In the process of learning all about career management, I've bought a bunch of self-help books on "finding your career" and whatnot. I guess I want to read a lot of other peoples ideas.

I've got two complaints:

The first is that these books espouse the importance of finding work you love. Of course, work that you love will no longer be work, your work will be better, you will be rich, blah blah blah.

Don't get me wrong, I buy that completely and wholeheartedly - so why then do every one of these books then discuss your next job. If finding what you love to do was just a matter of doing something different, if it was THAT easy....

Well, its not that easy, at least in my opinion. Finding your work - your mission in life, that for which you have a passion is a journey in my humble opinion.

The second problem I have with these books is: Step 1) assess your values. Step 2) assess your skills. Step 3) figure out what you want to do on this basis (huh?) Step 4) go on a job search.

Step 4 and beyond essentially forget the values part of the work. What happened to the values? My favorite part is the informational interview - they say "its important", and then the books "suggest" some questions to ask.

This makes me nuts - you went all through those exercises to learn your values and skills, and now your questions are extracted from some list in a book?

My opinion - it all ties together. Your questions in the informational interview should be rooted in your values and skills. If you don't get the answer to the question "is this job a good match for me", what was the interview all about?