presents for you, your clients, friends, family and anyone concerned with career transition.

—Julie Ann Sells, Newsletter for the Chicago Chapter of the
Association of Career Professionals International
July/August, 2004

It's about time someone wrote a feel good book about what job changers/seekers go through. Up until now, Dick Bolles spoke to us as a trusted Dad through his Parachute books. But Diane Grimard Wilson has surpassed even Bolles in helping the wandering career nomad to have faith that all will turn out well if you will just listen to Mom because Wilson doesn't truck with the tools and techniques of resumes, interviewing, networking (well, she does mention networking) and the like. She looks into the reader's soul and asks the reader to do the same. She tells us what we will have to weather, the emotional ups and downs, the perilous journey, the bad scare days, the looking at the past, the present, the future and explains about limitations and traits; how to condition your mind and what to expect when your brain begins to engage in the process of transition. And she does this in one new, definitive book that will help your clients as she has helped hers over a twenty-year period. Much of Wilson's style reflects her own story as she tells us about her own history and that of her clients. Throughout the book, we read snippets of her clients' writings which read like journal prose. Wilson herself catches the spirit of inner life through writing, and encourages her clients to do likewise. Each of the ten chapters has numerous references to key conditions or states of mind of the career seeker.

—Barbara Grauer, Career Planning and Adult Development Network e-Newsletter
Volume 26, Number 3, May - June, 2004