4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An invaluable single-source of information and counsel, January 18, 2007
This review is from: Hire Me, Inc.: Package Yourself to Get Your Dream Job (Paperback)
The core concept in this book is rock-solid: If you are in search of a job or a better job, think of yourself as a company which must create or increase demand for what it offers. Moreover, creating that demand requires meticulous preparation and then effective promotion. If you think that sounds like branding and brand management, you are absolutely correct. Indeed, all marketers must answer three very simple questions that prospective buyers now ask:
"Who are you?"
"What do you do?"
"Why should I care?"
Although Roy J. Blitzer does not pose these specific questions, the excellent material he provides will help his reader to answer them. Note his chapter titles and the sequence in which the material is organized: The Product (Self Assessment/Product Analysis), Research and Development (Understanding the Market/Landscape), Packaging (Creating Tools of the Trade), Marketing (Product Roll Out), Accessing the Internet, Channels of Marketing (The Distribution Mix), Successful Sales (The Pitch to Succeed), and Product Implementation (Landing Your New Job). Blitzer offers a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective system by which anyone can "package" herself or himself to get their "dream" job, whatever that job may be.
Many readers will especially appreciate Blitzer's provision of all manner of check-lists (the don'ts will probably prove more valuable than the do's), self-audits (e.g. questions which need to be answered), and guidelines for developing what must be a seamless career "game plan." Recall the three questions I posed earlier. Those who interview candidates will probably modify the second one, asking "What can you do for us?" Hence the importance of being very specific when explaining capabilities and especially, when focusing on (key word) relevant prior (better yet, recent) accomplishments that are quantifiable. Candidates for a job resemble applicants for admission to an academic institution in that those in both groups are involved in a process of elimination. More often than not, the competition to prevail during that process is intense. Blitzer's counsel may well provide an "edge" which determines whether or not a job candidate is hired. More importantly, in my opinion, he will enable those who absorb and digest that counsel to make certain that what they seek really is a "dream" job rather than what could well turn out to be a nightmare.
I presume to conclude with some advice of my own: If you obtain the position you seek (and I hope you do), from the first day commit to doing everything possible to become indispensable to the company that hires you. Learn everything you can about how you can add value, how your performance can exceed whatever is expected of you. You owe that to your employer. More to the point, you owe that to yourself.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Treat your career like the business it is, December 20, 2006
This review is from: Hire Me, Inc.: Package Yourself to Get Your Dream Job (Paperback)
This book prescribes the unusual but powerful methods I used back in the days when I was a job hunter. Most people conduct a "job search" as though it's the duty of an employer to supply a job. The very phrase "job search" conjures up notions of going out and finding something someone else has to offer. That's backwards.
The reality is the employer is a possible buyer of the services being offered. If the employer were not a buyer, then we wouldn't have paychecks. You're selling. Period. And remember, there is such a thing as a sales warranty (also addressed in this book).
Plans
Because the reality is you are trying to bring buyer and seller together, the reality is also that you need a marketing plan and a sales plan. Blitzer deftly walks us through the process of developing both.
For many years, I provided assistance and counseling to people who were between jobs. Those who insisted on pumping resumes into the mail system were still looking six months later and would invariably be forced to accept something they didn't really want. But those who followed a decent marketing plan often got an invitation to talk about what they could do for the company, without ever sending a resume. Those talks would often end in an offer.
A business must have a product or service to sell. So naturally, the first chapter of this book talks about the product (meaning the job seeker). You'll find this aspect covered in depth in the famous book What Color is Your Parachute?. That particular book comes out in a new edition each year. It helps readers succeed by showing them how to figure out what they are really good at doing and what they want to do. Blitzer cracks the same nut, a different way. Hire Me, Inc. contains some nifty analysis tools that will help you figure out what you have that you can offer a potential employer.
Resumes
This book doesn't focus on resumes, but most job seekers do. So, I want to address this book review in terms the typical job seeker can understand.
Many people labor over a resume. What they end up with is a couple of pages filled with meaningless clichés, useless buzzwords, pointless hyperbole, and other garbage that tells the other person nothing of any substance.
Being vague and non-communicative is not the way to convince someone to agree with you. That approach, which is often coached in job search books, simply insults the reader's intelligence. I don't know about you, but I don't respond with warmth to a person who treats me like an idiot. I guess if you want to work for an idiot, the "I am looking to be hired by an idiot, so I filled the page with tripe" approach is suitable.
Read the typical resume, and you don't have an answer to "What do you actually do?" What is the point of the resume if the reader can't get any useful information from it? There is no point. This same desire to impress the other person with nonsense tends to bleed over into the interview and doom it to mediocrity. And that's on a good day.
Connecting
If you can't articulate what you do, you are in trouble already. So, use the analysis tools and figure out what that is. One thing I like about Blitzer's analysis tools is they pretty much force you to stop with the "resume speak" and put things into English.
Something every MBA knows intimately well is the SWOT analysis. That means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You have to do this analysis before you start marketing a product, so you don't create landmines for your company and so you don't overlook the best places in which to invest company resources. Kudos to Blitzer for including this in Chapter Two, along with several other pre-marketing essentials.
Other chapters deal with various aspects of marketing and then sales, which is the proper order. Marketing involves determining the buyer's needs, positioning the product to meet those needs, and developing the sales tools. Sales is basically the process of helping the buyer to see that your product best meets the needs of the buyer at a price the buyer will be happy with. It involves many things, and Blitzer gives a mini sales course tailored to the job seeker.
The book devotes five chapters to these two aspects, following the classic marketing and sales concepts taught in any business school. Once you do the prep work per the first two chapters, then you can do the marketing. Once you've done the marketing, then you can do the sales. The typical job seeker skips right to the sales part, which is why the typical job seeker has such a rough time.
Continuing
The last chapter is called "Product Implementation." It's got some sage advice for starting out that new job the right way, and then maintaining your career. Here, too, the typical job seeker is remiss. Simply clocking in face time (the traditional approach) produces nothing you can use to make your case for a raise or even for retention. Your job/career is basically a crapshoot every day, instead of being run like the business it is.
My personal experience with the power of good product implementation involved outlasting the elimination of my position for four years after everyone else in my position was let go due to restructuring and elimination of that position. The headcount was significant, too.
I had enough quantifiable accomplishments articulated in terms of ROI on my salary that, even when my job had been eliminated, I was kept on for four more years in that same position. I finally begged to be cut in the next round of layoffs, because I was tired of the place. I figured it was better to leave with a severance package than to quit and get nothing. Do you want to know how I did it? Read Chapter 8.
This book has more to it than what I've described here. I give it a thumbs up and leave it to you to find the treasures between its covers.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First-rate self help guide to getting the best out of the job market., December 8, 2006
This review is from: Hire Me, Inc.: Package Yourself to Get Your Dream Job (Paperback)
Written by Roy J. Blitzer, executive and management consultant of more than 28 years' experience, Hire Me, Inc.: Package Yourself to Get Your Dream Job is a guide to selling one's talents, for job hunters of all walks of life. Chapters overview how to assess one's own skills, package onself with concise and effective business cards, a resume, and brochures that won't be ignored, the fine art of networking, using internet job sites to maximum advantage, preparing oneself for the interview including anticipating different interview styles and what to do if improper questions come up - inquiries into one's age, martial status, ethnic origin, religious preference, sexual preference, and disabilities are prohibited by law, yet a direct "gotcha" confrontation over them is not advised prior to being hired; instead, Blitzer recommends a nonconfrontational evasion such as "I'm surprised that came up. How relevant is this to the position?" Sample letters, forms, and template guidelines round out this first-rate self help guide to getting the best out of the job market.
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