Yesterday I said I’d comment on “the other” book that I’d highly recommend to a job seeker. Don’t worry, I’m not turning into a book review blogger! But this deserves your attention.
I have known C.M. Russell since May, when he did a little 5 question interview on me and JibberJobber. That was a great experience for me and helped establish some credibility for JibberJobber. And I was fortunate enough to get a copy of his book, autographed, and need to weigh in – you know by now that I can’t read something without commenting on it!
C.M. is one of the foremost experts in this space and has looked at it from various angles. These angles include a job seeker, a resume writer, an owner of various job boards (he still owns and operates these) and a blogger (with various blogs in this space). He’s definitely an authority, and qualified to write this.
I was very pleased to see that it was a relatively small book. I think I’m measuring this against a job search book that I got from the library earlier this year which was very long. Look, I’m in a job search, not doing research for a PhD. I don’t want to spend a month reading what I need to do. Give me it to me quick and directly. And that’s exactly what C.M.’s book does. One thing I worry about is that I would have made this a “quick read” and perhaps not internalized much of what is in this book. I caution you to actually read each sentence and seriously think about it – he doesn’t mince words, and I support 99% of what’s in here (the other 1%? I’m still chewing on it).
The first three pages is a summary of what I took at least 6 weeks to learn. If I could have had just the first 3 pages of this book when I first got laid off then this last year would be very different. (Lucky for me, I was a job search loser, so JibberJobber got the attention it needed in order to really be powerful for you and me ;))
Throughout the rest of the book I read about the personal marketing newsletter (he had his in there), saw a personal response from Jack Trout, learned about the qualifying letter, changed my thoughts on using faxes, learned how to make an e-mail way more effective, and read examples of questions that I should ask when in an interview. There’s much more, these are just some of the things that jumped out at me.
He put these little “Job Search Secret” boxes throughout the book with specific tips and suggestions that I found very helpful. There are two things about this book that I kept thinking as I read it:
1. Lots of “clever” in this book, backed up with real examples. I’ve been learning about the job search almost all year, and he had a bunch of little ideas and examples of things that I really hadn’t thought about.
2. He’s very heavy on real, useful and current technology. I appreciate reading a book that actually talks about certain social network sites and other current tools. C.M.’s business is based around technology for the job seeker so he really knows this area. But instead of just talking about it he gives real links, screenshots, etc. I found this quite helpful in that regard.
Not to sound like a broken record player this week but I highly recommend this book. It’s inexpensive and won’t take a ton of time to read – but don’t judge this book by its size. There is a lot of wisdom in here.
P.S. … page 112 is just bad 😉 I hope in his next version he can take that out and put in a page on JibberJobber. Heck, maybe he should put in a whole chapter on JibberJobber!