Customer Reviews

How to Be the Employee Your Company Can't Live Without: 18 Ways to Become Indispensable

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you want to earn as much as you can earn, for the work you do -- if you want to be as valuable, indeed as indispensable, to your employer as you can be -- Glenn Shepard explains clearly and completely how and why. And how far. And every bit of it makes perfect sense.

If you've been told to work harder and sacrifice deeper -- but you find that you can't articulate the why and how -- and if you find that the lack of a clear understanding of why and how makes it somehow difficult for you to bring focus and motivation to your efforts to succeed in your employment -- then Glenn Shepard may have answered all your questions.

If you are discouraged by the chaos of the job market and you are seeking desperately to discover how to clearly distinguish yourself in a difficult environment -- the answer to your dilemma awaits your patient perusal in these readable 150 pages.

Mr. Shepard acknowledges that everything he's saying is common sense -- and frequently, book reviewers disdain explanations of common sense. But it's sensible, for lots of people, to have this common knowledge stated concisely and with a clear structure.

If you're trying to become employed -- or if you're already employed, and you're trying to maintain or improve your situation -- this excellent book may be just the turning point you need.

And Mr. Shepard enjoys good food and good service -- and there's nothing wrong with that.

I just started a new job, and I'm looking to make a good first impression. Which usually means the impression of my lips on the boss' backside. It's the old "pucker up and trickle down" theory. So I've been shopping for products to keep my proverbial butt smooching sharp.

There's more to keeping a job than pure sycophantery. You've also got to convince the higher-ups that you're just the right person for the job -- and they'd never do it without you. That's where this book, devoted to being all the employee you can possibly be, comes in mighty handy.

Or would, I guess, if all the stuff it suggests weren't so darned HARD. I mean, seriously. Earning a good reputation? Developing a work ethic? Excelling at your job? Solving important problems? Showing up before noon?

Bossman, please. No job is worth all of that. So I paid a couple of guys twenty bucks apiece to read the book and just SAY that I did all of those things, nearby where the boss can hear it. That ought to vault me up the corporate ladder in a hurry. I'll just wait here on the bottom rung for somebody to come by, take my apron and paper hat, and give me the key to the executive washroom.

Should be any minute now. No time like the present.

Yep, any time at all. I'm ready for my closeup, boss. As in... NOW!

Now? Bueller? Hello?

Aw, rats.

I was disappointed in this book to be honest. I was hoping for more actionable info that could help me turn my career around. This did not give it to me. I expected this to be a "how-to" book but it was fairly light on the how. :(

Maybe it is because I already do many of the things he talked about. I wanted something new and fresh. This is an adequate work but not spectacular.

I thought that the advice was excellent, and really related to the definitions of the different generations that are present in the workforce today.

I wish I had learned some things earlier, sucjph as the career killers. I'm guilty of a couple of thise! They didn't kill my career, but I could have spared myself the relationship from hell that I had with a former boss. He was an awful boss, but I could have been a smarter and better employee had I known how to read and handle him better. And how to react better.

Buy them buy the dozens and give them to all your employees on day one. Assign them a chapter a week for the first 18 weeks and let them tell yo what they learned. If they get through the 18 weeks you have a "keeper", If not they will be replaced in a matter of time.

Great book! Helped me understand what makes a good employee and how to implement it.

A GREAT handbook to use when you have multi-generational workforce. An excellent tool for teachers to use to teach students what it takes to be the employee companies can't do without.

Highly recommended. A quick read. Uses great examples. Worth the time to read.

I said inside this book that "It should be in the top drawer
of every employee's desk" and I meant every single word.

Matt Bacak
Author of Secrets of the Internet Millionaire Mind
and The Ultimate Lead Generation Plan

I've read a lot of career and jobhunting books lately, and this book was the least useful I've read so far. I found it written in an incredibly dry and humorless style, though the seriousness with which the author wrote some of his passages had me laughing.

Here's some gems:
"Professionalism also applies to what you talk about in front of customers. I was at a Nashville restaurant in March 2005 when the server asked how I was doing. I gave my standard response, "Better than I deserve! How are you?" He explained that he wasn't doing well because he was having trouble with his finances and was worried about the health of Pope John Paul II. The entertainment experience of eating out had just been reduced to zero for this meal. It was naïve of him to answer a rhetorical question. I might have felt a little empathy or at least identified with him if he told me he was worried that the Tennessee Titans might lose our starting quarterback or that lawmakers were trying to pass a state income tax again. The problem with his response regarding the Pope was that he was already on his deathbed and everyone knew it. It was sad but I came to the restaurant to be happy. The server just didn't get that. The ironic part was the comment about his finances. Tips are how servers make most of their income and I'm a generous tipper. He would have received a better tip from me than from most of his customers if he had just been a run-of-the-mill server. Whining about his finances hurt them even more by ensuring that he was getting a minimum tip from me no matter how good his service was. This turned out to be a moot point since he was as unprofessional in his service as he was in his behavior."

"My ninth-grade English teacher once asked for volunteers to help with the Junior/Senior prom. I raised my hand and asked, "What's in it for me?" I was never as humiliated as when I heard her answer. She looked straight at me and said in front of the entire class, "It's not about you Glenn. When you grow up, you'll learn that sometimes in life you have to do things for others out of a sense of duty. This is why young men volunteered to serve in Viet Nam and Korea." I still remember that look of disappointment and disgust in her eyes when I uttered those fateful words."

I think those quotes speak for themselves.

He also claims that PowerPoint is a program very few will use at work (ha!), and that people often try to drag down those who want to "work harder" by saying things like "there's more to life than work."

As stated in other reviews, the book is definitely common sense. And to be fair, there are some basic good points in there that workers often forget, like about how a job is not about you and the importance of working hard. But much of the advice sounds like it's being given by a traditionalist baby boomer that served in the military and expects everyone else to follow in line or expect failure. I found almost nothing in this book helpful or that I hadn't read somewhere else (and in much richer and better detail). If you find yourself nodding seriously and agreeing with the author after reading the above quotes, then you just might like this book.