This is How You Get Your Next Job is about "fit" and how to manage the employer's impressions, or "negative impressions", of your suitability for employment. It is not targeted at any one industry or type of worker, such as professionals or entry-level workers, and though many job seekers will take something of value away from the book, any potential reader who has been told that they didn't get the job offer because of "fit" or for the person about to go for their first skilled-occupation interview.
Overall, the author has offers advice and exercises that will help with interview preparation, such as the list on
What employers look for that includes desired qualities such as flexibility, stable behavior and intellectual curiosity, and the
Would You Hire You test which includes several essay type questions that will include content you can use for answering interview questions. The encouragement for reflective thinking and self-examination, especially for a person that has had a few failed interview attempts and needs to examine their behavior in the interview, would be helpful for some readers. I would pair this one with Ron Fry's
101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions, which I like for basic training in interviews.
The author does spend a lot of time focused on the "negative filtering" techniques that employers use to decide who is a suitable candidate. Negative filtering is a cognitive trick used to determine if something is mismatched or incorrect according to our perceptions. In a mild form, negative filtering could mean removing a candidate from the running because they fail to show up wearing a tie. In its most abhorrent manifestation, when a candidate is the wrong religion, race or gender for a job, negative filtering can remove those candidates from consideration, based on the filter of the interviewer. Most of the book focuses on the failure to demonstrate follow through or stable behavior and how those traits are demonstrable and when not achieved how an interviewer can filter candidates out based on the lack of those traits. On the whole, when considering the exercises, candidates can make sure that they demonstrate the traits that employers look for and apply it to their career management.
I did like this book, especially for a reader who is getting ready to enter the professional work force, though I felt demoralized by the litany of employer complaints that sometimes felt frivolous. For example, one interviewer states they would not hire a person who wore patterned hose. Maybe the person meant the airy crocheted kind or fishnets, but this seems to be pretty picky when compared to a person's ability to regularly show up on time and write cogent sentences--not to mention the fact that the patterned salesperson could sell snow to an Inuit. Some of the employer likes and dislikes seemed a little silly when the person's abilities were not considered, but the candidates were discarded for trifling fashion
faux pas or some conservative bulwark against tattoos or piercings.
The advice on what to say and not say in an interview, your first presentation to an employer, was really well done, even if some of the picky faults were a bit exasperating at times. I would recommend readers who have the presentation down pat to review the chapter on
Things you should never do once you get a job or in your career--ever as a worthwhile introduction to basic career management and etiquette when dealing with colleagues and supervisors.
This is How You Get Your Next Job is useful, though it can get a little annoying at times, but it does remind you that interviewers are human too, with their own foibles that candidates need to acknowledge to find employment.
