Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THE BRAZEN CAREERIST
The New Rules for Success
by Penelope Trunk
Warner Business Books
Publication date: May 25, 2007
$22.99 / Hardcover / 224 pages
ISBN: 0-446-57864-9
CONTACT: Rob Nissen
973-410-1234 / rob.nissen@hbgusa.com
BRAZEN CAREERIST
The New Rules for Success
by Penelope Trunk
It’s okay to move back in with your parents after college. And it’s okay to work at a string of menial jobs or even take off to Asia for a few months. Why? Because eventually these seeming detours will lead not only to a great career but a great life as well. That’s the reassuring advice offered by career columnist Penelope Trunk in BRAZEN CAREERIST: The New Rules for Success (Warner Business Books; Hardcover; May 25, 2007; $22.99) an indispensable and bold new guide to the workplace for members of Generations X and Y.
This is not your parents’ career guidebook. The advice is different because the American Dream is different, Trunk argues. Today, that dream is less about entering at the bottom and climbing the ladder; it’s more about finding fulfilling work and having enough time for family and personal activities. Today’s twenty and thirty-somethings have less interest in hierarchy, promotions, and raises and more concern about flexibility and control over their own lives. These new values affect what young workers will do for a living, whom they’ll work for, and even whom they’ll marry.
Reflecting the new rules for a new generation, BRAZEN CAREERIST includes 45 short and easy-to-read chapters including:
• Be a Sponge
• When Writing Your Resume, Don’t Be Too Honest
• Assume the Job Description Was Wrong
• Differentiate Yourself by Starting at the Wall
• A Long List of Ways to Dodge Long Hours
These decidedly are not messages received by Boomers when they were young adults! Part One of the book covers what Trunk calls the first stages of a 21st century career: being lost, figuring out the type of career that’s right for you, and marketing yourself to get the job you want. She explains how to avoid the “quarter-life” (versus midlife) crisis, which can hit Generations X and Y around the late 20s—when they begin to panic about not having established a career. Trunk encourages young adults to take plenty of time for self-exploration including traveling, experimenting, and even flailing a bit to find out what you really want in work and in life. But when it’s time to get a job, she urges a clear-cut, disciplined approach.
BRAZEN CAREERIST also explains how to get what you want from your boss and your workplace. There’s no getting around office politics, Trunk says, but there are ways to handle it that speak to the core values of Generations X and Y. She explains how to work successfully with all kinds of people in ways that reject manipulation and instead rely on genuinely understanding people and accommodating them. Trunk’s advice covers the gamut of workplace experience, including frank talk about sex discrimination and harassment. She discusses her own experience of harassment, why bringing a lawsuit ultimately works against the victim, and how to turn discrimination and victimization into career advantages.
Trunk also identifies technology as a critical gap between younger people who IM in their sleep and older generations who scoff at technology’s influence. As Trunk says, people who can “bridge that gap will stand out in a multigenerational office.”
While BRAZEN CAREERIST is presented as an easy-to-read book of advice, the larger message is not to be missed by educators, employers, and those parents who find their grown-up kids back home living in their old rooms. Members of Generations X and Y won’t be rushed into a career path. Instead, these young workers will go from job to job, with time off for travel and education, until they discover the work that will satisfy them. They’ll work hard, but what they want in work will need to leave plenty of time for what they want in life.
BRAZEN CAREERIST is an essential guide for young adults in the throes of making decisions about their lives and careers and to understanding how today’s young workers impact the fabric of the workplace and society. As Trunk says, “The new American Dream is about fulfillment, which is a murky, slippery goal, but you will know it when you feel it.”
About the Author
Penelope Trunk is a software executive turned career advice columnist. She writes The Climb column for the Boston Globe and the Brazen Careerist column, which has run in more than 100 publications around the world and on websites including AOL and USATODAY.com. She also writes frequently for Forbes.com and The Wall Street Journal’s Careerjournal.com.