Customer Reviews

Faking Smart! Get Hired, Get Promoted and Become a V.P. in Six Short Weeks - GUARANTEED!

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

 

 

Faking Smart is a program that will not only get you a job, but also get you promoted to Vice President, and all within six weeks.

This was a hilariously sarcastic and over-the-top read. It read like a skit from Saturday Night Live or The Colbert Report. It definitely made me laugh and see the humour in moving through the corporate world. I can see this book appealing to everyone from teenagers who see exectuive positions as unattainable until the distant the future, to executives who will say they wish it had been this easy to get to where they are now.

This was just the book to read as a pick-me-up during the depressing act of job searching.

Inspired by the introduction to the book, I read the whole thing in just one "sitting" while in stall #2, (which is just off the main conference room). I wasn't going to quit until I had finished, no matter how long the line got!

I can't wait to start applying the lessons in Faking Smart to my own career and I'm looking forward to moving from my current position of Tech Zero to VP!

Thanks Dr. Ager and Mr. Fossum for such an extraordinary program! I can't wait to tell everyone that I got there by Faking Smart!

P.S. Thanks for the sticker too!

A fun, tongue-in-cheek, "how-to" book on office politics. The scary thing about this is it could explain just how some folks in my organization made it to where they are.

This was a review of a FirstReads offer from Goodreads.

Like all good reads, this one has a robot caper. I've been thumbing through my copy getting a little chuckle for weeks now. It turns out the book IS worth reading, though I must confess I bought it to display on my desk in cubeland as an f-you to everyone who thinks I'm not worth my salt!

Thank you Dr Ager!

Brief Description: The subtitle of the book is "Get Hired, Get Promoted and Become A V.P. In Six Short Weeks." Theoretically, it is a satire of business self-help books.

My Thoughts: Oh dear. This is my worst book blogging nightmare: a very nice author asks me to review their self-published book and I don't like it at all. Such is the case with Faking Smart! When I read Mr. Fossum's witty e-mail requesting that I consider reviewing the book, I accepted because the book sounded like it could be fun. And it is... in parts. However, the humor that is present is just drowned by overkill and repetitiveness that ended up making reading the book feel like a chore. Although it is a slim book (under 150 pages with illustrations), it still took me more than a week to read it because I kept avoiding it. Giving Mr. Fossum the benefit of the doubt, perhaps my dislike of the book was because I've been out of corporate world for almost a decade. Still, I really can't recommend this. I think this could have made a good short-form essay but, stretched to book form, it just doesn't work for me.

I can tell you right now that I'm a mover and shaker in the fast-paced, ladder climbing world of corporate America. In fact, I'm a V.P.

Six weeks ago you wouldn't have thought twice about a word I am saying, but now you're very interested. Why? I'll tell you why. Because of the wisdom of one Karl Wolfbrooks Ager and the works of the Faking Smart Research Institute. All of which are richly laid out in this, the best business book ever written. Because I bought this book I never had to learn what it means to be "solution conscience" or a "problem solver" or "smart." I never had to learn good communicatoins skills.

I DID learn how to be a V.P. Which I am. Right now. So listen to me: You should buy this book. It is THAT good.

Now get back to work!

If I'm going to read something that isn't work or school related it had better be worth my time, and Faking Smart definitely is.

It's refreshing to read something so clever and completely unorthodox. I enjoyed every single page in which the authors carefully describe the heavily researched process you must go through to propel yourself to VP in just six short weeks. It even schedules in a recuperative business trip to Las Vegas!

There's no faking the ingenious creativity it took to write Faking Smart! I like anything that makes me see things from a whole new angle and Faking Smart does just that. You will never, ever view the corporate world the same way again.

As a recent graduate with a job in my field I've been looking for some inspiration and know how to help me move up the ladder at my company. I've read a lot of these success books on Amazon and I can easily say this is the worst. It provides no knowledge on anything relevant to my or anyone else's job field. It's a lame joke that never gets to the punchline and I felt dumber after reading it.

If you want something that actually teaches you the right mindset to succeed read As a Man Thinketh

This is the first business book I've been able to read. For years, I couldn't get farther than two paragraphs before I sank into a deep, enduring sleep. I thought I had given up on business writing. Last week, a friend gave me Faking Smart. I read cover to cover in one evening--and no napping in between! Faking Smart reads like a picaresque novel. If you want to learn how to pack for your journey through the corporate landscape: read this book! If you want to beat insomnia read the others!

I recently received my `advance copy' of `Faking Smart!' in the mail from one Karl Wolfbrooks Ager. The `advance copy' I put in quotations because already the book was released to the minions before I could preempt them with an overview of its contents.

If only I had been able to foresee the destruction to the conventional corporate ladders that this tome held in store for my hierarchy, I might have circumvented the cubicle equivalent of a total apocalypse.

Ager thoroughly deconstructs the machinations of our industrial age power structures. I know this because I outsourced the reading of this book to my mother, who is a doctor of the English language. Having recently pre-tired to the beached of Baja California, she has nothing better to do than to read, god bless her soul.

I have always trusted her judgment, ever since she advised I purchase stock in Tongan outrigger canoes, which I promptly had prototyped, cast in vinyl and shopped around to outdoor sports competitors (record profits to this day).

Normally I read only the covers, sometimes the backs, of such pulp. My assistant will purchase a book here or there (no doubt using petty cash) while at Kinko's to pick up my bi-weekly change in business card hue and font (this week I am on `flake' with `Vetrulium Quinine' lettering).

But this book, Ager's attempted tour de force through the subtleties of manipulations necessary to usurp my throne, it was worth a special request to the publishing company (headed by an old friend from the horse races at Emerald Downs) for an `advance copy'.

I can only assume that the latency of the book's arrival in my office was a clever move on Ager's part. He knows the implications of his writing. He knows the speed with which the corporate world adapts to trending memes.

My assistant Gabriel kindly allowed me to dictate this review to post from his profile. Any responses may be addressed to me through him. Meanwhile I have assembled a legal team to move forward with arbitration of the matter.

Ager, my Moriarty, I challenge you to a duel. This is an act of war. Have your people call my people to schedule.

Dlage Blommings, Senior VP of Blommings and Sons, LLC.