Only for the innovative
Eric Kassan (mail@EricKassan.net), A reviewer, 03/01/2004

For companies and candidates that are open to new ideas and shared responsibilities this book is great! Note the ideas behind this book are those associated with Open-Book Management (see the book by the same name by John Case). If you are a job seeker who likes to be told what to do and who sees work as a four-letter word, this book may get you a job, but you will not be able to live up the expectations these methods would set for you so please don't bother. On the other hand, for those who enjoy the opportunity to innovate at work, this book tells you how you can *SHOW* that to prospective employers and thus sell them on you.

Also recommended: Open-Book Management by John Case

It works!
T. Noack, a Marketing Director in Anaheim, 01/23/2004

I have been in marketing for over 15 years and you would think I know about marketing myself. It is different! I have read a number of different job searching books including 'What color is my parachute'. All of these books are great and cover a wide range of topics one should be aware of when you are looking for a new job. This book really concentrates on the eccentials and at the same time covers everything all the other books cover as well. Short and concise chapters, a suggested schedule and off you go! After working through the book and preping my job search for a week, I sent out my first set of resumes and received two phone calls, which resulted in two interview. Now, it still took me almost three months to finally start my next job, but I consider this pretty fast considering that I know a lot of good and experienced marketing people who have been looking for work for six months and longer. It really works.

Classic Marketing Principles Applied to Job Searches
Donald Mitchell (donmitch@irresistibleforces.com), a management consultant from Boston, 05/07/2001

Mr. Fox challenges the conventional wisdom in useful ways in this provocative set of 44 mini essays on getting a terrific job. He argues that you should think of getting a job as 'marketing and selling of yourself.' He provides the primary metaphor to marketing, and gives you an outline of what to do. He encourages you to get even more ideas by reading books about marketing, having made the translation to this environment and issue. The material is clear and easy-to-execute, and following this advice will probably increase your chances of getting the best job you are qualified to do. Mr. Fox isn't against resumes, he just wants to change the way they are used. Rather than lead with a general purpose resume, he wants you to customize a resume for each opportunity after having met someone in the company. 'You are a product.' 'You are not a robot, but you will be purchsed as if you were a robotic assembly machine.' As such, he wants you to fit the specifications precisely, in a way that you cannot do until you have more information. His basic blueprint for getting a job entails these steps: (1) target organizations for their fit with your talents and interests, and their geographical proximity to where you want to live (2) research those organizations (3) send a custom impact letter to the highest level person who can hire you to get an interview (you can use ads to give you an idea of what they are looking for) (4) plan the interview (5) estimate the economic value of what you can do for the organization (6) bring helpful ideas to the interview (7) conduct an analysis of what the organization needs during the interview (8) write and send that individualized resume (9) Follow-up with a thank you letter within a day with some new idea in it (10) Plan any subsequent interviews to reflect what you've learned. He encourages you to stand out, even if that means being a litle outrageous. He tells stories about getting a creative job in an advertising agency by sending a fish as a message and a wind-up toy to get into business school. He also suggests looking for jobs where others don't look -- with venture capitalists, small companies, in China and Cuba, accountants and lawyers who handle family companies, bankruptcy trustees and lawyers, and commercial loan officers. I thought the advice was generally pretty good. The boldness advice should be tempered to match the type of organization and work you want to do. You don't want to seem out of character for what that person likes. Also, the economic benefits of your working with the company should be conservatively stated in the context of how that companies values such benefits. That point wasn't made clear. After you finish reading this book, I also suggest that you think about whether you should start-up a new organization with a team of people who have complementary skills. That's another place where most people don't look. Add the most value you can to the lives of others . . . and to yourself! Donald Mitchell, co-author of The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The 2,000 Percent Solution