This book can be divided into three sections:
1) The "enlightenment section" - This section is worth one hundred thousand dollars and should be read by every graduate student and mid-career scientist. This is the best part of the book. It gives the reader the desire and courage to change. It contains:
a. Forward - by the President of the National Academy of Sciences
b. Preface - by the author
c. Chapters 1 & 2
This section does a good job at changing the mindset of a young or mid-career scientist. The author convincingly told the readers that the total available job market for a scientist is much bigger than just the realm of academia. Also, the author successfully conveyed that the skills a scientist acquired while getting a PhD are also the ones highly useful in the corporate world. Finally, the author bluntly told the reader the some of the skills and habits that make a person successful in the academia are bad for the world outside of the academia.
2) The "principle section" - This section is worth ten thousand dollars. This part is the second best of the book. It gives the reader the principles of how to change ones job from inside the academia to the outside world. It contains:
a. Chapter 3 - the stages of change
b. Chapter 4 - the proper career planning process
Why is this section valuable, yet not as good as the first section? It is because it contains the same good career planning principles for every career type, not just for the scientists. While the principles described are good, they are not unique, nor earth-shattering. However, the Stanford Career Planning Model in p32 and the "80:10:10 Rule" in p33 are outstanding. These two pieces of information alone are worth much more than the price of the book.
3) The "do-it section" - This section is worth one thousand dollars. This part is the least valuable part of the book. It gives the reader step-by-step procedure of how to look for a job in the outside world. It contains chapters 5 to 13.
This section is least valuable because it is not much different from the myriad job hunting books that were written by others. However, chapter 8 on the difference between CVs and resumes, and chapter 10 on resume case studies are very outstanding. These two chapters are worthy of careful reading and are not found in ordinary job searching books.
**Note: The author, by revealing an important piece of information in this book, is worthy of great adulation and applause for daring to speak out. In page 1, this author points out the erroneous prediction of shortage of young scientists by National Science Foundation (NSF), which caused "one of the worst job markets for scientists in the past 40 years."
