10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Resource Book, October 16, 2000
This review is from: Fired, Downsized, or Laid Off: What Your Employer Doesn't Want You to Know About How to Fight Back (Paperback)
Written in plain English. Deals with the legal basics, emotional scars, and what's reasonable to ask for. Even has a list of 101 things to possibly ask for. I needed these things very much, and found them in this book. Provides a good insight, too, into what negotiating with your ex-boss, and Human Resources, is all about. I never realized that they wanted something from me even more than I needed the extra severance from them! This book is highly motivating, too. I recommend it for anyone.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential information helpfully presented, September 10, 2002
This review is from: Fired, Downsized, or Laid Off: What Your Employer Doesn't Want You to Know About How to Fight Back (Paperback)
The problem is that when we have a job we tend to invest in the illusion of security. We also feel disloyal to our employer if we prepare for the time of separation.
The funny thing is that when the whack comes (and to often it is as unforseen as club to the back of the head) you can bet that the company has prepared very carefully every aspect of our severance package before they apply that hit to the sweet spot on your noggin.
Very few people have the clout to get an employment contract let alone negotiate up front for a separation arrangement. For most of us we live in an "at will" world. The author points out that this "at will" isn't necessarily as once sided as our employers would have us believe.
They rely on the shock of the moment, our lack of preparation, and our shame for losing our job to streamline us into signing away rights and getting the heck out of dodge. It isn't in their interests to give you time to think and prepare, and, frankly, when you are laying off 1,000 or 10,000 people you simply can't enter into separate negotiations with every one of them. However, I can tell you that in the UK employees are routinely given employment contracts as they are hired.
This is why every employee should read this book today. Prepare and think about the ever more inevitable separation. Empoyees need to be on as equal a footing with their employer as they can; given current laws and the limitations of economics. We need to have more open eyes and be less sentimental about our jobs.
This book is a great first step or two on that path. Just as profits are made when you purchase an asset (buying at the right price) - not when you sell them, the basis for your separation (which you should accept as inevitable in some non-specified future) is laid when you are hired. We need to be smarter when we go into these situations and realize the planning and, well, practiced sincerity (masked insincerity) that employers now use during hiring, throughout the term of employment and during termination.
They aren't bad people, necessarily, it is just that they are prepared for what is happeneing and most employees are not. The message of this very helpful book is "Get Prepared!".
It isn't that they are all bad people; it is the nature of the current business and legal climate that leads to much of this nonsense.
This book will provide a great morale booster and provide some thoughts that can help even a newly terminated employee create a decent plan of counter-attack. Better to use this information and take positive action than be pushed downstream like so many cut trees.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Source of Empowerment, June 14, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Fired, Downsized, or Laid Off: What Your Employer Doesn't Want You to Know About How to Fight Back (Paperback)
As a hospital staff employee with job security concerns, I read Mr. Sklover's book after it was recommended to me by a nurse. I would recommend it to others, at all levels, without question. In this book Mr. Sklover provides a clear and concise guide to help anyone develop a proactive stance in severence negotioation, and makes it so abundantly clear that anyone can do this sort of negotiating for him- or herself. The format is consumer friendly, and the book prepares the reader for the relevant issues, whether or not advance notice of job loss has been already provided or, as in my case, if you're just concerned that "notice" may be given to you in the future. This book provided me with a sense that I can cope with this terrible experience I'm facing and that I might even be able to "turn the tables" around. Mr. Sklover reminds us that we must combine our internal and external lives to produce powerful change. The book is a real motivator, because even if you're on the right track and just sit there facing a job loss, you'll just get run over. Mr. Sklover shares his insight that no- one can make you feel inferior or powerless without your consent. Hats off to an empowering book-for everyone who needs to feel less powerless at a very vulnerable time. If you have a gut feeling about job insecurity, put it on your own "Must Read" list. Its really such a great book.
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