This review was originally published on forewordreviews.com.
The 5-Day Job Search is a career guide that draws on personal experience to deliver advice for succeeding in interviews and working toward professional success.
Leading by example, Annie Margarita Yang’s career guide The 5-Day Job Search is about forging a successful, satisfying career.
Encouraging a strong work ethic alongside a willingness to follow instructions, the book opens with personal examples of overcoming obstacles to achieve success: Yang faced prejudice and naysayers and worked a series of minimum-wage jobs, including a stint as a model in a foot-fetish establishment. But these difficult work experiences are also mined for lessons, and they are credited with contributing to Yang’s work ethic. Herein, there are positives to be taken even from abysmal work situations.
Yang draws on her own experiences throughout to suggest step-by-step techniques and strategies for others to take toward personal and professional success. The book’s advice includes making personal branding a priority, controlling personal information on the internet, and making memorable impressions at interviews. For the interviews themselves, it suggests methods for asking questions back, avoiding salary questions, and recognizing the signs of a toxic workplace. And, once jobs are secured, there’s advice for standing out as a leader without provoking the ire of one’s coworkers. The book’s overarching work is toward nurturing an “ownership mindset”—demonstrating leadership ability even without having a leader’s title.
The book distinguishes itself by taking a holistic approach to career guidance. Indeed, there’s a spiritual aspect to its work: it introduces the mind-control techniques of the Monroe Institute in the course of its guidance. It also discusses affirmations, arguing that using phrases like “I am learning to be” rather than “I am” are effective. These deviations from its more familiar work result in surprises.
Spelling errors, awkward transitions, and missing and extra words impede the book’s delivery, though, as does an early statement undercutting the book’s cover promises (“Since I no longer plan to work another job, I’m unable to share more stories of landing a job offer in five days”). The inclusion of a sales letter for Yang’s life coach is too personal and sits at odds with the book’s more general advice. Still, in the course of its pages, the book does an able job of imparting the idea that personal success is possible, no matter what one’s past looks like.
The 5-Day Job Search is a career guide that draws on personal experience to deliver advice for succeeding in interviews and working toward professional success.
Reviewed by Kristine Morris