The Right Job, Right Now Tue 02 Jan 07

If you're thinking of starting out the new year looking for a new job, run out and get Susan Strayer's new book, The Right Job, Right Now: The Complete Toolkit for Finding Your Perfect Career, before you do anything else.  Being in the midst of my own job search I've had the opportunity to survey the market of job search advice books.  The Right Job, Right Now offers sound, practical advice I haven't found anywhere else.

If you're like most of us the first thing you do when starting a job search is to write up your resumé, right? -- Wrong!  Using her trademarked Career Kaleidoscope Model, Susan starts out walking you through a determination of what you have to offer in terms of skills and competencies and what you want in return in terms of environment, culture, benefits and financial rewards.  How important is this? -- Very!  My favorite business school professor was "Gene" Lavengood who taught us "When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there."  The Career Kaleidoscope takes you step-by-step through the process of determining of where you want to go. 

As an indication of the importance of determining where you want to go, Susan doesn't even begin to talk about how you should prepare your resumé until about page 100, a third of the way through the book.  And when she does talk about your resumé she wisely tailors it around the outcomes of what you determined through the Career Kaleidoscope.  In this way your resumé goes beyond being a mere listing of job descriptions to highlight your skills, competencies and what you have to offer and focuses it on the types of companies/industries where you want to work.

The second unique feature of the book is that it takes you through the entire process from determining what you have to offer and what you want, searching for a job, through the interviewing and negotiating process, starting and subsequently growing and succeeding in your job and revisiting the entire process as necessary.  It is the Complete Toolkit, just as the title promises.  Because of this it is much a career management book as it is a job search book.  Many people in IT are faced with a decision during their career, should I follow the technical career path or go to the managerial career path.  Susan's book and the Career Kaleidoscope can help you work through issues such as this and be a success at whatever path you choose.  I started out by saying that if you were thinking about looking for a new job that you should run out and get The Right Job, Right Now.  The same holds true if you are happy in your current job but want to grow and have a successful career in the company you're at now.

The Right Job, Right Now is well written, easy to read and loaded with practical advice and tools.  The Career Kaleidoscope Model and the span of advice from goal determination to career success is truly unique.  It is an essential for anyone thinking of searching for a new job or looking for a more fulfilling career.