Marketing your freelancing business is important. I’ve been writing posts that stress the importance of marketing for over five years now. Perhaps that’s why I was given the chance to review Dan Schawbel’s new book, Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success.
Dan is also the author of Me 2.0 and the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm.
Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book, but was not paid to write this post. I am not an affiliate for either of Dan’s books.
Who Is the Book For?
The intended audience for this book is Generation Y. It’s specifically directed to recent college graduates and other professionals in their twenties and early thirties.
Generation Y is just entering the workforce and they need some guidance. This book aspires to provide it.
A Brief Overview of What’s Inside
This book does a good job of describing workplace changes and the process of starting a career in a highly competitive market. Of course, it’s impossible to adequately cover every topic discussed in the book. In this section, I’ll just talk about a few areas that I found to be most interesting (by topic, not chapter):
- Getting Hired. Dan makes some solid observations regarding how companies now hire. I think most of these observations (your job is temporary, you need to keep updating your skills, your reputation is key, and so on) are quite sound and more important than ever.
- Predictions. The book also goes on to make some predictions about the future of work–some of which seem a little bit idealistic (work will become more of a game, the younger generation will improve Corporate America’s reputation, and so on). It’s good to be idealistic when you are starting out. But I, for one, am not holding my breath waiting for them to come true.
- Learning New Things. Interspersed with the observations and predictions is some practical advice. Since I’m a big proponent of lifelong learning, I especially liked his advice on the various methods for finding training. Most professionals, regardless of their generation, would benefit by looking into this.
- Soft Skills. The book also contains a good discussion of and assessment tool for soft skills. (You know, those skills you don’t learn in school.)
- Social Media Advice. His social media advice seems solid and there are practical steps you can take to improve your networking skills and online reputation. Those steps include links to specific tools and websites that you may want to use.
- Relationship Advice. The one area that I felt was a little bit weak was the section on developing relationships with different generations in the workplace. While I strongly believe that personal relationships are important in the workplace, this section is filled with demographic information that is more suited to marketing a product. If you really want to form cross-generational relationships in the workplace, my advice get to know your co-workers as individuals and not as representatives of a particular generation.
Bottom Line
All-in-all, Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success is an interesting book with some solid advice.
The intended audience, those who are just starting their careers, will benefit the most from this book. It answers many questions that younger professionals may have. Of course, other generations may read the book and get some insights, especially about the way the workplace has changed in the past decade.
Freelance writers and other freelancers may also want to read the book to better understand their corporate clients.
Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your opinion on it. Share your thoughts in the comments.
