Book Review - Teen Dream Jobs - How to Find the Job You Really Want Now

I just finished reading, "Teen Dream Jobs: How to find the job you really want now!" by Nora E. Coon.  I must say that I was not overly impressed with the content of the book.  As the title suggests, the book is about helping teens find jobs.  The author provides information on how to find a job, resume advice, how to dress for the interviews and other advice for teen job seekers.  The information is good, much of it is outdated though. 

Here job seeking advice seems more relevant to a job search in 1999, rather than 2009.  She hardly touches on the internet and the new job boards designed for teens and the wealth of resources available for teen job seekers.  The reality is that all of the information presented in this book can easily be found on the internet with a simple google search.  The author does not provide any new or cutting edge techniques that make it worth forking over money for.

What I did like about the book is the quizzes that she provides.  There are a variety of self assessment exercise that really get the reader thinking about what they like, and dislike, and what they are passionate about.  There is also a quiz that will help determine which career path would be most suitable based on your personality traits.  I actually took some of these quizzes myself and I must say that I found them to be quite accurate.

In closing, I found the book to have some bright spots but overall I felt the book did not provide enough new information to warrant a purchase.

Dan Keller is the CEO of a popular teen jobs website and a resume writer

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What's Next? Follow Your Passion and Find Your Dream Job by Kerry Hannon

"What's Next? Follow Your Passion and Find Your Dream Job" by "U.S. News & World Report" Contributing Editor Kerry Hannon is an entertaining, interesting, and quick book to read that provides the reader with examples and motivation to follow their passion rather than sticking out a job that is unfulfilling and not providing the important things for life, such as family time and wellbeing. The book is a collection of stories, interviews, and suggestions related to changing careers when in your 40s, 50s, or older. The stories and interviews are of real people who did just that, and the jobs they left and the careers they entered are extremely varied, but all interesting with a few common themes behind why they changed. From the opening story of a tough cop turned Nashville music agent to the final story about a lawyer, congressional aide, lobbyist turned pianist, singer and performer of parodies, satire, and song, I found myself engaged and motivated as I pursue a career change myself.

Each chapter is formatted in the same way and features a different person and their career change. First there is a short story of the change the person made. Next there is a question and answer section where the author asked questions to the person about the reasons behind the change, difficulties and resources. Questions such as, "What did the transition mean to your personally?" or "What do you tell people who come to you for advice on starting the second act?" While the answers are brief, they do provide some nice insight and made me stop more than once and ponder my own situation. After the interview questions and answers, there are short segments that provide tips and resources, and some expert advice. These sections are brief too, but contain some very good information to think about upon thinking about your own second or third act and career change. There are sixteen chapters, so sixteen profiles and other information.

Additionally, the back of the book has a few pages of additional books on the topic and helpful web sites on topics such as nonprofits, job hunting, continuing education, small businesses, and more.

Hannon writes in an engaging style and I found myself enjoying the book and really thinking about my own possibilities. And that is the benefit of this book. It's not going to lay out a road map for your career path. Very unlikely you will want to follow the same course as one of the sixteen profiled, and even if you did, your path would be different. This book is for motivation. It allows you to see what others have done and why, and just may trigger a sense of excitement within that leads you to your own second or third act. (Or maybe even your forth, who knows?) The purpose of the book is to show what's been done to open your eyes to your own possibilities. If that is where you are in your life right now, this may be just the book you've been needing.

Alain Burrese, J.D. is a performance and personal development expert who teaches how to live, take action, and get things done through the Warrior's Edge. Alain combines his military, martial art, and Asian experiences with his business, law, and conflict resolution education into a powerful way of living with balance, honor, and integrity. He teaches how to use the Warrior's Edge to Take Action and Achieve Remarkable Results. Alain is the author of Hard-Won Wisdom From The School Of Hard Knocks, the DVDs Hapkido Hoshinsul, Streetfighting Essentials, Hapkido Cane, the Lock On Joint Locking series, and numerous articles and reviews. You can read more articles and reviews and see clips of his DVDs as well as much more at http://www.burrese.com/ and http://www.aikiproductions.com/

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Career Warfare - A Book Summary

It is a tough and competitive business environment you
live and it is getting more and more difficult to achieve
your goals. You have to stand out among your colleagues
and competitors. You have to work hard for career
advancement, and better compensation.

Whether you are a senior executive, an entrepreneur or
an employee, this book will show you the best way to
succeed, accomplish your personal and career goals,
outshine your competition and differentiate yourself
from the pack. David F. D'Alessandro shows you how to
stand out from the crowd by developing your own
"personal brand"; and provides valuable lessons in
the etiquette of reputation building.

What is Personal Brand?

You need to realize that success does not only come
from hard work and appropriately playing the part.
To be successful in business and in your career, you
must be able to distinguish yourself from the rest of
the pack - you need to develop, build and defend your
reputation.

Personal branding is a way you manage your career or
business. It is a way of communicating that makes you
different and special. By using these qualities you
can distinguish yourself from your peers so that you
can expand your success.

There are 10 rules you can follow for building a
successful personal brand and keeping it:

Rule 1: Try to Look Beyond Your Own Navel - The biggest
obstacle in building a positive personal brand is your
own ego. In order to develop an attractive personal
brand, you need to have self-respect and you need
to respect the people around you.

Rule 2: Like It or Not, Your Boss is the Coauthor of
Your Brand - You must realize and accept the fact that
early on in your career, your boss will reap most of
the rewards for ideas you give, money that you brought
in, etc. This is how the corporate world operates. Do
not fight the power structure. Instead learn how to
play and live by it.

Rule 3: Put Your Boss on the Couch - Not all bosses
will help you. It is best that you recognize what type
of personality your boss has so that you would realize
what advantages and disadvantages this person can
cause to your brand.

Rule 4: Learn Which One is the Pickle Fork - Good manners
are crucial in developing and enhancing your personal
brand. Manners are about consideration and respect,
knowledge and patience. Practice good business etiquette.

Rule 5: Kenny Rogers is Right - While it is important
for you to seize the opportunity to build your brand,
it is equally crucial to know what battles to take. Know
when to keep on fighting and when to move fold.

Rule 6: It's Always Show Time - You must realize that
reputations are not usually made by big events -
sometimes it is those big events that smear your brand.
What builds your reputation is your day-to-day
behavior in the business setting, such as how you deal
with people, how you make decisions, your work habits,
etc.

Rule 7: Make the Right Enemies - The best personal brands
include courtesy, fairness, tolerance, self-respect and
having good and proper manners. However, a small amount
of ruthlessness is good for your brand. Your reputation
will not suffer much if you fight your enemies,
but it will suffer if you lose your self-respect.

Rule 8: Try Not To Be Swallowed By the Bubble - Once you
are successful in building your brand and is rising in the
ranks, do not lose sight of the forest. Do not be too
full of yourself that you will be swallowed by success.
It is bad for your humanity, and bad for your career.

Rule 9: The Higher You Fly, the More You Will Be Shot
At - Everybody makes mistakes. The higher you are in the
ladder of success, the more likely that your mistakes
will be highlighted. Accept the fact that bad press comes
with prominence in any field.

Rule 10: Everybody Coulda Been a Contender; Make Sure You
Stay One - Set yourself to be distinct from your peers.
Since you are constantly being compared to your peers,
don't be afraid to offer something unique or distinctive.
Don't give up easily. Don't throw in the towel immediately
because of a setback or two. Learn from your mistakes and
turn it into an opportunity. Don't lie, cheat or
steal. Be cautious of the reputation you are building.

By: Regine P. Azurin

Regine Azurin is the President of BusinessSummaries.com, a company that provides business book summaries of the latest bestsellers for busy executives and entrepreneurs.

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Book Review - Crisis-Proof Your Career

Some ideas are timeless and when it comes to your career it really doesn't matter that the book "Crisis-Proof Your Career" was written in the 1990s.  North America and many of the world's economies are leading employees to consider the risks and options that they have for the future.

Author, Peller Marion, Ed,., D. challenges the read to not only examine whether you are "endangered" in the workplace but also helps you helps you to identify factors and barriers that prevent you from doing well.  Then he offers strategies and information to help you implement a plan that is "crisis-proof" which you can use on a daily basis to reach success.

Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and writer of the Foreword states:  "A crisis-proof career gives you the flexibility, courage and personal security to survive and even prosper in hard times as well as good times.  Peller Marion's book can show you the way!"

This book not only provides you with information about how to become marketable, but also provides specific and practical worksheets and action plan templates that will help you to turn the knowledge into effective task lists.  He promotes networking, teaches resume basics and tips on how to get the most from an interview. 

Besides the outward behaviours and activities, Mr. Marion challenges the reader to deal with the inner self through nourishing of the spirit.  He also recommends techniques to achieve a positive frame of mind.

If you are concerned about your career and want to read about how to improve your situation, this book offers you good common sense as well as specific methods for moving into a situation where you can enjoy security and emotional health.  I highly recommend it.

And now I would like to invite you to claim your Free Instant Access to a complimentary list of 10 Steps to Making Your Life an Adventure when you visit http://www.lindahancockspeaks.com/

From Dr. Linda Hancock, Registered Psychologist and Registered Social Worker

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Can You Be a Career Renegade? A Blueprint For a Fulfilling Career That Pays the Bills

Get a pad and pen and sit down at your computer before you begin reading Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields [Broadway, 2009]. You'll want to jot down notes and visit websites while reading -- and Fields provides a lot of ideas and resources in this fast-reading, career-building guide.

What Do You Want to Do?

Fields begins by leading you through finding your passion, the activities that you love doing so much you get lost in them, and the people you need to surround yourself with to be successful.

How Will You Do It?

In the next section of the book, Fields lays out general career renegade paths you can follow or adapt to your own circumstances. Each path is highlighted with stories of real entrepreneurs who have created wonderful careers for themselves while finding their passions. He presents categories of people's needs and discusses ways to use those needs to build your new career.

In addition, he provides a treasure trove of research tools and ideas to help you ensure that you find the right niche for your passion. Finding the right niche is essential if you are to earn a living, not just pursue a beloved hobby.

How Will You Share It with the World?

Next, Fields discusses the social networking and traditional tools you will need to use to build a platform for your new career. He provides tips for using each medium to the greatest effect for your own needs. He also shares valuable etiquette that will help you ensure you don't alienate any of the people you need to surround yourself with as you build your brand.

How Will You Make It Work?

Finally, Fields shares his own story, his failures and successes. He highlights the importance of believing in what you are doing and of ensuring that the most important people in your life (your spouse, children, and close friends) also believe in you and your dream.

Fields provides tips for contacting and networking with influence makers so that you can learn from their expertise. 

He closes with a powerful statement that should become a mantra for anyone seeking to follow in Fields' footsteps and make their passion their new career: "I began to accept responsibility not only for my life to date, but for the process of making it come alive from that moment forward."

Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love is a new breed of career discovery and business book - and it is useful to those looking for a career shift and those looking to start their own business. Career Renegade is highly individual and depends heavily on the interactive participation of its readers. You have to work the book to make it work for you.

Jennifer Roland is a an experienced writer and editor living in the Portland, Oregon, area. Her nonfiction covers such areas as educational technology, personal finance, entertainment, pets, and health and fitness. She also writes fiction, mainly paranormal and contemporary romances.

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Career Book Review "101 Ways To Successfully Market Yourself" by Jay Miletsky

In today's marketplace, your career is 100 percent your responsibility, including marketing your strengths. Unfortunately, marketing can be maligned, especially when you're the product being marketed. Honest attempts can appear boastful, so we hesitate to do so. Yet, if people aren't aware of your strengths, how will they know when, where, and how to use them?

The best self-marketing centers around building relationships and having fun doing so. Successful self-marketing can, among other things, enhance your job search, promote your own company, grab a piece of the spotlight (i.e. become a thought leader/industry innovator), and make new friends.

Following is the second of three articles summarizing "101" career books published by Course Technology. A different author highlights what it takes to achieve professional success in the 21st century for each book. Here, it's businessman and marketing expert, Jason Miletsky. His new book is entitled 101 Ways To Successfully Market Yourself."

Miletsky is CEO and executive creative director for a leading marketing communications agency in New York City. He's a featured speaker for numerous companies and seminars and guest lectures for universities.

"101 Ways To Successfully Market Yourself," is a short read of 88 pages, long on self-marketing tips. You're bound to learn some new applications to advance your career. Use Miletsky's ideas to gauge how many techniques you currently incorporate to promote yourself, and decide which ones best suit your needs.

The book reads in three easy parts. The first is entitled, "27 MYM (Marketing Yourself Mandates);" and establishes the foundation of your self-promotional efforts. Miletsky's tips include:

Understand Your Personal Brand. Your personal brand is your personal reputation. It's key to successfully market yourself and sustain relevant long-term connections. People will decide to befriend or distance you based on your personality, sense of style, unique qualities, what and how you say it, commitment follow through and what you potentially bring to the table.

22. Do Something Specific to Stand Out. Accomplish something that separates you from the crowd, and you'll find yourself in more demand. Suggestions include write a book, or articles for popular print/online publications, record a series of Web videos, and hold a seminar.

27. Don't Give Up-It Won't Happen Overnight. "Marketing yourself is a process," says Miletsky. It takes time to meet new people and build a following. Persevere.

Part II is titled, "Make The Most of The Web." Miletsky emphasizes that to effectively market yourself today, you need to include the Web. "Social networking may die down a bit over time, but it's here to stay," he says. For space interest, Miletsky assumes you have a basic knowledge of the three big social networking sites: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. If not, he advocates learning their attributes as soon as possible. Highlights include:

28. Make Social Networking Part of Your Daily Routine. Social networking does take time and effort. It can take a while before you see results. "This can be frustrating, because thanks to the speed of the Web, most people have lost their patience to allow things to happen over time," says Miletsky. Incorporate social networking into your daily routine, using the Big 3 sites. Send an e-mail blast once a month to your contacts. Inform them of your new blog posts and other information.

63. Get Your Name in a URL. Make sure you secure your name as a URL. It's good marketing for any of your online activities you engage in. Defensively it prevents someone else from cashing in on your name, as you become better known.

69. Broadcast What You Write. Get the URL for any blog post you write or comment you leave on someone else's blog (shorten the URL through bit.ly or some other shortening service). Broadcast it on Twitter, use it in LinkedIn conversations, and post it on relevant Facebook groups and your Facebook wall.

"There's Life Offline-Get Out and Meet Real People," is Miletsky's third message. Among his suggestions are:

78. Become a Regular. Frequent various places. Over time, people will recognize your face, making connections easier.

82. Seek Out Public Speaking Opportunities. Meet numerous people all at once. Be a featured speaker in a room full of people listening. Speakers command attention, are focal points for attendees; and many will want to befriend you afterwards.

101. Make Follow-Up a Ritual. Make sure you follow up with each new contact within 24 hours after your initial connection. Send a quick e-mail to remind new contacts who you are, how you met, and conversations had. Suggest a future meeting when you sense mutual benefits.

Six appendices enrich the book; with the first listing Miletsky's top 30 Twitter tools. "Twitter is one of the absolute best ways to get people to notice you," he says. Endorsements include:
Tweetdeck. Provides numerous columns to allow simultaneous monitoring of people you follow, tweets mentioning you, direct messages and any other keyword/group you choose. Twitterholic. Checks your relative ranking and graphs your followers over time. Nearby Tweets. Enhances local marketing by entering desired geographical location/keyword. Site shows the people within that radius that fit the description.

The " Who You Should Follow On Twitter" List is Appendix B, and details 31 active links to find good people to follow on the site. Included are:

25 SEO Gurus. 50 Users to Follow for Job Searching. Top 237 People to Follow on Twitter Who Will Follow You Back.

The most comprehensive appendix, titled, "Strategies for Success," specifies how to maximize your achievements at work. Its nine tips include "Visualize Success," and "Learn How to Advance within the Company;" which features 30 soul-searching questions pertaining to seeking a management position. Those queries include:

Are you decisive? Can you see yourself calmly and objectively handling crisis situations? Do you do your best work all the time?

Other appendices highlight LinkedIn groups, networking events and additional social networking sites.

Marketing yourself is no longer an option. To enjoy long-term career success, learn and hone a process that works for you; and have fun doing it.

Complement Miletsky's message with Rashika Fernando's "101 Career Success Tips," and Carol A. Silvis's "101 Ways To Make Yourself Indispensable at Work," to jump-start your career, whether employed, unemployed, seasoned or novice.

You can follow the author on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jaymiletsky.

Timothy Zaun is a blogger, speaker and freelance writer. Visit him online at http://timzaun.com/.

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Back on The Career Track - Book Review

Are you among the growing number of moms returning to work after leaving paid employment to care for your family? Maybe your youngest child is learning to walk, starting kindergarten, or leaving for college. You may be yearning for the rewards of your former career, feeling the isolation of your "empty nest" or in need of more household income.

Women return to work for a variety of reasons, but they all face similar challenges that can be minimized with smart planning.

Back on the Career Track - A Guide for Stay at Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin is a very good road map for women who have left paid employment to raise a family and are considering a return to work. In this book, the authors lay out an effective plan for stay at home moms who want to return to work. They are realistic about the challenges moms returning to work will face, and they provide effective tips for protecting your career while you are out of full time employment.

I've worked with plenty of relaunching moms and have found that when moms return to work, they have more success in reestablishing a career when they have found a way to stay connected to their former colleagues, their industry and developments in work related technology while they were at home with their kids. Back on the Career Track is full of tips for stay at home moms who want to maintain or reestablish professional connections, and for that reason, smart stay at home moms will benefit from implementing the tips in this book even before they are ready to return to work.

The book is remarkably thorough and addresses:

Fears and insecurities that stay at home moms often face when relaunching a career Realistic career considerations and options when moms return to work Typical challenges that arise from employment history gaps Changes in family and social dynamics when stay at home parents return to work Societal and employer views on relaunching moms

Although I'm a big fan of this book, there are two shortcomings in Back on the Career Track. The first is the fact that the authors have chosen to focus on college educated women who established high level, elite careers prior to starting families. The choice to use primarily doctors, lawyers and MBA graduates in the examples in the book is unfortunate.

The excellent advice in this book applies to all stay at home moms who may want to return to the workforce, not just women who left high level careers. If you are not a doctor or a lawyer or you don't hold an MBA, you can definitely benefit from the strategies in this book, but you'll have to remind yourself that all of the tips apply to any stay at home mom from any field of work.

The second shortcoming in the book is in the resume examples in the resources section. Addressing employment history gaps on resumes is an important issue for stay at home moms returning to work. The gaps in the sample resumes in this book are absolutely glaring. There are simple, effective strategies to minimize gaps on your resume while maintaining credibility with employers; those strategies have not been used in the examples here.

Go ahead and apply any and all of the other strategies for returning to work that are outlined in the book; the advice is excellent. When it comes time to write your resume, however, I'd recommend consulting another source for effective tips on minimizing gaps in your work history.

Back on the Career Track is a wonderful, much needed resource for moms returning to work. There is plenty of advice that you can apply well before you are ready to relaunch your career, so this book is a great read for women who are just leaving paid employment to become stay at home moms as well as those who are ready to return to the workforce. The authors do a great job of balancing honesty about the challenges of relaunching a career with the optimism that returning to work is absolutely achievable.

Stay at home moms returning to work can relaunch their careers. I've worked with plenty of moms from all walks of life who achieved this goal. Successful relaunching does take commitment, work and planning, and Back on the Career Track will show you how to do the work to make it happen.

Lisa McGrimmon publishes http://www.careerchoiceguide.com/ a career management and job search resource. To find out how parents returning to work can minimize gaps in their work history, visit http://www.careerchoiceguide.com/parents-returning-to-work.html

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