A pragmatic resume-writing guide that lacks a holistic approach.
Troutman, the founder of resume writing service Resume Place, aims to expand federal government employees’ job searches in a multistep book on resume and cover letter writing.
The author’s approach to resume writing is eightfold. The first step asks federal workers to update their resumes by adding new roles, training, or certifications, and separating their job duties from key accomplishments. Next, Troutman recommends searching for job postings on sites such as LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and CareerBuilder, and tailoring one’s resume to each specific position. The third step is writing out three top career accomplishments in 10 words each, and the author suggests using ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot to assist with the fourth step, in which one inputs a job’s duties and requirements and asks the AI assistant for “10 keyword phrases, 3 words each” to incorporate into a resume. The fifth step involves a “Matching Strategy” table, in which the first column lists a job’s requirements, and the second identifies relevant experience. Writing a two-page private industry resume is the sixth step, which requires reducing a resume into a tight, two- to three-page document describing the job seeker’s current job in three fact-filled paragraphs; previous jobs are allotted one paragraph each; and awards and honors sections allow candidates to stand out, the author asserts. The seventh step relies on using her company’s Resume Place Cover Letter Builder, which, she says, will produce a cover letter with bullet points. The eighth and final step suggests updating one’s LinkedIn profile, paying particular attention to the “About” section and a list of “Core Competencies.”
Troutman offers readers a practical, actionable guide to ease their transition to searching for a position outside the federal government. The book’s straightforward tone and structured format help readers focus on getting results without supplying unnecessary filler. The incorporation of AI tools, whether one wishes to use them or not, reflects the changing landscape of modern employment, and side-by-side comparison charts and resume samples clearly illustrate the book’s suggestions and make the author’s advice tangible. However, the book’s no-nonsense format may fail to engage readers who might desire more explanation about why each step is essential. The work often lacks personality, and it reads like a repetitive instruction manual in lines such as “Look at the top accomplishments from the sample resumes. Make a list of your top accomplishments to add into your resume.” Although this guide may help readers to produce resumes quickly, the author could have valuably included real-life stories of job seekers using these resumes to make it feel more human-centered. Humor would have also lightened the mood, as job-seeking can often be a stressful experience. The guide also doesn’t touch on next steps—specifically, a rundown of essential interviewing skills or tips on pivoting to the private sector after exclusively worked in government settings. The author also assumes a level of digital fluency and formatting skill that may not be universal among members of the target audience; troubleshooting tips and template recommendations might have help to make the resume-writing experience more accessible.
A pragmatic resume-writing guide that lacks a holistic approach.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781733777933
Page Count: 108
Publisher: SmallPub
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.
Well-crafted memoir by the noted media mogul.
Diller’s home life as a youngster was anything but happy; as he writes early on, “The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional.” His mother lived in her own world, his father was knee-deep in business deals, his brother was a heroin addict, and he tried to play by all the rules in order to allay “my fear of the consequences from my incipient homosexuality.” Somehow he fell into the orbit of show business figures like Lew Wasserman (“I was once arrested for joy-riding in Mrs. Wasserman’s Bentley”) and decided that Hollywood offered the right kind of escape. Starting in the proverbial mailroom, he worked his way up to be a junior talent agent, then scrambled up the ladder to become a high-up executive at ABC, head of Paramount and Fox, and an internet pioneer who invested in Match.com and took over a revitalized Ticketmaster. None of that ascent was easy, and Diller documents several key failures along the way, including boardroom betrayals (“What a monumental dope I’d been. They’d taken over the company—in a merger I’d created—with venality and duplicity”) and strategic missteps. It’s no news that the corporate world is rife with misbehavior, but the better part of Diller’s book is his dish on the players: He meets Jack Nicholson at the William Morris Agency, “wandering through the halls, looking for anyone who’d pay attention to him”; hangs out with Warren Beatty, ever on the make; mispronounces Barbra Streisand’s name (“her glare at me as she walked out would have fried a fish”); learns a remedy for prostatitis from Katharine Hepburn (“My father was an expert urological surgeon, and I know what I’m doing”); and much more in one of the better show-biz memoirs to appear in recent years.
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780593317877
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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