How to conduct a job interview
The worst way to select people, except for all the others.
Build your career
agility and thrive
News
Turning Disruption Into Career Growth: Insights from Immigrant Entrepreneurs
A conversation with Neri Karra Sillaman, Thinkers50 2025 Radar Award Winner, Professor, Entrepreneurship Expert, Speaker, Author of Pioneers.
Author Chat: Live Your Opus by Janine Mathó
Janine Mathó talks about her book Live Your Opus.
Career stories
Lily
China
Far from Home
Lily
China
MSc Management, London School of Economics
Audit Associate, KPMG
Lily’s move to the U.K. just before finishing high school in China was not her own choice, though her family situation no doubt predisposed her to this kind of development. Her father had been an expatriate manager of a Chinese multinational since she was a young girl, so she had frequently visited him in France and the U.K. with her mother. Her parents directed that she complete her secondary education at Oxford, to spare her the terrors of the notorious Chinese university entrance exams. Lily’s move to Oxford went smoothly, and she describes the two years she spent living with a host family as the happiest in her life.
Read more
Abel
The Netherlands
FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)
Abel
The Netherlands
Strategic Sail
to FIRE Freedom
Abel‘s voyage to Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) is marked by meticulous planning. He pursued a business education, eventually becoming a CFO. Abel and his wife embraced frugality, saving one salary while gradually growing their income. With strategic goals and an Executive MBA at INSEAD, Abel transitioned to a location-independent portfolio career, achieving FIRE. Now contemplating a fully retired life on a boat, Abel imparts essential lessons on starting early, disciplined planning, and enjoying the journey to financial freedom.
Read more
Marie
France
Corporate to Startup
Marie
France
Strategy and program management at General Electric
CEO, Co-Founder, Chief Innovation Officer of various startups
A true global cosmopolitan, Marie grew up on a farm in France. She completed her PhD in chemical biology in Singapore, before going to China to study its language and culture. She started her career with GE, as the first member of a new R&D team in China. Based in the U.S., her boss essentially told her: “You can do it – just go and figure it out”. In many ways, it was a lot like working in a start-up. When Marie eventually transferred to the Boston office, a colleague commented that she was “way too entrepreneurial to be working at GE”, which was true to a large extent. As she was contemplating leaving, serendipity stepped in: Her division was sold and in 2011, GE and Marie parted ways.
Read more
Anabel
UK
Profit to Purpose
Anabel
UK
Partner / Chief Operating Officer, Pensions First
Chief Operating Officer, Save the Children
Anabel says she had little experience in not-for-profit work, apart from a short project in Sierra Leone during her degree work in Human Sciences, as well as volunteer work in the U.K. with underprivileged children. She is perhaps too modest, as many of us have done far less than that. When Anabel says that purpose work “was not on her radar,” perhaps she means she did not see it as a legitimate way to make a living. She had spent ten years building a massive capacity as a leader and motivator of teams at world-class companies such as Virgin and Carphone Warehouse, and so had developed a taste for being challenged and stretched in this context.
Read moreThe book
Disrupt Your Career:
How to Navigate
Uncharted Career
Transitions and Thrive
By Antoine Tirard and Claire Harbour
Paperback, 310 pages
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
Professionals face many critical crossroads in their careers, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes more expected, but for which they were often not truly prepared.
This book discusses many such career transitions – from leaving a corporation to joining a non-profit, evolving from athlete to executive, or returning to a former employer.
Using the stories of 50 leaders interviewed all over the world, the authors describe what provokes the change, the challenges it creates, how the individual is surviving the transition, and what effective leaders do to navigate and grow from it.
The book offers a simple, easy-to-use framework to help make the most of any uncharted transition.
To thrive, you have to follow a four-stage process of Exploring, Experimenting,
Engaging and Expanding. Drawing on examples of a wide range of companies, Disrupt Your Career also provides recommendations to help organizations better acquire, develop and retain talent.
With both compelling stories and rigorous research, Disrupt Your Career serves as a call to exploit novel ways to approach careers and presents practical advice to help both individuals and organizations better prepare, manage, and make the most of career changes – ultimately leading to more fulfilling careers.
What people are saying
This book brings a fresh approach – based on the stories of a diverse and colorful range of career changers – that will inspire many to explore similar moves. It also provides excellent thinking for organizations, where there is still an enormous need for improved approaches to career management.
Herminia Ibarra
Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School
How often have you wondered if those that leave your organization are doing so for the right reasons? What would you give to know more, and lose less? Disrupt Your Career holds one of the keys to this increasing challenge for leaders, and outlines a series of insights and processes that can lead to better career comfort for individuals and enhanced, more effective career management for organizations. Tirard and Harbour-Lyell tell the stories that illustrate the career transitions with simplicity and empathy, and make it obvious that we can all learn from them.
Åsa Landén Ericsson
CEO of Cygate, Board Member of Grant Thornton Sweden, Formpipe and Rhenman & Partners
For a leader in any substantial organization, one major preoccupation beyond attracting the very best people is also keeping them stimulated, challenged and fulfilled. This book provides invaluable insight, research and strategies for improvement in both talent strategy and career management. The stories are inspiring and authentic, indicating new paths to follow, and innovative approaches to managing career paths for both companies and individuals.
Jean-Claude Le Grand
Senior VP Talent Development and Chief Diversity Officer, L’Oréal
An essential, soul-saving guide for anyone navigating a non-traditional career path, including most women. And for the companies smart enough to attract them – and creative enough to benefit from their adaptive skills.
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
CEO of 20-first and author of Seven Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business
Disrupt Your Career makes a significant contribution towards the career challenge, by illustrating various uncharted transitions with compelling and insightful stories. The frameworks are strikingly simple, and the book provides invaluable options and strategies for organizations and individuals alike.
Gianpiero Petriglieri
Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD
Career disruption will happen to everyone – and most of us are ill prepared. This captivating book shows how to understand career transitions and gives fascinating and practical ideas about how best to navigate. A must read for anyone embarking on a life change.
Lynda Gratton
Professor of Management Practice at London Business School
Whether you are an individual pondering a big change, or forced into transition by yet another downsizing, or you are leading an organization and hoping to stem the early attrition of your people, there is something here for you. The stories are compelling, and the frameworks for action simple and solid.
Per Heggenes
CEO, The IKEA Foundation
…combines insights drawn from stories of successful career changers with rigorous research and practical ideas that can be put to immediate use. The book beautifully demonstrates that career reinvention is not only possible, but should be embraced in today’s VUCA world.
Kevin Cashman
Senior Partner, CEO & Executive Development, Korn Ferry and bestselling author
About
Antoine Tirard is a talent management advisor and the founder of NexTalent. He is the former head of talent management of Novartis and LVMH.
Claire Harbour is a coach and global talent expert, the founder of Culture Pearl and a speaker, consultant and writer about all things to do with optimizing talent across borders.
Sign up
Sign up to receive regular insightful news and advice on managing your career and receive a free gift. Inspiration delivered straight to your Inbox!