Customer Reviews

The College Grad's Guide to Purgatory: Finding and Surviving Your First Job

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I'm a little older now. I've been out of college for over 10 years. As you get older, you tend to look back on your life. I thought about my time in college. I didn't do so well. I thought about my attempts to get work after college. It was horrible.

In terms of finding work, every approach that I tried, and it didn't work, the author said not to do when in college or after having left college. My approach led to frustration, anger, and bitterness.

I wish that this book was available for me when I left college. Even though I'm working now, I learned what "real life" was, and it's different from the "college life".

This book should be given to high school, college, technical school kids, whatever. Taking heed of the advice in this book will save them the bitterness that I experienced 10 years earlier.

I just read this review elsewhere and thought it summed up the book well...

The College Grad's Guide to Purgatory is the complete guide to finding and surviving a job. This book describes the process of finding a job from the decision about your major through the truth about internships and summer jobs to the best jobs finding resources. Then the book goes even further explaining resumes, interview strategies, and how to survive office politics.

Though the title of the book suggests this guide is written specifically for college and university graduates, practically anyone looking for a job will benefit from the author's suggestions. The tips in this book are straightforward, honest, extremely realistic, true to life, and often quite hilarious. I think this book should be required reading for every student leaving high school, technical school, college, and university.

What you really need to know if you don't have a 4.0 GPA, a trust fund and a daddy who owns Microsoft or any other major coporation. Buy a copy for any recent grad or about to graduate into a world of debt and unemployment!

I thought this book was hillarious, though painfully accurate. I myself had a hard time finding gainful employment after college. The books on the market about getting a job seemed to gloss over the hellishness I was about to experience. Arendt tells it like it is. No holds barred. While it may seem pessimistic, Arendt also explains how to deal with the difficulties she has experienced on the job hunt. I think the advice is practical, without being sugar coated. Not only is it practical, but also fun to read. The author's sardonic witt kept me chuckling. I loved the corporate cubicle inhabitants descriptions in the back of the book. I think this book would be helpful to anyone on that arduous search for a job. Also it might be comforting to other job searchers, who feel as though they are the only one who can't find a job.