The New Job Security, Revised

November 11, 2002
Early on in this snappy self-help career-development guide, Lassiter, a national career management consultant for more than 30 years, tells the cautionary tale of Michael, an ambitious 26-year-old investment banker enrolled in a top-tier MBA program. Michael announces he wants "to be a consultant with a professional services consulting firm... to design strategy for Fortune 500 companies, become a partner, and reap the rewards." Unfortunately, Michael is far less articulate when asked what he has to offer prospective employers. "There were five seconds of dead air," Lassiter reports, wryly adding, "that's a long time for an aspiring consultant." The book's overriding theme: ask not what your company can do for you but what you can do for your company. It favors practice over theory, covering résumé preparation, career networking, interview strategies, salary negotiation and when and if it's time to leave a job. Lassiter's tone is relentlessly upbeat, which will encourage some readers while annoying others. For example, in a section addressing interview jitters, Lassiter says, "A meeting at a company is nothing more than a very small cocktail party. If you think of these people you're meeting as potential interesting people or new friends, it puts you in control." Readers with sales careers may be doing this already, but folks in engineering may be unsure how to use this approach. The focus is on corporate careers, but there's good advice here for people in government jobs and nonprofits as well.