Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success (Hardcover)

by Penelope Trunk (Author)
Key Phrases: quarterlife crisis, messy desk, hiring manager, Esther Williams, Ninth House

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A delightful book, with some edgy advice that made me squirm a bit at times. I agreed with 90% of it, found myself arguing with the other 10%, and was completely engaged from start to finish." -- Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D, author of the New York Times Bestseller The No Asshole Rule

"BRAZEN CAREERIST has the street-smarts you need to make your career and life work for you from the start. Read it now, or you'll wish you had when you're 40!" -- Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

"Penelope Trunk brings considerable savvy and a fresh new perspective to the business of career success. Bold and sometimes unconventional, BRAZEN CAREERIST gives readers much to think about as well as concrete, practical suggestions that will help them know what they want, and know how to get it." -- Paul D. Tieger, author of Do What You Are and CEO of SpeedReading People, LLC

"Take everything you think you 'know' about career strategies, throw them away, and read this book because the rules have changed. 'Brazen,' 'counter-intuitive,' and 'radical' are the best three descriptions of Trunk's work. Life is too short to be stuck in a rat hole..." -- Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start

Product Description
Are you taking long lunches? Ignoring sexual harassment? Do you keep your desk neat to the point of looking like you don't have enough to do? The answer to all three should be yes, if you want to succeed in your career on your own terms. Penelope Trunk, expert business advice columnist for the Boston Globe, gives anything but standard advice to help members of the X and Y generations succeed on their own terms in any industry. Trunk asserts that a take-charge attitude and thinking outside the box are the only ways to make it in today's job market. With 45 tips that will get you thinking bigger, acting bolder, and blazing trails you never thought possible, BRAZEN CAREERIST will forever change your career outlook.

Take everything you think you "know" about career strategies, throw them away, and read this book because the rules have changed. "Brazen," "counter-intuitive," and "radical" are the best three descriptions of Trunk's work. Life is too short to be stuck in a rat hole... --Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start

It is a delightful book, with some edgy advice that made me squirm a bit at times. I agreed with 90% of it, found myself arguing with the other 10%, and was completely engaged from start to finish. --Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D, author of the New York Times bestseller The No Asshole Rule

BRAZEN CAREERIST has the street-smarts you need to make your career and life work for you from the start. Read it now, or you'll wish you had when you're 40! --Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Penelope Trunk brings considerable savvy and a fresh new perspective to the business of career success. Bold and sometimes unconventional, Brazen Careerist gives readers much to think about as well as concrete, practical suggestions that will help them know what they want, and know how to get it. --Paul D. Tieger, author of Do What You Are and CEO of SpeedReading People, LLC

BRAZEN CAREERIST provides a road map specifically for Gen Xers and Gen Yers to help them navigate corporate life and handle the unique characteristics of a twenty-first century career. Trunk's style is direct, practical and anecdotal and most important incredibly helpful. --Julie Jansen, author of I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know it's Not This


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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus (May 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446578649
• ISBN-13: 978-0446578646
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #113,517 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beware advice on how to have a successful career..., February 14, 2008

By	GadgetChick - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

From someone who doesn't have one, at least in the regular business world.

Yes, Gen Xers and Yers are moving into the workforce and redefining work, etc. etc. However, in most industries and companies, there are still baseline levels of comportment, behavior, etiquette, etc. that people are expected to maintain. I have worked for two Fortune 1000 companies and what I have found is that in many cases, the younger people moving in to replace Baby Boomers aren't rejecting their values and beliefs wholesale, as Trunk would have you believe, but adopting some and rejecting some others. Overall, I see more people buying into their own corporate culture and carrying on at least the major tenets than rejecting it completely.

Trunk admits on her blog she's been fired many times for a wide variety of offenses, including insubordination, inattention to her work, etc. One of my old bosses, who had an MBA from Stanford, said it best - always beware of people who make a career out of writing about having a career, rather than actually having one. I am not sure what credentials being a professional beach volleyball player gives you in the business world, but I don't necessarily think that being a professional blogger and getting one book published indicates someone is at the pinnacle of their profession, and therefore in a position to be dispensing advice to others. I don't claim to be at the pinnacle of my profession, but I can also say that I've never been fired for blowing off work assignments to work on freelance jobs. I've actually never been fired, period. My best piece of advice to any generation of worker is this: almost any company, big or small, is looking for people who make some attempt to fit themselves into the system, to some degree. While I don't believe that the whole system of paying your dues by working like crazy until you reach a particular job title is still relevant in all companies, I do think that most people are not going to be successful by going into a job and trying to get by on their looks and iconoclastic personality from day 1, which is basically what Trunk advises.

I recently read a fiction book where the author described a workplace where employees were divided into two categories: Golden Children, who could get away with almost anything without really putting their time into their work, and Work Horses, who picked up the Golden Children's slack. Most workplaces I have been part of fit that characterization pretty well. And I admit that as a Work Horse myself, being a Golden Child looks pretty good sometimes. But here's the thing. A career is a marathon, not a sprint. People do need to think strategically and make smart moves at the right time, but glossing through job after job after job expecting your looks and your chutzpah to carry the day isn't going to lead to the substantive success most people are seeking. Especially for women, relying on your looks to get you places isn't the safest bet. There are new, younger, hotter women coming into the workforce every day that you keep getting older. Somewhere along the line, you need to have some kind of skills and experience to deliver what you've sold people on. My suspicion is that Trunk was a Golden Child who couldn't deliver, time after time, and so therefore had to "create her own career" when she ended up basically unemployable after job-hopping/being fired too many times.

One more word about money - it's great if you can sponge off your parents while you find your place in the work world. It's great if you can live on $40,000 a year. Maybe for Trunk, money doesn't equal happiness, but in response to that idea, I will steal a line from one of my favorite movies and say: Look at the freakin' smile on my face - ear to ear, baby. I've worked in jobs I loved for no money and jobs I hated for a lot of money, and I can safely say that the best thing is to work a job you love that ALSO pays a lot of money. Which is totally possible, but I don't think Trunk's tips will get you there. It takes a mix of aggressive decision-making and hard work to really get to the point of true success, which is not purely defined by money, but to me, is defined by the ability to have some level of financial security (to the point where you don't have to go into debt to take a few weeks of maternity leave) and satisfaction with your work.

So advice seekers, beware this book. I imagine that if someone who is truly successful, who has truly managed to combine work and family life (like Meg Whitman of eBay) would take one look at Trunk's resume and think it was a joke. The advice in this book certainly is, and I hope there aren't a bunch of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young career women out there taking it. What Trunk describes in this book is not true success. It's the truest version of success she's managed to talk herself into accepting, because she got handicapped by her own limitations.

64 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE ADVICE, August 9, 2007

By	Tax Whiz "Tax Whiz" (New York City, NY) - See all my reviews

This book is just a mish-mosh of Ms. Trunk's weekly column on yahoo, where she spews some of the most insane "advice" I have ever seen. For example, she recently advised her readers NOT to report sexual harrassment because it would look bad on the person being harrassed! In another column, she advised moving back home with the folks to save money. I don't think this is something most parents would welcome. She's also recently advised female workers that it's okay to "show some skin" at work; to not give priority to work projects that won't matter 5 years from now (hmmm...I don't think any boss would take well to an employee saying "Sorry boss, this won't matter in 5 years so I'm going to pass on it"), and other such dribble. Her message is always "appearance matters more than substance".

Ms. Trunk touts herself as a career "expert" but if you read her bio, there is nothing that gives her these qualifications. She worked for a handful of companies, all of which went bankrupt or otherwise folded (even the company she founded is out of business); she was a professional volley ball player (not sure how that enhances her as an "expert"); and for a while she modeled advertisements on her chest. And we're supposed to take her seriously????

I'm not even sure she has a college degree (nothing is mentioned in her bio, which leads me to believe she only has a high school education), and she certainly doesn't have any advanced degrees, nor has she published any serious studies on careers/career-related issues (everything is pretty much her opinion, rarely backed up by serious data). I don't even consider her 10 years as a marketing exec to be anything of substance. How can you possibly be an "expert" by remaining in one field for your entire worklife?

There are much better career-advice books out there than Ms. Trunk's. Look for those written by people who run exec search firms/job placement firms/employment agencies/HR depts/etc, and/or who hold advanced degrees in Organizational/Industrial Psychology and study these issues for a living. In other words, people who actually work on a daily basis with real companies and real employees and who understand the needs, requirements, limits, and expectations of both.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Should be titled "Bad Advice: What To Do If You Want To Collect Unemployment", November 23, 2007

By	Read That (Midwest) - See all my reviews

Here's nothing more than a rehash of terrible advice that you can get for free by reading the author's on-line column. She seems to think that looks and appearance are what count, not skill or experience. Note that the author's career entails not working for corporate America; her thoughts on how to do little with the least could be helpful if Jim "The Cruise" Anchower needs another job to support his beer and weed habit. If you really think this could be interesting or useful (which it isn't) - be smart and just read the free on-line archive of the same.