Firing Back: Power Strategies for Cutting the Best Deal When You're about to Lose Your Job

by Jodie-Beth Galos and Sandy McIntosh

Turn the tables on termination Firing Back gives you the ammunition you need to take charge and secure the best possible severance package. You'll find powerful, effective strategies for negotiation, as well as clear guidelines for creating the best conditions for your financial future. You'll also find scores of illuminating real-life stories --some tough, some hilarious --from people who've been there and survived. Here's what you need to know about:...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471180319
• ISBN13: 9780471180319
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant, well-organized, thorough, helpful and humorous treatise on survival

FIRING BACK is extraordinarily well-written and is a great development tool even if your job is not in jeopardy. It helps you keep good records, to know what could be problematic for your employer and what could potentially be problematic for you. It gives you great ideas about how to avoid defaming the character of another (even unintentionally), and why it's important to keep notes so that you can negotiate without excessive emotion. It also points out that a separation agreement isn't one sided (p. 3), and if you're leaving your job, you have tools at your disposal to negotiate even when it's a mutual decision. This gives practical, real-life examples to help you calculate your next step on your career path, too. It has a great Q & A section. Even though Galos is an attorney, she and her co-author do not automatically steer you toward the legal profession. In fact, they show examples where that might poison the negotiations and how to decide whether or not legal action is really necessary. The authors teach you strategies for dealing with unpleasant things in a classy manner. I was impressed with how they acknowledged that a desire for revenge was valid but that it is more important to keep acrimony out of negotiations.

This book is really helpful

I really liked this book primarily because it addresses my specific situation. My employer promised us separation pay instead of severance pay. The book explained separation pay vs severance pay very well. I can't believe that businesses can do this to people and get away with it. I know where I stand and that I am not going to get any separation pay because the company is not legally obligated to pay me anything. In my case they are eliminating my position and sending my job to the Phillipines. Separation pay is a way for companies to promise you a lump sum payment and not pay you anything.

Strong Medicine for Victims of Firing

Jodie-Beth Galos and Sandy McIntosh have written an extremely useful book for those who have been unjustly fired or "downsized." The authors provide a comprehensive plan for deciding what the terminated (or soon to be terminated) employee wishes to accomplish, what s/he can, in fact, accomplish, how, precisely, to enter into negotiations and pursue and monitor each phase of the process, how to reach a satisfactory settlement, and, finally, how to manage money while out of work. This clearly and elegantly written book features a balance of realistic stories about firing and negotiation processes and appropriately technical and involved legal and financial information.

Puts you in the driver's seat when they're driving you out

This book takes the reader from a position of helplessness in the firing process to that of equals negotiating the best transition out of a work situation. While nothing will ever make the process of losing your job pleasant, this book covers all of the ins and outs of making sure that you get the best exit deal that you can, and that you don't fall apart in the time between jobs. Covering the time from before you lose your job (Yes, Virginia, there may be signs that it is coming) through the process of negotiating your exit, and what to do after it's all over, this book gives a solid, sensible approach to handling yourself in the one crisis few of us anticipate. This book tells you what to do, and more importantly, what not to do when you are being fired. Most people don't think about being fired until it's all over. Get the book and be prepared. It can happen to you.

"Firing Back" is a must for a financial planner's library.

When a client faces a daunting task of pulling his life together after being fired, usually the last thing he wants to do is "deal" with the ex-employer. This book effeciently steps the employee through the maze of beaurocratic nightmares that must be addressed. --Pam Pearson, pearsonfin@aol.com