An energetic, helpful, and thought-provoking coaching manual for improving job-applying skills.
A guide offers a methodical strategy for improving success in applying for jobs.
“Before you start to compete for your ideal job, you should know where you stand relative to the marketplace,” writes Parker in this extended game plan for understanding and improving the process of job seeking. “You should know what you want to offer, but you also must know how well you match up with what the market demands.” The author goes on to explore how readers can assess and improve their own marketability. He takes this same 360-degree view of the other elements of the job search process, seeking to instill in his readers the “limitless mindset” that will be the key to getting the positions of their dreams. Parker steers readers through every aspect of the process, from the nitty-gritty of how to arrange items on the printed pages of their resumes to the crucial elements to study in the companies they’re hoping to join. He understandably devotes a good deal of space to what’s typically seen as the most important aspect of the job search: the interview. When discussing interviews, for instance, he has a good deal of advice for readers, all based on remembering that they’re selling themselves and their credentials the whole time. The potential employer, he stresses, is quite literally your customer—and he warns of potential bad signs an applicant could be giving off: not being very accommodating when scheduling an interview, asking irrelevant questions (or questions that your own research could easily have answered), and talking too much and thus displaying an unwillingness to listen. He fleshes out all of his points with anecdotal examples designed to make them more identifiable.
Parker’s greatest strength is the sharp, forceful tone he employs throughout. Job seekers are bombarded on all sides by advice on how to improve their resumes, increase their charisma in interviews, and enhance their skill at reading the personalities of their possible future employers. The last thing such readers need is a wishy-washy approach, and the author avoids the equivocal completely. He provides his readers with graphics, bullet points, pull quotes, and the like, all geared, as his prose is, to convey the maximum amount of useful information in the clearest possible way. The author sympathizes with job seekers, presenting them the fruits of his research and experience on such points as reaching out and making personal contact with potential employers when possible (“Don’t merely rely on your credentials to land you a job”). But he’s also firm with readers, warning them against some of their own possible shortcomings, things job seekers tend to do without thinking about the images they project. “Inconsistency will put doubts in the hiring manager’s mind,” he writes. “It can be the one piece of information the employer uses to decide between top candidates, especially when employers are hypersensitive to anything that will allow them to make a quick decision with limited information.” At every turn, he’s trying to arm his readers with ways to avoid giving hiring managers “easy ways out.”
An energetic, helpful, and thought-provoking coaching manual for improving job-applying skills.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2024
ISBN: 979-8-9865451-0-3
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Beyond Competitive LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
