I just got my official copy of my friend Michelle Goodman’s My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional. I say official because I had the opportunity to provide a back cover blurb a few months ago. I was happy to do so, because for those of us who long to have the flexible lifestyle and income control of the freelance writer, Michelle’s book is a must-have.
I tried to use YouTube’s quick capture to upload a vlog about Jason Seiden’s awesome book called How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What’s Left of Your Career.
Unfortunately, the internet is conspiring against me and my video and audio tracks are misaligned.
In lieu of a vlog, let me summarize how I feel about the book:
- I love it.
- HR Wench enjoyed it and wrote a comprehensive review of the book. I don’t want to be derivative, so go read her review.
- If you want to understand why your career sucks and how to fix it, this book is for you.
- If you have an employee who comes to you for advice and wants to figure out why his/her career is stuck in neutral (or reverse), this book is a great resource.
Jason is a great writer and he flips ‘traditional career advice’ on its back and tells you how to succeed by giving you hilarious examples of how to fail. The book’s message will appeal to employees in all stages of their careers — and I personally highlighted all the mistakes that I made in my career and tried to think about applying Jason’s advice to my own experiences.
The book is brill, and I totally recommend it.
*
As a side note — here are some pictures of me with the book. One is staged picture to make me look all professorial & elitist. The other is a picture of me looking at my cat, Lucy, who is puking on my area rug in the kitchen.
Enjoy!
Pimp Your Work’s book review can be read here; this is one of the strongest HtSD has gotten yet!
As always, I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has taken the time to read HtSD, and especially to those who have taken the extra step of letting others know about it… I am continually humbled by the feedback I’m getting from people whose voices and opinions I have come to respect through their blogs.
I’m late to this game. Success for Hire has already been reviewed by many great bloggers.
However, Alexandra Levit was kind enough to send me a free copy of her book and I want to review it. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, perhaps this review will help guide your decision.
I have to admit, physicians are a bit larger than life to me.
I get medical school, years of learning, tons of debt, putting your pants on one leg at a time. . . yada, yada, yada. Still, there is something about the white coat, the bedside manner, the potential of another person being able to heal what ails me that draws my attention. Was it this, my biology background, my position in a medical center, or something else that made me pick up, put down and ultimately use my Barnes and Noble 15% off coupon and membership discount on a book about mortality written by a surgeon?
Daniel Pink could have written a classic business book about choosing a career, but he took a risk, tried something new and wrote a manga!
The ad for The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko (The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need) says that it’s “Americas first business book as manga”. It contains very nice and expressive art in the style of Japanese comics as well as fun dialogues. But it’s also full of valuable advice presented in a very engaging way.
In Daniel Pink’s own words:
Today the question at the center of work is: WTF?!
The book explores this question resulting in the “six lessons of a satisfying, successful career”. You probably heard them before in one form or another. But believe me, never like this. Or has any career counselor ever said to you that
when it comes to work, you’re as clueless as a cucumber.
I really liked how Pink introduces Johnny Bunko as a hardworking but disillusioned and somewhat clueless knowledge worker and then walks him (and the reader) through the six lessons.
I also enjoyed seeing the name of Martin Seligman (Learned Helplessness) and the face of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow) in a manga.
But the absolutely coolest was of course the red stapler! Okay, it’s in black & white, but it was so obvious, it had to be a red stapler.
The only bad thing about the book is that it’s too short. But I always say that after reading a great manga.
Most employees walk around every day with a ready supply of hand grenades. Some are thrown at coworkers during times of duress. Others get rolled into the boss’ office when credit is taken for something you worked weekends to complete. But the most explosive, destructive and damaging we save for ourselves. This is the overarching point of Gen Xer Jason Seiden’s sarcastic book, “How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What’s Left of Your Career“.
There is a new book in town and it is a good one. Simply put, Alexandra Levitt delivers. Alexandra brings her experiences and expertise to her newly released book, Success For Hire where she provides a 9-step guide to finding and keeping outstanding employees.
From carefully analyzing your position from both a business and cultural perspective to conducting a strong interview and making a job offer, Alexandra provides a practical road map with nuggets of wisdom along the way:
- When requiring a certain number of years of experience, quantify what a person will be able to deliver as a result of that experience (page 7)
- Understand your own problem-solving and decision-making process to know how any new employee can complement your strengths and cover your weaknesses (page 11)
- ALL of Chapter 3, Narrow the Field of Applicants: Assess Where They’ve Been and Where They’re Going and the lost art of reading a resume.
Wait, there is more. Alexandra takes you through making the job offer and developing a positive first impression at new employee orientation and leaves you charged and ready for action as she dishes out retention strategies.
This is an excellent desk top reference for entry level HR professional and supervisors. If Alexandra should ever happen to convert Chapters 3 - 5 into a supervisor training module (hint, hint), I am on it.
Are you ready to put an end to “desperation hiring?” This is the book for you!
Finally: A book that appeals to my Generation X sensibilities and gives me good career advice at the same time.
How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What’s Left of Your Career by Jason Seiden is exactly what Michael Horowitz, PhD & president of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology says it is on the back cover,
Jason has written a very smart and funny book with a serious message that appeals to the best in his readers.
Well, that is all find and dandy, but who the heck is this Jason guy and what makes him so qualified to help you fail? Look no further than the book’s introduction (perfectly titled, Read This First Despite Your Strong Temptation to Skip It) where Jason tells us,
If you want to be a great criminal, learn from a cop. If you want to be a great failure, learn from me.
and
Here’s the deal: I’m the guy companies call in when they want to grow. I “coach teams” and “develop leaders.” On occasion, I might be asked to help “get someone’s head out of his ass.”
Say no more, Jason. I’m on board with your qualifications.
The book’s premise is: what’s easier than failure? Jason offers “An alternative form of success that requires no practice, no soul-searching, and no behavioral changes whatsoever.” He wrote the book to help others, “Succeed at self-destruction.” Now there is a movement I can get behind!
The layout of the book is thus: the white pages contain snarky, fun and delicious tidbits on how to not just fail, but Fail Spectacularly. The red pages, in contrast, contain tips for “masochistic success seekers”.
In four very readable and quick sections, you will learn how to self-destruct from early on in your career, whether you aspire to be an executive or individual contributor.
One of my favorite “red page sections”, for those of us that are really not sure yet if we want to fail, talks about craptastic hiring procedures. Readers, you know this is a topic near and dear to my heart. Here is what Jason has to say about it:
Cut through administrative red tape and go get the job.
Official channels clogged up? Call the hiring manager directly and let him know. Three days passed since the official offer was supposed to have arrived? Call the hiring manager’s boss - no, call his boss’s boss - and ask what’s what. By doing so, you will make a statement that you are an action-oriented go-getter, and you will make that statement with action and go-getterness. Still, be respectful. This approach isn’t without risks, among them the potential to upstage your future boss. At some point, you’ll need to ask yourself: is it more important to demonstrate respect for the existing office pecking order (at the risk of having the job offer go cold), or to get the job (at risk of upsetting the office pecking order)?
Another one of my favorite “red page sections” could have been written by HR communication guru Frank Roche,
K.I.S.S.E.S.
Don’t make a thing more complicated than it needs to be. Don’t overthink, don’t add “one more thing,” don’t jam in last-minute changes, and don’t overengineer. Think twice before using your brain at all. Business isn’t brain surgery. (Unless you’re a brain surgeon.) But it does require vigilance. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Execute, Stupid.
Now for a healthy dose of constructive critiscm.
Jason suggests 19 books and one article to his readers. Every single one (barring one co-authored book) is written by a man. What is wrong with a man reading what other men have written? Nothing. However, the other half of the planet has a valuable perspective to share with you as well.
Another note: almost all of the books listed were written by Caucasian men. There are some exceptions (if you also count co-authors, I believe there are three to four total). Again, nothing wrong with reading something written by a Caucasian male. At the same time, I encourage Jason to broaden his horizons. There are passionate, intelligent and groundbreaking business books out there written by women and people of color that are very much worth your time. And, I promise, not all of them are about being a woman or person of color in business.
All in all, How To Self-Destruct is very well done. It made me laugh and entertained me, but it also made me think. I encourage you to give it a spin.
If you’d like more information on Jason and to read more of his thoughts, check out his blog at JasonSeiden.com.
Cross posted at BlogHer
What is the best thing you can do for your company as a HR professional? If you guessed “hire the right person the very first time”, you have just won the HR sweepstakes. Now I know that HR professionals aren’t always totally in charge of hiring but you should at least have some influence over the process. That’s why one of the best things you can do is read the book Success for Hire: Simple Strategies to Find and Keep Outstanding Employees.
Other than the fact that the book is written by HRM Today’s own Alexandra Levit, the book gives HR professionals and hiring managers alike ways of recruiting the very best people. Levit writes in a very easy to read tone that is devoid of jargon or rigidity that fills a lot of HR books. That is appreciated, at least by me.
Another thing that is important about this book is that she gives very practical advice and even includes guides and forms to help you to put some of her ideas into practice. This is important, especially if you are new to some of the concepts. So instead of saying “Hey, you really need to check the backgrounds of the people you hire thoroughly”, she gives you a form to use that actually helps you do better background checks.
My three favorite parts of the book are really easy:
- Analyze before you advertise - Ah, so often forgotten in the heat of losing a critical person. “Hey, get the advertising up and get a new person as quickly as possible.” Wait, did we analyze the job to see if that person is actually going to be doing the same thing as before? Do we know if the person who just left had a problem with the job functions that we should revisit? Is the salary appropriate? Spending a couple hours on this can save days, weeks and even months.
- Better interviewing strategy - Interviewing is already a fairly unreliable method of identifying great candidates so why do people assume they can go into an interview unstructured? I love the emphasis on thinking ahead about what you want to know and then formulating your questions around that.
- On-boarding improvements - New hire orientation sucks and everyone knows it. Yet, nobody seems to want to change it. Just awful I tell you! HR people should work on making sure the on-boarding process is smooth and welcoming. If people are rushed in the door to work on their specific project without meeting other people, what sort of impression does that leave?
Two things that I wished the book included:
- More content about retention - I know the books emphasis is on hiring process and that’s the low hanging fruit. The book spends 2/3s of its time on it too which is appropriate. Keeping outstanding employees is almost as important as hiring right and is (at least in my opinion) much more difficult. It may have been too much for a book that is meant to be read by many levels of an organization but that’s what I would have liked to see.
- A companion website - I think a really simple companion website would have helped out even more on the implementation side. So for example, those nice forms she included could be in Word format on the companion website along with a short bit on how to utilize and implement it. Right now, if I like the format of one of her forms, I am going to be copying it out of the book.
Overall, this book was really great. If you are just starting in the hiring arena or if you need a refresher, this is a great book to read through.
Also, I am more than happy to read and review books as long as you’ll allow me to be honest. Any book that is sent to me is either passed on to another HR professional or donated to a local job development organization. Feel free to e-mail if interested (lance at hrmtoday dot com).
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