Customer Reviews

Get Hired Fast! Tap the Hidden Job Market in 15 Days

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

 

 

I bought this book during by career switch. Even in a bad market at the time, his ideas were dead on accurate. The greatest benefit was that he gives you suggestions on what to say (Actual scripts to use) and after you get going, you develop your own, but it was a great help getting started! A fair warning, although his techniques work (I received 3 offers is less time than 15 days) it requires a GREAT DEAL OF EFFORT. It can take you way outside your comfort zone but they do work and it's no gimick. What seperates this book from others, is that this book gives examples of what to say, what to do and how to do it. Once you follow the "script" a few times, it gets much easier and you develop your own routine.

This book very effectively walks through the process of researching companies, making contacts at those companies, preparing for interviews, and securing a position.

It advocates an aggressive process of identifying companies in the fields you want to work in, whether they have open positions or not. You then research these companies, looking for viable contacts. You call these contacts, looking for open positions that may or may not be advertised. The rationale is that "90%" of the filled positions aren't advertised and this gives you an advantage in finding a new job.

At the same time, it says that while you should pursue the traditional job search methods (job boards, networking, etc), you shouldn't count on them. Graham likens these methods to "winning the lottery".

Here is where the book is excellent. It gives great tips for organizing the job search, researching companies and contacts, and getting prepared for every stage in the interview process (phone interview, in-person interview, negotiation, and acceptance). It provides helpful forms for keeping track of the information. It provides great techniques for how to present yourself.

The only issue I have with the book is that it's very clear that you *must* follow the whole procedure, including dismissing your network of friends and collegues to call people who probably can't help you. (the book admits that it's a numbers game - 150 contacts called will lead to three interview that lead to a job offer)

I don't fully agree with this approach. If you are well-qualified and/or have a strong network that you've maintained during your career, I don't think you'd need to call people that don't know who you are and have provided no reason to believe they have an open position. In my own job search, I had a strong network of collegues with a lot of contacts. My focus was on working that network, and it paid off.

On the other hand, if you're struggling to find a new position, you should consider the approach that Graham describes. It's not that I don't believe it would work - I think it's a bit of an overkill in many situations.

Even if you're only planning to use a more traditional approach, this book will still help you for all of the reasons described above - thus the five-star rating. In the end, you'll know how to get the attention of the hiring managers at any stage of the process. This has certainly helped me.

Brian Graham hit a home run with this one. Well crafted, it provides great advice and accurate insight on how to find the job you really want.

Graham takes us behind the scenes and has us look at the job market from the other side of the desk. When Graham takes us there and we understand the process and the steps, it becomes increasingly clear why only signing up on the job boards and using them as your only search method is like buying a lottery ticket. You might win, but chances are, you won't. The job boards like Monster are designed to sell advertising, not help you find a job. Submit all the resumes you want, just remember, chances are, no one is reading your resume when it comes in that way. I like the fact that Graham's advice comes from the trenches. He wasn't in the Ivory Tower writing this book. Graham earned his stripes as a recruiter and a job seeker in a very tough market, so he comes with a lot of street cred. While this is a great book filled with no nonsense advice, it is when you put his ideas into action that you really see the value. If you are thinking about changing jobs, or are already looking, read this book. It will save you tons of time, and hours of heartache. More importantly, you'll get a job much faster and you won't have to click through 2,000,000 pop up ads on Monster.

I really liked this book.

I'm embarking on my own job search and the advice on what needs to be done before calling out to prospective hiring managers was great. It spells out exactly what information you really should have before picking up the phone or sending out a resume, shows you how to keep yourself motivated and how to document your progress and research thoroughly.

This is the 2nd book I've read to help make my job search more effective, and I'd say it's a perfect complement to Nick Corcodilos' Ask the Headhunter : Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job. The one place that this book falls down is the actual interview advice. While Get Hired Fast!'s interview advice is great to keep in mind, I think that Ask the Headhunter's "New Interview" is a much more effective way of taking control of an interview and demonstrating that you can do the job, leaving fewer questions in the interviewer's mind.

Get hired fast is a relatively thin book at 180 pages. Like the best steaks it is meat with little fat and easy to digest. You can easily read this book in a few hours.

In the world of work, especially during challenging economic times you need to give yourself an edge by differentiating your job search.

Graham gives you the tools and methods to do this bu advocating a direct selling/marketing approach to your search.

You will learn:

* Why the old rules of job searching don't work. Page 15

* The best tactics to turn a phone call into an interview. Page 95

* How to maximize your time to land a job interview in 15 days! Page 67

Read this book not just once, but over and over again until this new paradigm and mindset sinks in.

Knowing how to tap the hidden job market is a valuable skill that you will use many times in the years ahead.

Cheers!

Graham gives you the tools to do what needs to be done. He lists websites for corporate research, provides scripts for cold calling contacts and worksheets to keep track of your progress.

This book is a gem!

Get Hired Fast! Tap The Hidden Job Market In 15 Days is a guide to using a direct-calling strategy to get a job quickly in the wake of dot-com failures, increased automization, and other twenty-first century obstacles that make earning a living more difficult than ever before. Chapters addressed how to break the old rules when they don't work, how to identify key contacts in target companies, how to follow through and nail the job, staying even keel in a face-to-face interview, how to keep a new job once one has it, why it is important to keep looking even when one has a job, and more. Management expert Brian Graham offers the benefit of his many years of expertise in plain terms, in this practical "how-to" manual that walks the reader through direct calling and beyond step-by-step.

The book seems to be interesting at first. However, it does not portray what is going on today. The author instructs people to pick 150 contacts within the local job market and contact all of them. Where am I going to get 150 contacts or job openings? There are only few jobs openings even in my big city that I would be interested to explore. Then, who am I going to contact? Many organizations do a wonderful job at hiding those human resource managers' names and other contact info. When I tried to find out, they were not giving out their names or their contact information. The internet has not been helpful in that regard either. Overall, the strategies described in this book are not bad at all. However, the times are now different from what they were in 2005 (the date of its publication). If you can, employ those strategies. However, you will find there is not much to employ. Look elsewhere for the answers...

The auathor of Get Hired Fast offers some good suggestions on the direct calling method. With several researching tools available today such as ReferenceUSA and LinkedIn, the direct contact method is indeed a possible resource.

However. like many job searching methods its just another way and getting your reume in front of the hiring manager. The author clearly states that the odds are still slim even using this method. The book is a little outdated with new technology but still holds some merit with the strategies that is detailed.

Overall the book is moderately helpful.

This book was written a few years ago so some of the info is outdated. Although the steps it takes you through is a good thing to try when nothing is working as far as job searching.