Are you a Brazen Careerist? Win the book

Are You a Brazen Careerist? OK. Prove it! And Win Penelope Trunk’s New Book. If you’ve ever asked, “What Should I DO with my life?� Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist; The New Rules for Success is a book that will shed some light on that age old question. This book is not for the job seeker or career changer looking for sympathy or a shoulder to cry on. No, this book is a swift kick in the ass for anyone who is ready to do anything necessary to find real, sustainable career success.

I really wish this book would have been around when I graduated from college in 1993 with a mountain of student loan debt and no clue how to network, interview or write a resume. What I like best is Trunk’s no nonsense advice that propels you through the book. She gives you the bad news for your own good. Recruiters are not going to tell you that your resume sucks, but Penelope will. Your friends are certainly not going to tell you to move home with your parents to save money, but Penelope will.

Some of the key take-aways are:

• Your resume is a sales tool
• Cold calling will empower you
• Corporate life is risky—start your own biz instead
• Being Likeable is more important than being competent
• A lawsuit will hurt you more than the harassment
• You only need 40k to be happy
• Typecast yourself

As you can tell from this list, Ms. Trunk isn’t afraid of a little controversy. I can just see the backlash she’s going to get from her chapter on harassment. I have to agree with her though and she puts it all into perspective when she says on page 119, “After you’ve filed a report, human resources will protect the company, not you.� This will probably be pretty sobering for anyone just entering the workforce. Anyone older who has actually gone to human resources for help, will recognize this as a true and unfortunate fact of corporate life.

Penelope puts the responsibility for career success squarely on your shoulders. There are plenty of people who are not going to like this. They’d rather blame the economy or their boss or a string of ‘bad luck.’ And as a career coach myself, I’m very empathetic to the epic struggle it can be to find a job or change careers.

In fact, after 9/11, living in NYC, I co-founded a business and made almost enough money to buy take-out burritos on a regular basis. It took three years before I found a full-time job. And I worked that full-time job for exactly one week before I decided that I’d chew my own arm off to get out of those corporate shackles.

The most surprising (and to me satisfying) chapter in the book is Chapter 5, “Corporate Life is Risky—Start Your Own Business Instead.� This chapter is an example of what really sets this book apart from all of the other career books out there. She gives it to you straight about the pros and cons of both corporate life AND entrepreneurial life. This will resonate with people (like me!) who work in corporate
America when they need to, but hope to live entirely off their own business in the near future.

If you’re serious about finding some good answers to the question, “What should I do with my life?�check out Brazen Careerist. It won’t be pretty and plenty of readers will want to chuck this book before they even reach Chapter 5, however, for the brave Brazen Careerists among us, (and I am one!) Career Victory is close at hand.

So Are You a Brazen Careerist? Ok then, here is your chance to prove it. Did you quit law school to pursue a job at a non-profit? Did you move home to your parent’s basement to start a granola company? Did you tell your boss to shove that job that you hated ever since day one even though you didn’t have another one lined up and you were three months behind in rent?

Share the bravest career move you’ve ever made and win a copy of Penelope’s new book, Brazen Careerist; The New Rules for Success.