A wide-ranging manual that delivers valuable advice for job seekers.
In this debut guide, an employment recruitment specialist offers insider information for readers looking for better careers.
As a seasoned career coach, Nadon knows how job seekers can successfully market themselves, and she shares many professional tips in this well-organized handbook. In a friendly, conversational tone, she provides some refreshing perspectives; for example, she writes that even readers in their 60s can begin new career paths. One of the biggest mistakes people make, the author asserts, is waiting to upgrade their career advancement tools—like resumes, bios, or references—until things get bad at their current jobs. Investing time and/or money for professional development is also part of her common-sense, strategic advice. In order to get job seekers started, Nadon gently walks them through some simple professional assessments—such as determining whether their careers are entry level or midmanagement—and then she prompts them to write a career wish list. Presenting an unconventional twist, the author suggests brainstorming the wish list in an inspirational place, like a park or a temple, to leave stagnant thinking behind. Nadon’s prose is fluid, and her breezy chapters include “Mindset Alerts” or short, often lighthearted tips that urge the audience to think creatively. For example, when organizing a career wish list, she encourages readers to have fun: “If you always wanted to be the prime minister of Canada, write it down.” Chapters also feature “Killer App alerts” or insider tips, such as the importance of knowing when to call about a position; for example, a hiring manager may not want to be interrupted during an important industry conference. Though Nadon encourages job hunters to think outside the box, she delivers many practical ideas, such as what not to do in a first-round interview and how to negotiate salary.
A wide-ranging manual that delivers valuable advice for job seekers.Pub Date: March 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-4111-7
Page Count: 210
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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