It took me a while to get around to reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, and I’ve gotta admit, my first reaction was that the title had to be hyperbole.

Four hours? Really?!

Well, for the entrepreneur that may be a possibility, if you follow Ferriss’ formula. In fact, I’ve been through both the book and the related website, and I do think Ferriss has done as much as anyone possibly can to put the tools right into people’s hands.

There’s an old saying to the effect that you have to be responsible TO people, but you can’t be responsible FOR people. Ferriss was definitely responsible to people in what he’s put out there.

But what do you do if you’re in corporate America? Is this book useless to you?

Hardly. Here’s an overview of Ferriss’ formula from Wikipedia, and how it gets adapted for employees versus entrepreneurs:

In the book Ferriss uses the mnemonic DEAL for the four main chapters. [4] It stands for: Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation.

Definition means to figure out what a person wants, get over fears, see past society’s “expectations”, and figure out what it will really cost to get where a person wants to go.

Elimination is about time management, or rather about not managing time. This is achieved applying the 80/20 rule to focus only on those tasks that contribute the majority of benefit. There’s a difference, Ferriss says, between efficiency and effectiveness. The books emphasis is on effectiveness.

Automation is about building a sustainable, automatic source of income. This includes techniques such as drop-shipping, automation, Google Adwords and Adsense and outsourcing.

Liberation is dedicated to the successful automation of one’s lifestyle and the liberation from a geographical location and job. Incidentally, Ferriss notes that if somebody has a regular job, the order of steps will be DELA, not DEAL.

If you’re on the hunt for a new position, consider starting to build in some of these liberations into the offer you seek.

We try to keep things practical here on the blog, as you’ll note from scanning through our recent posts. In fact, even when we do the light-heated “Fun With a Purpose” posts, we make an impassioned effort to explain what useful purpose the information in those posts serves.

That said, I’m going to take a moment to write about The Secret. It started as a 90-minute movie you could watch online, then a DVD you could order, and then a book version. It’s been featured a few different times on the Oprah Winfrey show and lampooned on Saturday Night Live, so if you haven’t heard of it before, you can take my word for it that it’s got the trappings of a cultural phenomenon.

The “secret” behind The Secret is the Law of Attraction. According to the ever-helpful Wikipedia:

The phrase Law of Attraction, although used widely by esoteric writers, does not have an agreed-upon definition. However, the general consensus among New Age thinkers is that the Law of Attraction takes the principal “Like Attracts Like” and applies it to conscious desire. That is, a person’s thoughts (conscious and unconscious), emotions, and beliefs cause a change in the physical world that attracts positive or negative experiences that correspond to the aforementioned thoughts, with or without the person taking action to attain such experiences. This process has been described as “harmonious vibrations of the law of attraction”, or “you get what you think about; your thoughts determine your experience.”

Put another way, your mother (or grandmother) probably once told you that you’d attract more bees with honey than vinegar. Same idea.

The one thing I would take exception with here is the possibility that you can bring the positive to you without taking action. I’ve never known anyone who could say, “I want X,” then sit back and have it magically appear.

I’ve spent multiple months unemployed in my lifetime, and I know it can be very challenging to maintain a positive attitude in the face of creeping time with no results. But what I have experienced is that, when I have a clear goal, stay focused, take action, and trust that the Universe is willing to meet me halfway, something good comes of it – and usually in the nick of time.

My wish for you today: Stay positive and grateful. Work at it if need be. It’ll pay itself back way more than being negative ever will.

It’s Required Reading time here on the Career Resumes blog, and the book I want to flag this time around has come back on my radar twice in the last month, in two very different ways.

It’s also, by sheer coincidence, celebrating its 18th anniversary this month. Back in 1990 (has it been that long?!), Random House published Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! It came into our family courtesy of my wife’s Aunt Joyce, in honor of my wife’s 22nd birthday and impending college graduation. It now sits on our son’s bookshelf, and he pulled it out last week and asked for it as his bedtime reading.

The thing that amazes me most about this book is how it manages to be inspiring and realistic at the same time. Immediately after it talks about you, the reader, soaring to high heights, it follows with an “Except when you don’t, because sometimes, you won’t.” And after describing some of the challenges that happen to all of us, the text turns back to the triumphant.

For a book on Amazon to have a five-star average on 299 reviews is astounding. That’s how well loved Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is.

Now, you’re an executive, or manager, or professional. And maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “C’mon, you’re recommending a kids book to me?” Yes, I am. I was inspired by Beth Kennedy of Benatti Training and Development, who included the book in her list of tomes she endorses on her website.

She has 15 years of corporate training under her belt, including Fortune 50 (not 500, 50!) experience. She also specializes in leadership, executive, career, and life coaching, and she put Dr. Seuss right alongside What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Rites of Passage at $100,000 to $1 Million+, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

So, my recommendation? If you need an excuse, take your kids to the library and pick it up. The lessons apply at any age.

Happy holidays to you! It’s time for the “Required Reading” segment of the blog, and as luck would have it, our friends at Monster.com have a special treat for job seekers - it’s their “Career Book Gift Guide” for 2007.

They’ve managed to make this a highly diverse list - there’s something for businesswomen, English majors, executives, eggheads, philanthroppists, and aspiring entrepreneurs. They only gave nine recommendations (all of them 3.5 stars or above), but to make it a nice, even ten, I’ve added a bonus here, which involves a book featured presviously on this blog. It’s perhaps the most “directly” relevant to this website, though the rest of the list undoubtedly touches on the interests of readers like you, the manager or professional considering your next big career move. Enjoy!

Responsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don’t Act) Responsibly by Howard Gardner (Editor) (5 stars)

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss (4.5 stars)

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (4 stars)

Toyota Talent by Jeffrey Liker and David Meier (5 stars)

Off-ramps and On-ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success by Sylvia Ann Hewlett (5 stars)

Chindia: How China and India Are Revolutionizing Global Business by Peter Engardio (Editor) (3.5 stars)

What to Do with Your English or Communications Degree by The Princeton Review (no customer reviews)

Don’t Retire, REWIRE! by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners  (4.5 stars)

Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton (3.5 stars)

And our bonus 10th recommendation:

30-Day Job Promotion by Susan Britton Whitcomb (5 stars)

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today. Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®.

A lot of people I’ve met over the years have looked at job posting descriptions, requirements, and desired attributes and said confidently, “Yeah, that’s me. I fit the bill on all (or almost all) of the list.”

And to that I say, “Yes, you and a few dozen of your best friends, enemies, co-workers and complete strangers.”

Are you really a good fit for the position, though? How would you truly know for sure?

Well, you’re a manager, executive, or professional … chances are, you have to evaluate the performance of members of your team, people who report to you, however you care to describe the people you supervise.

And it’s likely you have a manager or executive above you who reviews your performance, right?

I’ve seen, completed, and been subject to corporate performance review documents before, and I can’t say I ever gleaned a lot of useful information from them – and certainly nothing I could’ve used to update my own resume or do anything with in relation to a job search.

The idea of doing your own personal evaluation is just part of the process detailed in Susan Britton Whitcomb’s new book, 30-Day Job Promotion: Build a Powerful Promotion Plan in a Month. And honestly, phrasing it as “doing a personal evaluation” doesn’t begin to do the book justice in terms of what it can help you understand about yourself, your contribution to your company, and how to move to the next level of success.

(By the way, while the main focus of the book is landing a promotion internally, the lessons it contains can easily be applied to a job search outside your current company.)

Susan gave me the chance to peek inside the first half of the book, and if I had to summarize my reaction in one word, that’d be “robust.” It’s as much a workbook as anything, and I’m astounded by the amount of valuable information she’s managed to pack in here, without also overwhelming at the same time. No mean feat.

The truth is, I could blog about this book twice a week for the rest of the year without breaking a sweat, considering the range of topics covered in the first six chapters alone. Instead, I’ll highly recommend you skip the middleman and pick up a copy for yourself.

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today. Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®.

Looking for a new weapon you can use in your executive job search arsenal? Look no further than blogging.

I’ve been reading Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, and it’s a great resource about blogging. And I think blogging poses a great opportunity for job seekers who want to demonstrate their passion and expertise in their field.

Some business folks have used regular websites as an online portfolio of their work. In the past, you’d see this most with creative-type folks, who had web, print, photographic, and textual work to display.

These same people can use blogs, now, too. But with the conversational, highly search-engine-friendly nature of blogs, experts in all areas of business have reason to get online and strut their stuff. This is especially true for:

• C-level executives
• Senior managers
• Mid-career professionals, and
• Anyone business person with lots of experience to draw from and share with an online audience

The nice thing about blogging software programs like WordPress is that you can also set up traditional website pages with ease - including portfolio pages and “About” pages where you could share your resume.

So why blog? Among its many merits, “a blog is a way to connect with other like-minded professionals,” as Lani Voivod puts it. That’s exactly what networking is, right? Which you do anyway as a good executive and business person, so why not extend it into the Internet?

The list of executives who blog is growing. General Motors’ Bob Lutz is one. The Dallas Maverick’s Mark Cuban is another. Give it some consideration. It’s another way you could stand out from the job seeking crowd.

For more information, check out Debbie Weil’s website, which has a specific “blogging for business” focus. Specifically, look at the right-hand navigation for “Corporate Blogging Resources” and “Top CEO and exec blogs.”

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today! Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com and The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®!

Are you one of those people with books piled on your nightstands and end tables? Or do you crack open a tome only when it’s absolutely necessary?

Either way, if you’re an executive looking to make a career transition - in your industry or completely outside of it - you’ll serve your cause well if you take the time to read up on the task ahead of you.

After all, the stats say it’ll take you at least a few months to secure a new position. If you can accelerate the process by curling up with one of these books before bed every night, that’d be worth your time and money investment many times over.

The Executive Job Search: A Comprehensive Handbook for Seasoned Professionals, by Orrin Wood - five-star rating on Amazon.com:

The groups hardest hit by the most recent wave of downsizings have been upper and middle management. People with 10 or more years on the job, much or all of it spent at one company, are particularly unprepared for the rigors of today’s job market. The Executive Job Search shows these professionals how to take charge of their searches and land the jobs of their dreams.

Executive Job Search Handbook, by Robert F. Wilson - 3 ½-star rating on Amazon.com:

Many executives today are vulnerable, having been recently downsized or fired, victims of the ongoing economic downtown. Or they hate their current jobs but feel they have no chance to move on to a more positive career. Executive Job Search Handbook will help management-level employees deal with the trauma of job loss, the threat or reality of down-sizing, and show how to create a plan to get the job they really want.

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today! Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®!

It’s “Required Reading” time here, and because it’s impossible to gauge what YOUR particular taste in books might be, I thought it’d be a nice idea to highlight three different booklists here for you.

One of them is Monster.com’s Top Ten Books for 2007. Because of Monster’s incredibly broad scope, you’ll find a highly diverse set of titles in their list. Not all of them will apply to you, but it’s likely you’ll find a diamond or two.

The second is a list of books written by Spencer Stuart consultants. As one of the world’s leading companies for executive search consulting, the brainpower they’ve amassed is astounding. And what’s better, they’re sharing it with the world through a very targeted series of tomes.

Finally, to mix together editorial discretion, bestselling numbers, and even a little pop culture power, I’ve added the Amazon.com Editor’s Picks for the Top 10 Business Books of 2006.

Now, there’s not a single resume writing book in here. Why? Probably because resume writing books aren’t often described as “page-turners.”

But think of your own bookshelf, and think of the titles on the bookshelves of any executive you’ve known, interviewed for or with. Imagine the books owned by any executive you might meet in a networking situation. These books are the building blocks of conversations, of reputations, of relationships.

The knowledge and language in these books represents the knowledge and language being used by some of the most forward-thinking business people out there right now. If even a smidgen of this starts filtering into your resumes and interviews, so much the better.

Monster.com:

• Take This Book to Work: How to Ask for (and Get) Money, Fulfillment and Advancement by Tory Johnson and Robyn Spizman
• Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children and Restart Your Career Even If You Haven’t Had a Job in Years by Monica Samuels and J.C. Conklin
• The Art of Connecting by Claire Raines and Lara Ewing
• Monster Careers: Networking by Jeff Taylor with Doug Hardy
• Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn
• Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future by Patricia Seybold
• What Color Is Your Parachute? for Teens by Richard Nelson Bolles and Carol Christen
• Portfolio Life: The New Path to Work, Purpose and Passion After 50 by David Corbett with Richard Higgins
• Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children by John Wood
• Odder Jobs: More Portraits of Unusual Occupations by Nancy Rica Schiff

Spencer Stuart:

• You’re in Charge - Now What? by Tom Neff and Jim Citrin
• Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have by Justin Menkes
• The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction by James M. Citrin, Richard Smith
• The Human Side of M&A: How CEOs Leverage the Most Important Asset in Deal Making by Dennis C. Carey and Dayton Ogden
• Lessons from the Top: The 50 Most Successful Business Leaders in America and What You Can Learn from Them by Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin
• Zoom: How 12 Exceptional Companies Are Navigating the Road to the Next Economy by James M. Citrin
• How to Run a Company: Lessons from Top Leaders of the CEO Academy Edited by Dennis C. Carey and Marie-Caroline von Weichs

Amazon.com:

• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson
• Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz
• Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters by Jerry Porras
• The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman
• Knowledge and the Wealth Of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh
• Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker
• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win by William C. Taylor
• Changing Minds: The Art And Science of Changing Our Own And Other People’s Minds (Leadership for the Common Good) by Howard Gardner
• Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today! Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®!

It’s that time of year again … Fortune Magazine has released its annual 100 Best Companies to Work For list, and Google is the new #1. What’s more, it’s their first appearance on the list at all - hot stuff!

How did Google and the other 99 companies get on this list? Here’s an excerpt from Fortune’s website:

More than 105,000 employees from 446 companies responded to a 57-question survey created by the Great Place to Work Institute in San Francisco. Two-thirds of a company’s score is based on the survey, which is sent to a minimum of 400 randomly selected employees from each company and asks about things such as attitudes toward management, job satisfaction, and camaraderie.

The remaining third of the score comes from our evaluation of each company’s responses to the institute’s Culture Audit, which includes detailed questions about demographic makeup, pay, and benefits programs, and open-ended questions about the company’s people-management philosophy, internal communications, opportunities, compensation practices, diversity programs, etc.

About 1,500 companies contacted us or were recruited to participate. (Any company that is at least seven years old with more than 1,000 U.S. employees is eligible.)

So, 1,500 could have participated, but only 446 did, and 100 were selected. Pretty good odds for getting on that final list!

But I digress. If you’re wondering what companies to approach for your next executive job opportunity, this is a great place to start. The extensive web feature includes rankings sorted by:

• Best benefits
• Job growth
• Pay
• Turnover
• States
• Bonus
• Women
• Size
• All stars
• Minorities

So whatever your job search priorities are, the Fortune list will give you plenty of food for thought.

And last, I’d like to take special note (and perhaps you should, too) of the “All Stars” category. These 18 companies have been on Fortune’s 100 Best list every single year for all ten years Fortune’s put out this list:

• A. G. Edwards
• Cisco Systems
• First Horizon National
• Four Seasons Hotels
• Goldman Sachs
• J. M. Smucker
• Marriott International
• Microsoft
• Nordstrom
• Publix Super Markets
• Recreational Equipment (REI)
• SAS Institute
• Synovus
• TDIndustries
• Timberland
• W. L. Gore & Associates
• Wegmans Food Markets
• Whole Foods Market

Congratulations to all. I have a feeling they’ll be seeing a flood of resumes soon. If yours is one of them, make sure it stands out from the crowd.

 
Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today! Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®!

As I mentioned in a previous post, we’re going to be highlighting new articles published on various websites specializing in resumes, networking, job searches, and executive career transitions on a regular basis.

Today is not one of those days, but not to worry - the next installment arrives next week. In the meantime (since you might want information right…this…instant), here’s a glimpse of three career websites you should have on your radar.

Spencer Stuart: Celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, “Spencer Stuart is the leading privately held, global executive search firm. We are the advisor of choice among top companies seeking guidance and counsel on senior leadership needs. We have unrivalled access to leading executives around the world.” (That’s from their website.)

Check out their Research & Insight and Your Career sections - if you’ve got time to spare, because you’ll definitely get drawn in.

NETSHARE: Must be the year for round-number anniversaries. 2006 is NETSHARE’s 15th year of “providing executives and professionals across all disciplines and industries, with quality $100K plus job listings, networking opportunities, and a community of peers for the exchange of strategic information related to job search, professional development and best practices.” (From their website.)

Check out their extensive catalog of free trade publications and downloads, which require naught but a little personal information in exchange.

TheLadders.com: They’re at the awkward age of 3 - put 2008 on your calendar to send them a 5th anniversary congratulatory card. TheLadders.com “is a privately held company offering premier online job search destinations and content for the $100k+ sector of the employment market.” (From their website.)

They have a Career Advice section worth a few clicks and then some. Registering with them will get you access to newsletters based on your industry/profession.

Of course, there are a lot more sites like these out there. Peter Newfield, the president of Career-Resumes.com®, has been the Resume and Career Expert for the three companies listed above, and if they’re working with Peter, you can bet they’re good companies for you to be working with, too.