New Book

I’m writing another book. The last one, Job Search for Moms went over pretty well with mothers who were returning to the workplace. While it was also helpful for any job seeker, many men or non-moms didn’t want to pick up a book with the word Moms on the cover. The new book, still unnamed will be a handbook of job search techniques for everyone. It will contain stories and facts, worksheets and resources. Right now, all of that is floating around in my head and keeping me up at night.

One of the hardest things about writing a book is deciding on the content. It’s not the wording so much as deciding the chapters and the flow. I’m having trouble because many of the tasks and thought processes that a job seeker goes through in the job search circle back and affect all of the job search steps. Career assessment can be found in resume writing or interviewing; preparing for an interview is similar to preparing the resume and so on. With these thoughts in mind, I think that the job search process can be seen as a series of four steps; assessing, resume preparation, interviewing and networking. Networking is an action that floats around throughout the entire process. How can you network without assessing your strengths, weaknesses and skill set? How can you compose an elevator pitch or response to the “tell me about yourself’ question without understanding and being able to articulate the same things?

What do you think? What would you want to see in a job search handbook? Do you have any questions or stories?