Get Hired Fast!: Tap the Hidden Job Market in 15 Days

Get hired fast is a relatively thin book at 180 pages. Like the best steaks it is meat with little fat and easy to digest. You can easily read this book in a few hours. In the world of work, especially during challenging economic times you need to give yourself an edge by differentiating your job search. Graham gives you the tools and methods to do this bu advocating a direct selling/marketing approach to your search. You will learn: * Why the old rules of job searching don't work. Page 15 * The best tactics to turn a phone call into an interview. Page 95 * How to maximize your time to land a job interview in 15 days! Page 67 Read this book not just once, but over and over again until this new paradigm and mindset sinks in. Knowing how to tap the hidden job market is a valuable skill that you will use many times in the years ahead. Cheers!

I bought this book during by career switch. Even in a bad market at the time, his ideas were dead on accurate. The greatest benefit was that he gives you suggestions on what to say (Actual scripts to use) and after you get going, you develop your own, but it was a great help getting started! A fair warning, although his techniques work (I received 3 offers is less time than 15 days) it requires a GREAT DEAL OF EFFORT. It can take you way outside your comfort zone but they do work and it's no gimick. What seperates this book from others, is that this book gives examples of what to say, what to do and how to do it. Once you follow the "script" a few times, it gets much easier and you develop your own routine.

This book very effectively walks through the process of researching companies, making contacts at those companies, preparing for interviews, and securing a position. It advocates an aggressive process of identifying companies in the fields you want to work in, whether they have open positions or not. You then research these companies, looking for viable contacts. You call these contacts, looking for open positions that may or may not be advertised. The rationale is that "90%" of the filled positions aren't advertised and this gives you an advantage in finding a new job. At the same time, it says that while you should pursue the traditional job search methods (job boards, networking, etc), you shouldn't count on them. Graham likens these methods to "winning the lottery". Here is where the book is excellent. It gives great tips for organizing the job search, researching companies and contacts, and getting prepared for every stage in the interview process (phone interview, in-person interview, negotiation, and acceptance). It provides helpful forms for keeping track of the information. It provides great techniques for how to present yourself. The only issue I have with the book is that it's very clear that you *must* follow the whole procedure, including dismissing your network of friends and collegues to call people who probably can't help you. (the book admits that it's a numbers game - 150 contacts called will lead to three interview that lead to a job offer) I don't fully agree with this approach. If you are well-qualified and/or have a strong network that you've maintained during your career, I don't think you'd need to call people that don't know who you are and have provided no reason to believe they have an open position. In my own job search, I had a strong network of collegues with a lot of contacts. My focus was on working that network, and it paid off. On the other hand, if you're struggling to find a new position, you should consider the approach that Graham describes. It's not that I don't believe it would work - I think it's a bit of an overkill in many situations. Even if you're only planning to use a more traditional approach, this book will still help you for all of the reasons described above - thus the five-star rating. In the end, you'll know how to get the attention of the hiring managers at any stage of the process. This has certainly helped me.

Graham gives you the tools to do what needs to be done. He lists websites for corporate research, provides scripts for cold calling contacts and worksheets to keep track of your progress. This book is a gem!

Get Hired Fast! Tap The Hidden Job Market In 15 Days is a guide to using a direct-calling strategy to get a job quickly in the wake of dot-com failures, increased automization, and other twenty-first century obstacles that make earning a living more difficult than ever before. Chapters addressed how to break the old rules when they don't work, how to identify key contacts in target companies, how to follow through and nail the job, staying even keel in a face-to-face interview, how to keep a new job once one has it, why it is important to keep looking even when one has a job, and more. Management expert Brian Graham offers the benefit of his many years of expertise in plain terms, in this practical "how-to" manual that walks the reader through direct calling and beyond step-by-step.