Job Hunting in the New Year

How to Interview Like A Pro Forty-Three Rules for Getting Your Next Job Mary Greenwood. JD. LLM iUniverse release/ ASIN: B004JHZ26C Kindle EditionKindle / paperback Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson A book for its time… The Feel-Good Guide for Getting a Job and Learning Negotiating Skills Who would have guessed. I read this book because I thought I might be able to recommend it to my retail clients, but it turns out, getting a job is very much like selling a book! So it’s suitable in many ways for my author-clients, too. Getting a job isn’t much different than it was back in the days when I interviewed at PR firms and magazines like Good Housekeeping. Though we have many tools at our disposal that weren’t available back then, the basics are similar. And industry-to-industry, we can learn so much from the general (yet detailed!) information Mary Greenwood gives us in How To Interview Like a Pro. Basic business skills like Greenwood imparts here, are useful at some level for almost anyone who must earn a living. Mary’s number two rule is that a job hunter must “prepare a good elevator speech.” She also says, “Make a list of everyone you know.” Ajob hunter would then use that list to find influential people with contacts of their own who will lead them to other jobs, recommend them to others, and generally hold their hands through the process. Going hand in hand with this process is Mary’s rule “Telling everyone you know you are looking for a job.” She, expands this rule by adding: “Tell everyone whom you would like to know you are looking for a job.” Here she covers making new contacts using social networking. Mary’s rules are born of experience, both general and legal. Her book moves us along from rule to rule—lickety split—right down to the never-nevers like: “Never say you don’t have any more questions.” Interviews go both ways. If they don’t, the interviewer may form some opinions you’d just as well he or she didn’t. I once hired for my store a very young employee with no experience because her questions were so astute I figured she was mature for her age and would learn fast. It turned out, that assessment was right. One of the reason things move so quickly is Greenwood’s anecdotes. You’ll come away from this book feeling as if you aren’t alone in your search and knowing how to make sure you aren’t. You’ll know the basics and the details, like how to answer about any question an interviewer is likely to ask. One of the best things about this book is Greenwood’s Introductory Rule: “Getting a job is like parking. You have to be at the right place at the right time.” If you keep that in mind—along with her little protractor story (yes, this is a tease—I think you should read this book!), you’ll hang in there and know one day you’ll be exactly in that place at that time. Now, here’s the thing. I believe that almost anyone in the business world could benefit from this book, from interviewee to interviewer. from author to retailer to IT guy or gal. Sometimes the books we get the most from are the ones we don’t think we need in the moment. Have it ready. It’s way more than a get-a-job book.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson's FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques launched at the National Stationery Show at Javits Center. Because she is the author of the multi award-winning how-to books for writers,The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success, retailers will also find essentials of writing for blogs, Web sites, and newsletters on this blog. She is the author of an award-winning novel, This Is the Place; and other fiction and poetry. She blogs on better writing at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog. Find her tweeting for retailers at @frugalretailing . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use this little green widget to let them know about it: