Book Review: No Mistakes Resumes

Katie November 30, 2013 0 Comments

While I’m not looking for a job at the moment, it never hurts to have an up to date resume on hand.  Especially at my job – sometimes we are asked to hand it off to the boss to see about us moving to a different position within one of our customers groups.  I’m always a bit nervous that my resume is not the best it can be or what the person looking at it is going to be looking for.  What do I put on it? What do I keep off?  Also included in the book are some tips on cover letters which is also a pretty difficult concept for me to grasp – and I guess I am not alone since there are books written on how to do it.

The book is under 100 pages – your resume should be short and to the point and so is this book! It has a lot of great examples of what doesn’t work on resumes and how to re-word it so that it will work. There’s a lot of great tips and I am going to be working on my resume a bit to get it up to par after reading this book.

This is also the first book in a “No Mistakes” Career Series – the next one will be about the interview process – that you’ll no doubt get after making a kick ass resume!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to  write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Warning, reading this book might get you a new job. 
If you’ve ever wondered why you didn’t get called for an interview—when you knew you fit the job—this book will explain why. Learn how to… Keep your resume out of the trash!

Discover     the secret to a perfect resume.  Learn     the three most important parts of a resume.  Find out     how to get the hiring manager’s attention Learn     which sections of your resume can put it in the trash. Uncover     the magnificence of a perfect cover letter.

What makes me qualified to write this book?  I have been a headhunter for more than 30 years, and I have evaluated, screened, and edited a gazillion resumes. I know a gazillion sounds like a lot, and maybe it wasn’t quite a gazillion, but it was a lot of resumes. (more than a few dozen for sure)
I see people make the same mistakes over and over again. Mistakes that keep them from being considered for the jobs they want. That’s why I wrote this book—to help people get the jobs they really want.
So what are you waiting for? Want to know how to get that interview? Get the No Mistakes Resumes book. (It only costs about 2 cups of coffee.)
No Mistakes Resumes. Change your life today! 
Danger! This book contains sarcasm, humor, and damn good information

Book Review: Confidence

Katie November 28, 2013 0 Comments

Confidence is an interesting book.  I really have none in certain aspects of my life so I was interested in reading this to see if it would help me overcome my confidence issues or maybe be more confident in my confidence issues. It was very interesting how it explained how both high confidence and low confidence could be good, but also bad.  Just because you have high confidence doesn’t mean you’ll succeed and just because you have low confidence doesn’t mean you’re destined to fail at everything you do.

It also talked a bit about confidence with dating and how confidence differs between men and women.

A perfect read for my recent flight, full of great information, but I’m not sure I am any more confident in my lack of confidence – but at least I know now that my talent and hard work SHOULD mean more in the end than my confidence in what I’m doing.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Biographers are quick to attribute the success of eminent people to their colossal levels of confidence, while downplaying the roles of talent and hard work, as if it were in anyone’s hands ( or minds) to achieve exceptional levels of success merely through sheer self belief.  Barack Obama did not become the first black president in US History because he had confidence; Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, did not found 400 companies because of his confidence; and Michael Jordan and Roger Federer did not achieve total domination of their sports because they felt good about themselves.

World-renowned personality expert Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic shows us in his upcoming evidence-based book CONFIDENCE that high confidence makes us less likeable, less employable, and less successful in the long run.  In his book, we’ll learn about the downfalls of having too much confidence and how more insecure readers need to understand the value of self-doubt and learn to capitalize on their low confidence.

Once Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic illuminates the distinct difference and benefits of competence and/or confidence, he illustrates how understanding these differences can be applied in everyday life including:

•Career Myths (Confidence, Talent, and Arrogance)

•Why Successful People are Rarely Themselves

•How You Can Benefit from Insecurities

•How High Confidence Creates False Health Hopes

•Confidence in Romantic Relationships

•How to Master interpersonal Relations using competence drawn from his extensive research in this area.

Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic reveals that spending time trying to become more confident and secure is not only fruitless, but would be better spent embracing one’s insecurities and becoming more competent.  People with low confidence are not only more likeable, but they try harder, are more introspective and realistic, and tend to keep striving even when they have already achieved success.  CONFIDENCE shows us how to close the gap between confidence and competence, how to fake it when you need to, and real ways to get ahead at work, home, and out in the world.

Book Review: Status Update

Katie November 26, 2013 0 Comments

I thought this book would be more about status updated with just Twitter and Facebook but I was pleasantly surprised (or maybe i should read book blurbs better) that it focused more on all sorts of technology and connecting to people – blogs, usenet, the way sxsw is ahead of the curve with debuting new technology. (Usenet is how I met most of my internet friends as a teen because I never had many friends IRL).  Interesting also is the ‘anti-fan’, a group of people who love to hate something and will comment negatively on anything the person they are an ‘anti-fan’ of posts. Who has the time for that?

The book certainly gave me a lot to think about in terms of status and being a ‘micro-celebrity’ not that I think I am one – but hey, a girl can dream, right? Maybe some day “concert katie” will be a household name?

If you are into technology, status and social media as much as I am then you will probably want to check out this book (Or if you have no friends IRL – or does that just go hand in hand?) It has a lot of great info and resources and you will hopefully, as I did, learn a lot!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Social media technologies such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook promised a new participatory online culture. Yet, technology insider Alice Marwick contends in this insightful book, “Web 2.0” only encouraged a preoccupation with status and attention. Her original research—which includes conversations with entrepreneurs, Internet celebrities, and Silicon Valley journalists—explores the culture and ideology of San Francisco’s tech community in the period between the dot com boom and the App store, when the city was the world’s center of social media development. Marwick argues that early revolutionary goals have failed to materialize: while many continue to view social media as democratic, these technologies instead turn users into marketers and self-promoters, and leave technology companies poised to violate privacy and to prioritize profits over participation. Marwick analyzes status-building techniques—such as self-branding, micro-celebrity, and life-streaming—to show that Web 2.0 did not provide a cultural revolution, but only furthered inequality and reinforced traditional social stratification, demarcated by race, class, and gender.