Author: Paul Freiberger

You should begin reading When Can You Start? now. 

The last advice most people received about preparing for a job hunt came curing a crisis situation right after they were fired, laid off, or displaced by company closure. The last how to hunt for a job book I read was in 2007, so I did not expect that much had changed in six years. When I read When Can You Start?, I certainly did not expect to close the book in shock.

Much has changed. Resumes are being used less often, and so much of the discussion about prospecting for jobs revolves around those who are starting out fresh from college, neophytes in the netherworld of beehive corporate towers. Navigating among the denizens haunting both sides of glass-walled executive offices until you rise from student to star in a brand new career preoccupies millions of fresh college graduates each year. Yet, there are even more diverse employment explorers out there: those over age 50, the disabled, foreign-born men and women, and those for who race, religion, sexual orientation, family status, marital status, or criminal history laden them with a so-called black mark before they walk in to an interview. All these applicants jockey with fresh college graduates for each position, and only those who are prepared win the prize. 

Paul Freiberger, President of Shimmering Resumes, a resume-writing, interview preparation, and career counseling service, has compiled the most up-to-date primer for position prospecting on the market. His credentials are impressive enough to bowl over any Human Resources Director. He has won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, co-authored the best-selling Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer (McGraw-Hill, 1984, rev. 2000), which was translated into many languages and later made into the Pirates of Silicon Valley movie. He has produced reports for National Public Radio programs, written columns for the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Examiner, and he directed communications for McKinsey & Company, the most respected global management consulting firm. His work has been widely praised.

This new book will find a grand reception during these tough economic times. Finding a good job where you will be paid fairly and be happy may be proving to be an elusive dream for many, so no time has ever loomed riper for a book such as When Can You Start? If you want to get on a fast track to success, get this book now and take his teachings to task immediately. The small cost of the paperback may be the best investment you ever make.    

Advice the author covers that will be of great importance to everyone include:

• How to master the informational interview: preparing a list of questions you should ask prospective employers and follow up in a timely and correct manner. 

• New rules for the phone interview: how to prepare for a group interview, how to handle an unexpected ambush interview, and projecting the right image with nothing but sound. 

• Answering the One Big Question Interviewers Always Ask: Tell me about yourself. 

• How to respond to the Trite But Ever-present Tell me about your weaknesses.  

• How to succeed in a panel interview: how preparation and research can make or break you. 

• How to nicely deal with those boors who insist on asking questions that are illegal, such as your race, religion, age, place of birth, and other personal private matters that are none of their business.  

• The right way to reply to those time-honored Trick Questions that give the interview insight they will apply to their hidden agendas.  

If you have interviewed for a job during the last five years, you have noticed that some questions come up repeatedly. Answering with aplomb forces you to give them an entertaining tap dance while deftly deploying enough slight of hand to seem to answer the right way, a neat trick if you can pull the smoke screen in front of them fast enough so they fail to see the magic in the manipulation. Here is where this book comes in handy: the author delves into each of these overly used questions and explains several ways you can practice giving answers that seem off the cuff when they are really well rehearsed. 

The book winds up with chapters on how to negotiate a salary and how to accent the positive while eliminating the negative if you are a veteran, have an accent, suffer from a disability, have jumped from job to job, been fired, stayed too long at a job, or are haunted by the horrible shame of AGE.

The author shares with readers much of what he has learned from jobs cooking burgers and washing dishes to positions reporting on business, distilling years of experience to equip job hunters with the knowledge and the tools to help avoid interview mistakes. Study When Can You Start? and ace the job interview and win the job you want most.