When Issac quit his dream job of Head of Marketing at PUMA in 2015 and took a career break to study screenwriting in New York, little did he know what he had signed up for. Over the past two years, Issac spoke to more than fifty working professionals, all of whom went through a break in their career for various reasons. Reboot is an intimate, honest and rich compendium of all those experiences, mistakes, lows and highs that people confronted with a career break go through. Author, Issac John says, “Career breaks, whether voluntary or involuntary, dent the confidence of working professionals and make it harder for them to rejoin a mainstream career. I struggled with it up close when after my second sabbatical, it took me 18 months to make a comeback. It’s high time we normalise career breaks and Reboot is a step towards that. Reboot covers myriad experiences of people at different levels who not just survived to tell the tale of similar journeys but went on to accomplish amazing things after their career break.”
Executive Editor, Sachin Sharma says, “Taking a break and then getting back into the job market is akin to getting off a treadmill and then getting back on it while it’s moving. Issac John took not one but three breaks during the course of his corporate career to pursue various interests. Every time, making a comeback was riddled with challenges. Not only did he successfully manage comebacks, he ensured he made notes of all the learnings enroute. Reboot is a book that should be in every working professional’s bookshelf.”
ABOUT THE BOOK
When Issac quit his dream job of Head of Marketing at PUMA in 2015 and took a career break to study screenwriting in New York, little did he know what he had signed up for. Over the next eighteen months, he would face over a hundred rejections from famed brands, headhunters, publishers, talent agencies and producers. After being rejected in the final interview rounds of brands like Uber, Netflix and Airbnb, he slowly and steadily clawed his way back into a mainstream career. Issac went on to lead a team of over a hundred people at Discovery, having built their direct-to-consumer OTT business in Asia-Pacific (discovery+), and has authored two books – all in a span of five years since that career break. Over the past two years, Issac spoke to more than fifty working professionals, all of whom went through a break in their career for various reasons. Reboot is an intimate, honest and rich compendium of all those experiences, mistakes, lows and highs that people confronted with a career break go through. It shares the message that no matter the odds you are up against, a career break is always temporary, and, in many cases, it can even prove to be life-changing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Issac John has led large direct-to-consumer teams spanning marketing, product, design and tech functions, with stellar consumer brands such as Discovery and PUMA. A big believer in re-shaping careers, he has taken two breaks over the course of his career of sixteen years, one of which took him back to school at the New York Film Academy at the age of thirty-three. Both his breaks, while leading to short-term pain, turned out to be game-changing for his personal and professional growth. Issac is currently building his own company as an entrepreneur-in-residence with Antler India, an early stage VC firm.
HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and the Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India has been awarded the Publisher of the Year Award four times: at Publishing Next in 2015, and at Tata Literature Live! in 2016, 2018 and 2021. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Egmont, Oneworld, Harvard University Press, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet.