Fired to Hired: Bouncing Back from Job Loss to Get to Work Right Now [Paperback]

Tory Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 4, 2009

If you want to get hired today, you must be a great candidate and an exceptional job seeker.

Tory Johnson?s New York Times bestseller, Will Work from Home, was comprehensive and inspiring. Now, the Women For Hire CEO and Good Morning America workplace contributor returns with advice and real-life stories for finding the right job after being let go. Tory knows what it takes to get noticed and hired, and helps you create a concrete action plan?one that will help you come out stronger and more successful than ever.

Giving up is not an option. Now?s the time to get the lay of the land, sharpen your skills, and energize your search. Here you?ll learn how to:

* Get over the sting of being unemployed
* Develop a digital identity and dive into online social networking
* Ensure your resume does not get lost in a big black hole
* Build and leverage your ?I Rock? file to master essential self-promotion
* Pitch and secure an effective externship and make volunteer experience count
* Launch a valuable job club that will yield strong support, job leads, and career success

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Tory Johnson is simply the best. Her ideas are exciting. Her heart is big and embracing. There is no better coach, champion, and friend on the path to your dreams."
--Diane Sawyer

"I love it when I get a chance to work with Tory on Good Morning America. She is passionate about helping our viewers. Tory's ideas for getting hired and creative and lead to positive results."
-Robin Roberts --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Tory Johnson is the founder and CEO of Women For Hire, a nationally respected organization that produces career fairs and conducts job-seeking seminars for women throughout the country. She is a frequent media guest and has appeared on CNN, CBS, NBC, and FOX news. Robyn Freedman Spizman, has authored more than sixty books and is a frequent guest on CNN and Headline News, and has appeared for two decades as a consumer advocate on NBC in Atlanta. Lindsey Pollak, a Yale graduate, is involved with many national women’s organizations and has served as Director of Business Development at WorkingWoman.com.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade; Original edition (August 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425230554
• ISBN-13: 978-0425230558
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #786,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

117 of 124 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Fired at 22 and managed to recover. April 11, 2010

By Robin

Format:Paperback

Tory Johnson starts out this book with an example that is supposed to show us that she feels our pain. She tells us about the devastating experience of getting fired from NBC at age...22. No, I am not kidding. We hear the story of all her first job, how she liked it and how she got fired. Apparently she actually believes this example is meaningful. She was devastated but, she had $23,000 in the bank.(Presumably the result of a cash payout for being laid off.) She writes "With a cool $23,000 in the bank, going to the ATM, didn't seem so scary. That is until rent payments, retail therapy, and a few more cash withdrawls whittled away at those five figures."

As an executive recruiter I could not believe the egotistical indulgence of this story. I sit day after day hearing professional people, people with established careers, families and a lot to offer--tell me that they have been fired.

Being fired when you are expert at your profession, and ten years older than the junior player firing you is what is happening every day in this country. Its demoralizing. It makes you wonder who you are--and that is something that's a lot more painful at 50 than at 22. (At 22 you don't even know who you are.) So, in one fell swoop Johnson provedsshe doesn't have a clue--and tells a story guaranteed to demoralize most people who read this book.

Everyone has had a few stumbles at 22. Trust me Tory--ITS NOTHING. People who are twenty-two can actually survive on unemployment. People in their 50s with kids in college don't do "retail therapy." The only thing this silly story told me was that Tory Johnson made a lot of money when she was very young--and doesn't have any idea what being fired means when you are no longer a kid. Can you re-engineer your career? Unless you are a kid, this book isn't going to provide much help.

Ah but what about the solutions? Surely the solutions will be helpful regardless, right?

Wrong. The solutions in this book are for very junior or low level jobs. Some might work for women with young children who desperately need to be at home and are willing to take gigantic pay cuts. She makes the classic mistake of doing career counseling while talking about working from home. Note to all who want to work from home: Home is a location--not a career. First focus on what you have in your bag of experience--then ask yourself if you can do it from home.

Working from home actually can work very well for experienced people who have usable skills (tech writing for example) and can look for contract work, but Johnson doesn't go into ways that an experienced person can make it work. This book has another huge ommission in the form of tax advice. While Johnson explains that a 1099 contract worker needs to pay taxes quarterly, she fails to mention that the Social Security tax is DOUBLE for people who work from home. There are often other taxes as well, such as the New York City "Self-Employment" tax. Taxes in a place like NYC can easily eat up HALF of your paycheck before you pay your health insurance--so this is not a minor omission.

I would have been fine with this book if it had said it was for the recent college grad who just got the boot, but in this economy an awful lot of people with more experience than Tory Johnson have been fired and are going to spend their very precious dollars on this book--which will be a compete waste. You would be very hard pressed to support a family on the kinds of jobs Tory Johnson will find you. The condescention of this, coming from someone with Johnson's success, was irritating--to me anyway.

Getting a new job or changing careers when you are 22 or 25 is simply not that hard, even in this economy but if it happens to you, this book might help.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Standard job-hunting fare March 19, 2010

By Morganalee

Format:Paperback

I was at the library and this book was on display. Its title attracted me. "Maybe finally some solid advice for the less-than-sterling applicant," I thought. Not really. Although there is some acknowledgment of the particular toughness of the job market at the time of the book's publication (late 2009) and inclusion of the changes the Internet has made in looking for a job, there's very little here that couldn't be found in any standard job-hunting manual of the past 20 years or so. I'm not job-hunting, so it was mere curiosity that drew me to the book on the library shelf. Had I been out of work and spent the minimum $4.00 for it (one cent plus 3.99 "shipping and handling"), I'd feel ripped off. There's a lot of the obvious here, and little that's fresh, despite Johnson's inclusion of her favorite song titles for revving up one's job-hunting juices. Network, pump up the resume with action verbs, be ready to pass out those business cards at the bus stop and gas station. Yes, we know. The book is plumped up with plenty of name-dropping and what the author supposes are inspiring stories from the likes of people (network-anchor types, Maria Shriver, and so forth) that are likely to make the unemployed feel seriously inadequate. And she writes, as all such job coaches write, as if her reader were like herself: Type A, driven, people-oriented, highly-energized, so full of tangible accomplishments at her last job that she must whittle them down to a manageable list--and out of work? How? Do people like this get fired, even in a "down" economy, or stay out of work long enough to get used to sleeping late? I'm on the lookout for a book called "I Landed a Great Job After Doing Hard Time." Now, that one should have something fresh to say.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very practical November 27, 2012

By John Wolf

Format:Paperback

Unlike some other career books (Quitter, No More Mondays, & 48 days) this book is far more practical and does not so much focus on finding a "dream job" as it is on begin practical and sometimes having to re-market oneself for the job market. If one lives in a area where their dream job is going overseas, then they MUST re-market themselves or they will end up working at low paying jobs. I have spent far too much time on trying to find my dream job that I have damaged my career when I need to find ones marketable and what I can do. 48 Days, Quitter, and No More Mondays focus way too much on the "pie in the sky" and are not as practical as this one. I recommend this book very highly.