Book Review Promote Yourself

I have the privilege of reviewing a fantastic book being launched today by bestselling author Dan Schawbel. It has rave reviews from top publications and personalities in the industry. It is the definitive book on how to build an outstanding career with tips and strategies that can be implemented with great success.

Presenting:

Promote Yourself – The new rules for career success by Dan Schawbel

(Read the official book summary)

Here is an excerpt:

How people perceive you at work has always been vital to a successful career. Now with the Internet, social media, and the unrelenting hum of 24/7 business, the ability to brand and promote yourself effectively has become absolutely essential.

No matter how talented you are, it doesn’t matter unless managers can see those talents and think of you as an invaluable employee, a game-changing manager, or the person whose name is synonymous with success.

So, how do you stand out and get ahead? Promote Yourself frees you from the outdated rules for getting ahead and lays out a step-by-step process for building a successful career in an age of ever-changing technologies and economic uncertainty.

Schawbel provides you with the unique skills and message that you’ll need today and for the rest of your career. Promote Yourself is the definitive book on how to build an outstanding career.

Promote Yourself gives cutting edge strategies on how to stand out and get ahead at work based on new research, interviews and insights. It also explains how millennials will shape the future of work. 

My Review

Today’s workplace is highly challenging and competitive and to survive, let alone thrive, the individual must have a number of techniques and tools to stay ahead of her game. Dan’s book is full of practical advice combined with stories and insights to help you succeed.

As someone who enjoyed an eighteen year corporate career, I consider myself lucky to have worked with organizations that believed in on-going training and encouraged personal development – and I worked with some of the best names in the industry. I love that “Promote Yourself” focuses on helping the reader develop her skills and abilities and become a leader in the workplace.

Technology is shrinking the world by the day and feeling complacent about existing skills is not an option. Just doing your job isn’t enough. To get ahead, to get promoted, you have to stand out. You have to show your employer what makes you special and unique in the marketplace – build your personal brand and become a high value employee. You must work really hard, make yourself an expert on something and pursue your passions to achieve what you want.

Unlike the previous generation that thought a one-job career was a virtue, for Gen Y or the Millenial, a year into the job and it is time to move up or move on. Today’s young workers are competing for jobs and promotions not only against their peers, but  also against older experienced workers.

Take control of your career without quitting your job.

“Promote Yourself” shows you how to rise to the top by using your current job as a springboard to success and using thinking inside the box skills rather than outside the box skills to realize your potential, maximize your success and take your career to a whole new level.

“If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing” Malcolm Gladwell, Bestselling author of The Tipping Point

7 takeaways from Promote Yourself:

1. What happens after you have a job
2. How do you get the (technical, interpersonal and social media) skills you need to advance in your career
3. How do you prepare yourself to deal with problems that may crop up in this incredibly uncertain time
4. How to network with executives and managers
5. How to manage relationships between people from different generations
6. How to create a personal brand that showcases your uniqueness, will make people take notice of you at work and will help promote yourself faster than your peers are promoting themselves.
7. How to stay within the corporate policies while reaching your true potential at work

7 reasons to get “Promote yourself”

You:

1. are talented and feel stuck because what you needed to know wasn’t taught in school
2. don’t know how to move up in your company
3. work at a job that makes you miserable
4. have great ideas but don’t have the backing to develop them on your own
5. don’t know what your options are
6. want another position in your company but lack the skills or don’t know where to get them
7. want to make a change but don’t know how to assess your options or where to get started

“Know who you are, recognize your strengths, differentiate yourself”

7 things you learn from Promote Yourself

1. take your strengths and uniqueness and turn them into your personal brand
2. develop the skills you need to get ahead
3. communicate your unique contribution so that you become indispensable
4. highlight your strengths for all to see
5. be the best version of you
6. make everyone marvel at what you bring to the table
7. build relationships across generations

7 things I liked:

1. Everything Dan says in the book is supported with research.
2. The optimism projected on behalf of Gen Y / the Millenials
3. The real life examples and resources throughout the book – makes it much more interesting to relate to what he’s saying
4. The emphasis on staying current to stay employable
5. What to do and how to do it in easy digestible bullet points in each chapter
6. The focus on strengths,  not weaknesses and that personal branding is a game-changer
7. The chapter on online skills and how to use social media to your advantage with specific tips on each prominent social media platform

“In today’s knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn”  Bill Clinton

Promote Yourself is a must-have guide if you are serious about succeeding in your career, both as an employee and an entrepreneur.  This book will help you succeed in any job, in any market so that you can pursue your passion to the fullest no matter where you started or where you aspire to be. It teaches you how to face the new economy and succeed in today’s workplace. Self-promotion is a subtle art and career guru Dan Schawbel gives you the new rules for success, and answers your most pressing questions about your career.

This could well be a life-changing book for both beginners and pros. If you are looking to succeed in your career while experiencing a personal transformation, this book is for you. A very well written book, full of valuable insights. Wonderfully motivating, inspiring the reader to feel confident.

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (September 3, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1250044553
ISBN-13: 978-1250044556

About the author:

Dan Schawbel is a best selling author and the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the author of the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, now in 13 languages.

His second book, Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success, is being launched today. Dan is a columnist at both TIME and FORBES, and has been featured in over 1,000 media outlets, such as Wired Magazine, NBC,  CNBC, PBS, Fox Business and ELLE Magazine. He’s spoken at Google, NBC Universal, McGraw-Hill, Oracle, Harvard Business School, MIT, Time Warner, IBM, and CitiGroup. Dan was named in the Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 List in 2010, the Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 List in 2012.  He tweets as @danschawbel and also inspires on Facebook.