50 Ways to Get a Job

February 12, 2018
Aujla, CEO of the recruiting firm Catalog, which works with nonprofits and startups, presents a practical guide for young people looking for their first—or their first paid—job. The book aims to teach job seekers how to understand their own skills and needs, and thereby improve their chances of finding suitable employment. Good jobs, Aujla advises optimistically, will feel natural and rejuvenating; bad jobs will turn a hapless employee into a stressed-out clock-puncher. So how to find the right one? Chock-full of exercises, this well-laid-out collection of concrete advice will help young readers feel better equipped to define their dream jobs, research potential employers, prep for big interviews, network effectively, and overcome obstacles when they inevitably get mired down. Clearly talking to millennials, Aujla urges a high-confidence approach which may feel foreign to the anxious parents dispensing this book as a graduation gift to their college seniors, but which will be endlessly helpful to the graduates themselves. Aujla has parlayed his experience into an excellent job hunter’s 101 for the young and ambitious—or just unemployed.

March 15, 2018

At times it seems there are as many job search books as there are job seekers. Aujla, a recruiter and non-profit executive director, contributes to the plenitude with this work. His subtitular "unconventional" approach involves reframing one's thinking about work, making changes to one's environment and lifestyle, and undertaking unhurried and in-depth exercises aimed at finding meaning in one's next job, rather than merely procuring employment. A potpourri of philosophical influences are scattered throughout, including Buddhist thought, feng shui, mindfulness, and self-help philosophies such as "finding your center of gravity" and "finding a new way of being." VERDICT Based on interviews with thousands of career counselors, self-help gurus, recruiters, and career changers, the author's many recommendations and exercises will undoubtedly resonate with job seekers and career changers receptive to the notion that the quest for nonlinear careers requires unconventional strategies.--Alan Farber, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018
This brief paperback draws from Aujla's (Making Good, 2012) extensive experience as the CEO of a recruiting firm that provides talent and strategy to innovative companies like BMW and Change.org. Reminiscent of the fresh thinking in What Color Is Your Parachute? (2018), the long-standing, annually updated, benchmark for an effective career guide, the focus here is on the job seeker as an individual exploring a wide range of occupations. It is as much a book on how to live as how to find work. It begins with the truism that job seeking today often does not follow a straight line. Instead, the author helps the reader to discover his or her unique path by making a list of different milestones, relationships, people, jobs, or experiences in life and connecting them chronologically. He then guides the reader with fun and practical exercises into the mechanics of job seeking, such as identifying likely work paths, networking, engaging your friends, applying, and interviewing. Patrons in job transition in public and academic libraries as well as new job seekers will find this quick read useful.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)