How to Get Any Job With Any Major: Career Launch & Re-launch for Everyone Under 30 or (How to Avoid Living in Your Parent's Basement)

By Donald Asher

Book Overview

Donald Asher, America's career guru, believes that success comes from an alignment of passion and preparation. First tip: Your college major has very little to do with your job options. In fact, you can get to virtually any life-goal destination from virtually any starting point. Stephen Colbert was a philosophy major. Chad Hurley, billionaire founder of YouTube, was an art major. And while we're at it, Albert Einstein was a high-school drop-out. Still think your college major will determine your life path? Think again.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB is the first book that definitively answers the following questions, and many more:

- What is "life launch" and how is it different from getting a job?

- Why do employers hire people like you?

- Which skills do employers value most? (They're not what you think!)

- How do non-tech people get hired and thrive in tech companies?

- How do you set yourself up to get promoted?

- How do you prove you have skills that don't show up on your transcripts?

- How do you get experience if you can't get a job, or have the "wrong" major?

- How can you get famous and influential people to help you?

- How do you hit restart if you get stuck in a dead-end job out of college?

- What should you do if you're a graduate and living in your parents' basement?

- What should you do if you're a junior to make sure you don't end up in that basement?

Whether you're twenty and still in college or twenty-nine and still wondering how to start your life, HOW TO GET ANY JOB offers the most creative and innovative thinking on life launch to date. It is used by college career centers nationwide.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158008947X
• ISBN13: 9781580089470
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Take the edge off an over-competitive place

I read this book after I got out of college -I have a Masters/Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science, but I did not have a job because I didn't have all the ridiculously stringent requirements set forth by most institutions I applied to. So, I needed to make money quickly and get on my feet to pay bills and keep following my passions in environmental science and biodiversity conservation. The book is well organized, helpful, hopeful, and encouraging to the most die-hard fatalist (my mother) that at 45, she could not start a new career because she didn't think she had the skills. It makes you look at all your personal assets, non-monetary materials and skills you have to offer, and how many people you really know that can help you get to where you want to go. The book gives clear and effective exercises for defining your passions, what you want out of life, and how to make different jobs work to fulfill your personal needs, even if it may not be in the original field you thought it would be.

Failure to launch?

After I stopped laughing/sobbing because this title is much too applicable than chance should allow, I started reading what has become a very great book! This book won't find a job for you, but it will give you a tremendous amount of help in finding a career. From the onset, you will be warned that this is not a book to be passively absorbed. This book challenges you to analyze your beliefs, your values, and your skills; which is then combined with dozens of other soul searching exercises aimed at getting recent graduates or soon to be grads going in the best suited direction. This amazing resource is well researched and careful not to be pushy or authoritative in in approach, it merely guides the reader through their own soul-searching process. This one of the most practical and applicable books that any college graduate, basement bound or not, can read!

Comprehensive, Extremely Practical Book

Donald Asher is brilliant, and that's all there is to it! This book, especially, is a valuable resource for any liberal arts major and for any career changer at any age. The sheer volume of useful information is amazing, given the book's moderate size. Every pertinent topic is included, such as choosing careers that would be good fits to you, doing informational job research, strategies for finding the job you want (things EVERYONE should know, but no one tells you!), advice on resumes, cover letters, thank you letters, interviews, etc. This book literally includes everything you need to know, in just the right amount of detail, and all of it is very practical and immediately useful - you won't be disappointed!

great advice!

I bought this book based on the title since my children have liberal arts majors. After reading it I bought copies for both my children (so I could keep my copy!) and have highly recommended it to my friends. Mr Asher has many years experience counseling college students on career choice and career launch. "Most college students want a job when what they should really want is career development. What is career development? Career development is conducting a process of self-discovery and then matching what is discovered with the career marketplace." p 3 The book describes the process of selecting careers to research, how to research them, and then how to look for opportunities in those areaa. What I particularly liked is that Mr Asher gives very detailed instructions on what to do, how to do it, and why to do it. For example, here is how to develop a list of companies to call, here is how to make contact and get interviews, and here is the number of interviews you need per week to get "traction" and land a job within 6 months. While this book is specifically aimed at college grads it would be very useful for anyone looking for a new job. I also highly recommend "The Play of Your Life: Your Program for Finding the Career of Your Dreams - And a Step-by-step Guide to Making It a Reality" by Colleen Sabatino. It is geared toward workers with experience who want to change jobs but the assessments are very useful for first-time job hunters. It has more specific advice on resumes and cover letters. Another book I highly recommend is "They Don't Teach Corporate in College: A Twenty-Something's Guide to the Business World" by Alexandra Levit. The business world functions very differently from college and that can be a tough transition for students. Written by a 28-year-old who figured it out successfully, it's a great introduction for students entering the work world.