A valuable resource for today’s job candidates.
This nonfiction book offers strategies and examples to help readers ace the tough questions during a job interview.
To find employment, today’s job seekers need more than a stellar resume and great references. They also need their future bosses to see them as likable, motivated and a good fit within the company culture. In the latest edition of his debut work, Firestone guides readers in figuring out how to position themselves as ideal candidates during job interviews and how to play up their strengths in ways that hiring managers and human resources departments will appreciate. He gives candidates the perspective from the other side of the interview desk, describing what hiring managers want to know, why they want to know it and how the candidate can effectively deliver that material. He outlines how to create “SOARL stories” (i.e., anecdotes about professional success or learning opportunities, presented in the “Situation / Objective / Action / Results / Learning” format) and instructs readers to practice saying them before their interviews. Firestone also describes “behavioral competencies”—analytical thinking and problem solving, conflict management, initiative and thoroughness, etc.—and encourages readers to discuss their accomplishments in ways that meet these standards. Finally, he lists sample questions for candidates to ask at various stages of the interview process. For the most part, the book is succinct and engaging, providing a wealth of job interview information in an easy-to-follow style. It focuses on preparing the candidate, not spotlighting success stories or making impossible promises. (As Firestone points out in the introduction, “[Y]ou won’t find any BS filler or author ego stories in the following pages.”) Section 2, which lists 40 behavioral competencies in detail, runs the risk of overwhelming readers. Likewise, Section 3 features 63 pages of occasionally rambling sample answers that highlight sales and management issues, which might not apply to all interviewees. The book also ends abruptly, without any final words of wisdom or closure. Despite these drawbacks, the text offers enough useful advice to make the average candidate feel more confident at his or her next interview—provided they practiced their SOARL stories, of course.
A valuable resource for today’s job candidates.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-615-72589-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Success Patterns LLC
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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