Books : Work It! : Excerpts

Introduction

During the carefree days of the late 1990s -- remember them? -- the job market for twenty- and thirty-somethings was flush. Young people could write their own tickets: stock options, outrageous benefits, fat salaries, quirky job titles, and cool working environments were readily available. If you were searching for a job, the 1990s were good times. But the good times couldn't last forever.

When the dot-com bubble burst a few years ago, I threw a party for a bunch of friends of mine who had just been laid off. The party scene had always been a big part of the dot-com world, so with some willful defiance against the employment gods, I called my soiree the Pink Slip Party. It was July 2000, and I had no idea that my little get-together -- a "safe haven for dot-com-miserating" -- would soon blossom into a major community-networking event. Friends brought their friends, and recruiters even showed up. Soon, hundreds of people were crowding New York City nightclubs, grooving to "I Will Survive," drowning their sorrows in Guinness and Cosmos, but always making valuable connections and discovering that they weren't alone. As the economy continued on its downward spiral, laid-off workers from every industry started showing up and I threw one new Pink Slip Party per month. The idea spread, and by the end of 2000, Pink Slip Parties were popping up all over the country, from Atlanta and Philly to Boston and San Francisco. People even started throwing Pink Slip Parties in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Tokyo.

Meanwhile, as the founder of The Hired Guns, an agency that places freelancers into short-term projects, I knew what companies were looking for in new employees. Thus, I was in a unique position to offer career advice to the downsized. As the Pink Slip Party circuit blossomed, though, I had no idea that doling out job-hunting advice would become, quite literally, my full-time job. I'm a firm believer in "what goes around comes around," so as people kept asking for help with their job searches, I kept giving it. When I started to get the same queries from job hunters and pink slippers over and over again, however, I realized just how different getting a job is now from when our parents first started out. Landing a job today requires learning the new rules of engagement that govern the current working world. It's easy to develop a false sense of job security when the economy is hot. But if you start feeling smug and complacent, like a milk-fed house cat, your survival will be at risk. You need to keep your job-hunting claws sharp, so that if you get tossed out into the cold, cruel job market, you'll have the skills to compete.

With that in mind, consider Work It! your job search scratching post. Whether you're just starting out on your job hunt, are about to go into the biggest interview of your life, or just got laid off, this book was written so that you get the information you need, when you need it. I hate those books that force you to read the whole thing before you can start seeing an improvement in whatever it is that they're trying to get you to do. You should be inspired to implement recommendations on the fly. That's why in Work It! every tip within every chapter is written so that you can take immediate action and improve your job hunt. How much more instant gratification could you want? Read it front to back, if you want a total job hunt overhaul. Or skip around to cull the information that's relevant to you, right now. If you only have a few minutes to spare, read it on the bus or take it to the bathroom. Work It! is written a lot more like a web site than a career tome. So, pop around and enjoy yourself. Each and every chapter also includes sage advice from career experts as well as epic war stories from job seekers just like you, who share their successes and failures.

If this all sounds like a bit more than you need right now, fear not. The first chapter, "Get Out of Your Own Way," summarizes the major takeaways from the book. Thereafter, each chapter ends with an action plan, "Now Go Work It!," so that you can start making changes to your job-hunting efforts right away.

The first section of the book, "Everything You Know Is Wrong," includes chapters that will challenge you and get you to see things differently so that you can conduct a successful job hunt. The chapters in Part Two, "Back to Basics," provide you with the tactical elements of the job hunt. They're designed to hone your job-hunting skills from resume writing and interviewing to negotiating your eventual job offers. The last section of the book, "Break Open in Case of Emergency!" offers specific advice when you need some job-hunting 911. When your career is at a turning point or crisis, crack these chapters open. You'll get through the tough stuff from figuring out if you're about to get pink-slipped to surviving unemployment without going broke. There's also a special chapter for people just starting their careers.

This book is noticeably devoid of charts, graphs, or those insufferable worksheets. If you want one of those career books, head directly to Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble, choose from hundreds of options, and let them collect dust on your bookshelf. (Okay, there is a Six-Month Survival Budget, which you'll need and should use if you get laid off or are still looking for a job. But it's painless, I promise.)

I'm hoping that Work It! will debunk a few career myths and radically alter the way you approach job hunting from this moment forward. Filled with in-your-face advice, a needed dose of realism, and anecdotes from the trenches, Work It! is not for the wishy-washy. It's meant to be dog-eared and tattered, shared with friends and used and abused. Job hunting is never fun, especially today. But if you adopt the tools and techniques you'll find in these pages, you'll get results.

Now go Work It!