Slashdot Mirror
The Laidoff Ninja
walmass writes "My first reaction on seeing the book was, 'Oh no, another book with "Ninja" in the title.' But in this case, the authors have established a case for that: they explained that the first ninjas were peasants who could not take the abuse from the samurai anymore and how they used everyday objects as weapons." Keep reading to see what walmass has to say.
The Laidoff Ninja
author
Craig Brown and Javed Ikbal
pages
278
publisher
CreateSpace
rating
9/10
reviewer
walmass
ISBN
1451558848
summary
Learn techniques that helped hundreds of people survive unexpected unemployment
The authors are co-founders of The Layoff Support Network, which seems to be a collective knowledge-sharing site for people looking for jobs, and the authors say that the book distills the knowledge from the website collected over the past 2 years. The authors also started off by stating that this is not just a book about finding a job; this is also a book about surviving until finding a job. I think The Laidoff Ninja (henceforth, "LON") fares well on these claims.
The pre-ramble is listed as section zero (0) — perhaps not surprising considering the two authors are techies: information security is their day job. Keep that in mind when we look at what they manage to extract out of LinkedIn.
One thing I liked about this book right out of the gate is what the authors (or their editor?) decided to call "Quick-shot" guides. Instead of traditional table of contents, they have provided a listing of topics they thought might be interesting to the following types of readers:
- Job seekers with work experience.
- Recent graduates with limited work experience.
- People who are feeling "cash strapped."
- People who are feeling overwhelmed and emotionally distraught.
Considering the last bullet, I was not really surprised to see a section titled "Ninja Psychiatry." The authors made it clear that they do not have any formal training in Psychiatry and are not licensed to practice psychology, psychiatry or any mental health related profession. They then proceeded to dispense advice on feelings of Loss, Depression, Anxiety, Financial Worries and how to deal with rejection after interviews. The section ends with an admonition to say no to drugs, and encouragement to say yes to humor.
There are lots of "Guerrilla this" or "Ninja that" related to layoffs and job hunting, but I don't think I have come across any other book that addresses the mental aspects of being unemployed.
The next section, "Survival" contains a chapter titled "Pull money out of your butt." Crude but effective, and while whole books have been written about making money on eBay, LON addresses this in a practical way.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised to see LON come out and suggest people should not commit crimes when they are desperate for money. I think this would be obvious to any rational person.
There are some tips about maximizing your available financial resources by delaying payment on some utility bills. While legally OK, I question the morality of providing such advice to readers.
Part 4, "Getting a Job" is where the book begins to read like a traditional book, but there are some surprises and hidden gems there. The sections begin with a job-applications toolkit that recommends free email services, OpenOffice and other technological free-bees that would be required for a job-searcher. These are items that the typical Slashdot reader find amusingly basic, but would certainly be useful for seekers who have been out of the hunt for a while.
Part 5, "Finding opportunities" focuses heavily on LinkedIn. It contains a useful exercise where a job-seekers "needs and wants" are sorted in a "value sort" to determine what type of job would be suitable. But in the next breath, the authors suggest folding away the values-list and taking a job (any job) that will pay the bills. I fail to understand this contradictory advice, and wish they would make up their mind.
The LinkedIn content is useful, but only to a new user of LinkedIn. Experienced LinkedIn users may miss the nuggets buried among these basic facts.
Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are also covered. The well-known but often ignored warnings about being careful with what one posts on one's social networking profiles are posted here.
There is a scathing chapter on recruiters. While certain good qualities of recruiters are mentioned, it seems the authors generally believe that recruiters are uncaring commission-hounds that just want to place a candidate and don't care about individuals. The brutal honesty was refreshing, and I'd be curious whether a majority of Slashdot readers would agree or disagree with the authors.
If you consider that stress and anxiety for a jobless person comes from being, well, jobless, then Part 6, "Preparing for the battle" is the most important section in the book. It covers the basics like resumes, cover letters and elevator pitches, etc.
The next chapter is "Reconnaissance" and this is where the hacker background of the authors finally shows up. They show, with examples, how to find the name and email address of recruiters and HR people at practically any company. The theory being, if you can directly contact the HR people at a company, your resume will not be lost in the 1000 other resumes that people send in. There is just one problem with this theory being put into practice. The book assumes, and does not make abundantly clear, that without building up your network first to some reasonable degree this isn't easy to do. But after I have spent a few hours inviting people and joining groups as the book suggested, I was indeed able to pull up the names of some recruiters at Apple and Google. That accomplished, based on the techniques suggested in the LON, I was able to figure out their email addresses and email them. I hope spammers and marketing droids will not read this book and find out these techniques.
For example, I did not know that one could search Facebook by email and zero in on any individual. It is also a violation of my social norms to approach strangers on Facebook about jobs, but the authors provided guidance and specific examples on how to do that, and also when to step back and look for alternatives.
But some of the techniques, such as querying "whois" records to find out the email address format used by a particular company may not be for the average non-technical Joe, and also seem to skirt ethical boundaries without exactly stepping over the line.
This chapter alone is probably worth the price of the book
The book is a good value at 278 pages and the authors have not done any "white space tricks" to make it seem bigger. A laid-off person would probably appreciate the price/performance of this book.
Overall, "The Laidoff Ninja" is an extremely valuable resource on dealing with the mental stress and anguish that may come from being laid off. It presents creative and novel ways of finding jobs by leveraging social media. The book is a tool in itself that can help the reader survive and prepare for the battle that is a job-search, and do it in a highly effective way.
This book is an excellent value if you need help dealing with the stress of unemployment, or want an edge in reaching hiring managers or recruiters at potential employers. This book is not meant to teach you how to write your resume or cover letter. It will work for novice and experienced candidates alike, although the LinkedIn tricks would definitely favor a more technical reader. I highly recommend it.
You can purchase The Laidoff Ninja from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The pre-ramble is listed as section zero (0) — perhaps not surprising considering the two authors are techies: information security is their day job. Keep that in mind when we look at what they manage to extract out of LinkedIn.
One thing I liked about this book right out of the gate is what the authors (or their editor?) decided to call "Quick-shot" guides. Instead of traditional table of contents, they have provided a listing of topics they thought might be interesting to the following types of readers:
- Job seekers with work experience.
- Recent graduates with limited work experience.
- People who are feeling "cash strapped."
- People who are feeling overwhelmed and emotionally distraught.
Considering the last bullet, I was not really surprised to see a section titled "Ninja Psychiatry." The authors made it clear that they do not have any formal training in Psychiatry and are not licensed to practice psychology, psychiatry or any mental health related profession. They then proceeded to dispense advice on feelings of Loss, Depression, Anxiety, Financial Worries and how to deal with rejection after interviews. The section ends with an admonition to say no to drugs, and encouragement to say yes to humor.
There are lots of "Guerrilla this" or "Ninja that" related to layoffs and job hunting, but I don't think I have come across any other book that addresses the mental aspects of being unemployed.
The next section, "Survival" contains a chapter titled "Pull money out of your butt." Crude but effective, and while whole books have been written about making money on eBay, LON addresses this in a practical way.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised to see LON come out and suggest people should not commit crimes when they are desperate for money. I think this would be obvious to any rational person.
There are some tips about maximizing your available financial resources by delaying payment on some utility bills. While legally OK, I question the morality of providing such advice to readers.
Part 4, "Getting a Job" is where the book begins to read like a traditional book, but there are some surprises and hidden gems there. The sections begin with a job-applications toolkit that recommends free email services, OpenOffice and other technological free-bees that would be required for a job-searcher. These are items that the typical Slashdot reader find amusingly basic, but would certainly be useful for seekers who have been out of the hunt for a while.
Part 5, "Finding opportunities" focuses heavily on LinkedIn. It contains a useful exercise where a job-seekers "needs and wants" are sorted in a "value sort" to determine what type of job would be suitable. But in the next breath, the authors suggest folding away the values-list and taking a job (any job) that will pay the bills. I fail to understand this contradictory advice, and wish they would make up their mind.
The LinkedIn content is useful, but only to a new user of LinkedIn. Experienced LinkedIn users may miss the nuggets buried among these basic facts.
Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are also covered. The well-known but often ignored warnings about being careful with what one posts on one's social networking profiles are posted here.
There is a scathing chapter on recruiters. While certain good qualities of recruiters are mentioned, it seems the authors generally believe that recruiters are uncaring commission-hounds that just want to place a candidate and don't care about individuals. The brutal honesty was refreshing, and I'd be curious whether a majority of Slashdot readers would agree or disagree with the authors.
If you consider that stress and anxiety for a jobless person comes from being, well, jobless, then Part 6, "Preparing for the battle" is the most important section in the book. It covers the basics like resumes, cover letters and elevator pitches, etc.
The next chapter is "Reconnaissance" and this is where the hacker background of the authors finally shows up. They show, with examples, how to find the name and email address of recruiters and HR people at practically any company. The theory being, if you can directly contact the HR people at a company, your resume will not be lost in the 1000 other resumes that people send in. There is just one problem with this theory being put into practice. The book assumes, and does not make abundantly clear, that without building up your network first to some reasonable degree this isn't easy to do. But after I have spent a few hours inviting people and joining groups as the book suggested, I was indeed able to pull up the names of some recruiters at Apple and Google. That accomplished, based on the techniques suggested in the LON, I was able to figure out their email addresses and email them. I hope spammers and marketing droids will not read this book and find out these techniques.
For example, I did not know that one could search Facebook by email and zero in on any individual. It is also a violation of my social norms to approach strangers on Facebook about jobs, but the authors provided guidance and specific examples on how to do that, and also when to step back and look for alternatives.
But some of the techniques, such as querying "whois" records to find out the email address format used by a particular company may not be for the average non-technical Joe, and also seem to skirt ethical boundaries without exactly stepping over the line.
This chapter alone is probably worth the price of the book
The book is a good value at 278 pages and the authors have not done any "white space tricks" to make it seem bigger. A laid-off person would probably appreciate the price/performance of this book.
Overall, "The Laidoff Ninja" is an extremely valuable resource on dealing with the mental stress and anguish that may come from being laid off. It presents creative and novel ways of finding jobs by leveraging social media. The book is a tool in itself that can help the reader survive and prepare for the battle that is a job-search, and do it in a highly effective way.
This book is an excellent value if you need help dealing with the stress of unemployment, or want an edge in reaching hiring managers or recruiters at potential employers. This book is not meant to teach you how to write your resume or cover letter. It will work for novice and experienced candidates alike, although the LinkedIn tricks would definitely favor a more technical reader. I highly recommend it.
You can purchase The Laidoff Ninja from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I was going to try and write a funny post here about taking revenge against your coworkers, but the Onion did such a better job:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/disgruntled-ninja-silently-kills-12-coworkers,1575/
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Yup, I spent some time back in mid-to late 2001 laid off. Sending out hundreds of resumes and follow ups every day without any responses (other than canned messages, or companies that were interested, but weren't willing to hire me because they knew when the economy picked back up I'd be gone) gets really disheartening.
Luckily for me, I'd planned and prepared for being laid off, and honestly, got lucky that I got a job when I did. A lot of people on here state that you should have 6 months of "rainy day" money saved up for your living expenses. I agree with this 100%...if not for the money I'd set aside, I'd have been homeless most likely.
That's a scary thought, how quickly you could conceivably go from productive member of society to homeless.
Sent from your iPad.
If you were going to post "Oh my god another review that's a 9/10... why don't they use a scale that doesn't give every single book a 7 or higher" boy have I got good news for you! I am in the process of writing a review of the 2009 Danielle Steele novel "Matters Of The Heart". I don't want to spoil the review (or the book) but I will say that I am prepared to give it a 4/10 for it's lack of detail and an unconvincing plot.
people should not commit crimes when they are desperate for money. I think this would be obvious to any rational person.
Um...no. Starvation drives people to the perfectly-rational extremes of stealing food (or stealing the means of obtaining food). Then, when they get caught, they get sent to jail, where they are provided with food, clothing, and shelter, all at the taxpayer's expense.
It is a symptom of severe economic decay when crime becomes a rational choice. However, that does not change the fact that a point can be reached when crime is, in fact, the most rational option.
It said the first ninjas were peasants, not all of them. Do you have an alternative history of their origins you would like to present?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised to see LON come out and suggest people should not commit crimes when they are desperate for money. I think this would be obvious to any rational person.
Unfortunately, there are people that do become irrational when they lose their source of income. I have had several ex-coworkers call and ask for monetary assistance. There was one that pulled a knife on me when I told him I couldn't help as my wife had lost her job the previous week.
It's never easy to be laid off. It took me being laid off of several jobs to realize that the company isn't angry at you, it's just that the PHBs want to save their own asses by cutting staff. However, I've seen many otherwise rational people become irrational when they are told that they're being laid off. I've seen adults beg, cry, plead and throw temper tantrums to keep their jobs. It's at times like these to remind them to act like adults and it's not the end of the world.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Frankly, I was a bit surprised to see LON come out and suggest people should not commit crimes when they are desperate for money. I think this would be obvious to any rational person.
Unless of course, you're laid off form the banking industry, in which case, you can start a hedge fund. After all, if you're going to commit a crime, start with the legal ones.
There are some tips about maximizing your available financial resources by delaying payment on some utility bills. While legally OK, I question the morality of providing such advice to readers.
Good lord, aren't we all just a bit past that sort of sanctimonious BS? The banks and credit card companies would dig up sell our dead grandmothers for hamburger seasoning if it helped their quarterly numbers a bit. Do you think we really owe them *any* moral consideration?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Treat the interview the same way you would treat a technical discussion among coworkers: keep it light and relaxed, but make sure you know what you're talking about. It's often difficult to be relaxed in an interview, especially if you're currently unemployed and it's the first interview you've had in months. However, being a nervous wreck who can't answer any questions without stammering will sink you faster than anything, even if you are technically competent. Try to tell yourself that, although you might want this particular job, not getting it isn't the end of the world. There will always be other opportunities. It may be hard to convince yourself of that, but unless you're actually living in your car and you just sold your left shoe for a loaf of bread, it's probably more true than you realize.
Interviewers, especially in the technical interview, are looking for people they want to work with. This means they want people who are technically competent, but more importantly people who they can get along with. The better you are at being the kind of person most people (at least most people in your field) can get along with, the better off you'll be.
There is a scathing chapter on recruiters. While certain good qualities of recruiters are mentioned, it seems the authors generally believe that recruiters are uncaring commission-hounds that just want to place a candidate and don't care about individuals. The brutal honesty was refreshing, and I'd be curious whether a majority of Slashdot readers would agree or disagree with the authors.
I found recruiters to be entirely self-serving. Last year when I was looking for a job, the ones I dealt with seemed to have a strict "two and out" policy: they present you to two companies MAX, and if those interviews don't go well, it'll be months if you ever hear from them again - i.e. you got dropped, they stopped trying to market you. One recruiter totally shoehorned me into an interview for a job I had no background for. Another set an interview up and the phone screen didn't go well. In both cases, I didn't hear from those recruiters again.
Yet another tried to convince me to move for an opportunity (I balked due to various expenses that weren't covered, plus the loss on selling my home) and the next interview they lined up was a 2 month scripting contract at a game company, and after that... never heard from them again. The way they handled the first job (that required the move) was totally fishy - they wanted me to agree that I'd accept the job and move IF there was a job offer, while I pushed back I can't pre-accept what doesn't exist especially without even meeting or talking to the group first. They wouldn't even set the interview up so I had more info for the decision. I figure there must have been something weird about their finder's fee and what sequence of steps or how far along things were before payments were exchanged or refunds made, etc. I think they were afraid if the company and I contacted each other (i.e. I interviewed) without an agreement in place for the recruiter, the company would somehow be able to duck their fee.
My name is Craig Brown and I am one of the book's authors. First, thank you all for discussing our book! I'd like to address some of the comments that were left about some of the things I have said (both in the book and on The Layoff Support Network". Crime: First, I clearly say don't do it. But don't think I haven't spoken with at least a dozen guys that had considered it. You can argue "right and wrong" all you want, but I would be willing to bet that the discussion would be completely different if you were truly desperate. Your level of desperation would depend on your situation. If you are a young single guy, your situation may only be effecting your own life. But if you have kids, the prospect of having your kids become homeless (or suffering in any way) is unbearable. Believe me, I know what I am talking about (see what I wrote on the site). What about healthcare? If you miss one Cobra payment, you lose it. For me, it was over $1,000 per month. What if you have a sick kid? My point is that if you are a rational person in a bad situation you may consider doing something that you normally would consider irrational. I know that we have helped people by allowing them to run through a scenario and realize it would not be beneficial to anyone in the long run.
My name is Craig Brown and I am one of the book's authors. I admit outright that I am biased against recruiters. In my 25+ years of work in high tech, I have never been placed by a recruiter. I have met with hundreds of them and have heard countless stories about questionably ethical behavior by a recruiter. After writing the chapter, I read it over and it was pretty obvious that my experiences had not been positive. So, I turned to Javed (my co-author) to wrote a "counter point" to my "point". He couldn't do it. We have both had similar experiences with recruiters. I attended a job hunting Meetup last week. About half the attendees were recruiters. They all seemed nice and vehemently denied that they would ever do anything like the examples I cite in the book. Recruiters are just like us, they are trying to scratch out a living. The problem I have with recruiters is that we work with them when we are desperate and at our weakest point. We believe the things they say because we WANT to believe them. I don't fault recruiters for aggressively trying to succeed. I fault them for out-right lying. A recruiter told me that he brings people in even if they clearly are not a good match for the position they think they are applying. He said that it works out good for them because if another position comes along, he can suggest them for it. No, Thank You! You are not doing me any favors posing as my salvation and wasting my time.