Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success [Hardcover]

Penelope Trunk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2007

Are you taking long lunches? Ignoring sexual harassment? Do you keep your desk neat to the point of looking like you don't have enough to do? The answer to all three should be yes, if you want to succeed in your career on your own terms. Penelope Trunk, expert business advice columnist for the Boston Globe, gives anything but standard advice to help members of the X and Y generations succeed on their own terms in any industry. Trunk asserts that a take-charge attitude and thinking outside the box are the only ways to make it in today's job market. With 45 tips that will get you thinking bigger, acting bolder, and blazing trails you never thought possible, BRAZEN CAREERIST will forever change your career outlook.


Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start
"Take everything you think you 'know' about career strategies, throw them away, and read this book because the rules have changed. 'Brazen,' 'counter-intuitive,' and 'radical' are the best three descriptions of Trunk's work. Life is too short to be stuck in a rat hole..."

Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D, author of the New York Times Bestseller The No Asshole Rule
"A delightful book, with some edgy advice that made me squirm a bit at times. I agreed with 90% of it, found myself arguing with the other 10%, and was completely engaged from start to finish."

Paul D. Tieger, author of Do What You Are and CEO of SpeedReading People, LLC
"Penelope Trunk brings considerable savvy and a fresh new perspective to the business of career success. Bold and sometimes unconventional, BRAZEN CAREERIST gives readers much to think about as well as concrete, practical suggestions that will help them know what they want, and know how to get it."

Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
"BRAZEN CAREERIST has the street-smarts you need to make your career and life work for you from the start. Read it now, or you'll wish you had when you're 40!"

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A delightful book, with some edgy advice that made me squirm a bit at times. I agreed with 90% of it, found myself arguing with the other 10%, and was completely engaged from start to finish." -- Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D, author of the New York Times Bestseller The No Asshole Rule

"BRAZEN CAREERIST has the street-smarts you need to make your career and life work for you from the start. Read it now, or you'll wish you had when you're 40!" -- Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

"Penelope Trunk brings considerable savvy and a fresh new perspective to the business of career success. Bold and sometimes unconventional, BRAZEN CAREERIST gives readers much to think about as well as concrete, practical suggestions that will help them know what they want, and know how to get it." -- Paul D. Tieger, author of Do What You Are and CEO of SpeedReading People, LLC

"Take everything you think you 'know' about career strategies, throw them away, and read this book because the rules have changed. 'Brazen,' 'counter-intuitive,' and 'radical' are the best three descriptions of Trunk's work. Life is too short to be stuck in a rat hole..." -- Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start

About the Author

PENELOPE TRUNK lives in
Madison, Wisconsin.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 201 pages
• Publisher: Warner Business Books; 1st edition (May 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446578649
• ISBN-13: 978-0446578646
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #189,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Penelope Trunk writes career advice for a new generation of workers. She explains why old advice - like pay your dues, climb the ladder, and don't have gaps in your resume - is outdated and irrelevant in today's workplace. She has a reputation for giving advice that is counterintuitive but effective, like take long lunches, ignore people who steal your ideas, and stop vying for a promotion.

Trunk is known for test-driving her advice before spewing it. Her own career choices have been featured by TIME magazine and the London Guardian as examples of the new issues people face at work today. Both the New York Times and Business Week cited Trunk's writing as especially in tune with this new workplace. In her personal life, Trunk routinely (often awkwardly) demonstrates buzzwords before they buzz, like the quarterlife crisis, portfolio career, and shared-care parenting.

Her new book is Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. It was published by Warner Books in May 2007.

Trunk spent ten years as a marketing executive in the software industry and then she founded two companies of her own. She has endured an IPO, a merger and a bankruptcy. Prior to that she was a professional beach volleyball player.

Trunk started writing business advice when Fortune magazine published an open call for a woman to write about her own life as an executive. Trunk auditioned with a piece about her brother's stupid Internet ideas, and a piece about her boss's appeal, and she won the job. Today, she is a columnist at Yahoo Finance and the Boston Globe, and her syndicated column runs in more than 200 publications worldwide.

Trunk has spent roughly ten years each in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and New York City. Recently, taking her own advice about how to leverage scientific data to choose a job and a place to live, she landed in Madison, Wisconsin. The first word her baby learned in Wisconsin was cow.

Trunk is also a popular public speaker. This is true, but not massively true. For example, where she has spoken, she has been popular, but she does not speak all the time. That said, as a career advisor, Trunk realizes that a bio is not so much factual as aspirational, and she feels compelled to put an aspirational paragraph in her own bio. Otherwise, how can she advise other people on setting goals for themselves that are a bit of a reach?

She is dedicated to helping people find success at the intersection of work and life, because that's what she wants for herself. She thinks of career advice as a group effort - the movement for her generation ' so please email her. Or at least check out her blog, where she posts daily tips for making work life and personal life one happy, synchronized adventure.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

159 of 166 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Beware advice on how to have a successful career... February 14, 2008

By GadgetChick

Format:Hardcover

From someone who doesn't have one, at least in the regular business world.

Yes, Gen Xers and Yers are moving into the workforce and redefining work, etc. etc. However, in most industries and companies, there are still baseline levels of comportment, behavior, etiquette, etc. that people are expected to maintain. I have worked for two Fortune 1000 companies and what I have found is that in many cases, the younger people moving in to replace Baby Boomers aren't rejecting their values and beliefs wholesale, as Trunk would have you believe, but adopting some and rejecting some others. Overall, I see more people buying into their own corporate culture and carrying on at least the major tenets than rejecting it completely.

Trunk admits on her blog she's been fired many times for a wide variety of offenses, including insubordination, inattention to her work, etc. One of my old bosses, who had an MBA from Stanford, said it best - always beware of people who make a career out of writing about having a career, rather than actually having one. I am not sure what credentials being a professional beach volleyball player gives you in the business world, but I don't necessarily think that being a professional blogger and getting one book published indicates someone is at the pinnacle of their profession, and therefore in a position to be dispensing advice to others. I don't claim to be at the pinnacle of my profession, but I can also say that I've never been fired for blowing off work assignments to work on freelance jobs. I've actually never been fired, period. My best piece of advice to any generation of worker is this: almost any company, big or small, is looking for people who make some attempt to fit themselves into the system, to some degree. While I don't believe that the whole system of paying your dues by working like crazy until you reach a particular job title is still relevant in all companies, I do think that most people are not going to be successful by going into a job and trying to get by on their looks and iconoclastic personality from day 1, which is basically what Trunk advises.

I recently read a fiction book where the author described a workplace where employees were divided into two categories: Golden Children, who could get away with almost anything without really putting their time into their work, and Work Horses, who picked up the Golden Children's slack. Most workplaces I have been part of fit that characterization pretty well. And I admit that as a Work Horse myself, being a Golden Child looks pretty good sometimes. But here's the thing. A career is a marathon, not a sprint. People do need to think strategically and make smart moves at the right time, but glossing through job after job after job expecting your looks and your chutzpah to carry the day isn't going to lead to the substantive success most people are seeking. Especially for women, relying on your looks to get you places isn't the safest bet. There are new, younger, hotter women coming into the workforce every day that you keep getting older. Somewhere along the line, you need to have some kind of skills and experience to deliver what you've sold people on. My suspicion is that Trunk was a Golden Child who couldn't deliver, time after time, and so therefore had to "create her own career" when she ended up basically unemployable after job-hopping/being fired too many times.

One more word about money - it's great if you can sponge off your parents while you find your place in the work world. It's great if you can live on $40,000 a year. Maybe for Trunk, money doesn't equal happiness, but in response to that idea, I will steal a line from one of my favorite movies and say: Look at the freakin' smile on my face - ear to ear, baby. I've worked in jobs I loved for no money and jobs I hated for a lot of money, and I can safely say that the best thing is to work a job you love that ALSO pays a lot of money. Which is totally possible, but I don't think Trunk's tips will get you there. It takes a mix of aggressive decision-making and hard work to really get to the point of true success, which is not purely defined by money, but to me, is defined by the ability to have some level of financial security (to the point where you don't have to go into debt to take a few weeks of maternity leave) and satisfaction with your work.

So advice seekers, beware this book. I imagine that if someone who is truly successful, who has truly managed to combine work and family life (like Meg Whitman of eBay) would take one look at Trunk's resume and think it was a joke. The advice in this book certainly is, and I hope there aren't a bunch of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young career women out there taking it. What Trunk describes in this book is not true success. It's the truest version of success she's managed to talk herself into accepting, because she got handicapped by her own limitations.

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Should be titled "Bad Advice: What To Do If You Want To Collect Unemployment" November 23, 2007

By Read That

Format:Hardcover

Here's nothing more than a rehash of terrible advice that you can get for free by reading the author's on-line column. She seems to think that looks and appearance are what count, not skill or experience. Note that the author's career entails not working for corporate America; her thoughts on how to do little with the least could be helpful if Jim "The Cruise" Anchower needs another job to support his beer and weed habit. If you really think this could be interesting or useful (which it isn't) - be smart and just read the free on-line archive of the same.

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad advice for most people most of the time November 30, 2007

By A Disciplined Trader

Format:Hardcover

This book was a disappointment to me, containing significantly more bad advice than good advice. I agree with the reviewer that said the book reads as the product of the experience of an upper middle class kid who never had to worry too much about the consequences of failure or unemployment (and unemployment is where you will probably find yourself if you follow her suggestions). Do yourself a favor and look somewhere else for career advice, because most of what Ms. Roston writes about in this book is not applicable to the working situations of the great majority of people. Follow her advice at your own peril.

In my opinion, you should not buy this book.