Are you up a river without a paddle?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Your Job Survival Guide

Competency: self development

Who benefits: job seekers

Consultant Usage: coaching tool

What’s it about? I want to wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009.  And while I am handing out wishes, I wish gainful employment to the 8% plus of you who are currently without a job.

I have a friend who fits into the unemployed group.  He has been unemployed for almost 6 months.  It’s driving his wife crazy, but he says that something good is bound to happen.

I asked him the other day if he was actively seeking employment.  He said, most definitely.  He said he has posted his resume on Monster.com and a couple of other websites, had answered more than 20 want ads in the newspapers and couple of want ads in trade magazines.  He had also sent several letters to companies in the area.  He was comfortable with his job search.

My friend needs Your Job Survival Guide, a new book in the crowded get-a-job genre.  I suppose this book isn’t for all job seekers.  There is a certain meanness or toughness about the book that could be off-putting.  Or maybe, to be entirely fair, it is just straight talk the way Dr. Phil does it on TV.

Personally I like the nice, gentle, caring kind of books that make me feel all warm and fuzzy.  But seeking a new job isn’t warm and fuzzy.  It is darn hard work.  And maybe a kick in the pants is just what is called for.  I know my friend needs one.

The book is, in many ways, one giant metaphor.  The primary author is an avid kayaker and he takes Peter Vaill’s phrase of many years ago, “permanent whitewater”, and makes a book out of it.  Kayaking, as the author puts it, is “learning to be comfortable in an environment that scares the hell out of (you).”

I like this quote: “Today you might feel swept down a rushing, roiling, and seemingly unending river…you can’t slow or change the pace of the river.  But you can change how you look at the river as well as how you react to it.

With the above as an introduction, here are some of the book headings I would recommend to my friend: 

Create a “Not To Do” List
Treat Your Career as a Series of Experiments
Minimize the Risk of Failure
Master the Emotions of Failure
Make Your Mistakes on the Move
Create Optimism and Avoid Learned Helplessness
(and my favorite) When All Else Fails, Paddle Like Hell

If you are looking for a job or a career change, invest in a paddle and this book.

Catch you later.

 

[tags]career, career development, job, job change, job seeking, employability, permanent whitewater, optimism, learned helplessness, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.