Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass A Survival Guide for the Recently Unemployed
Job hunting is a different ballgame when you’re holding a pink slip instead of a brand-new college diploma. In Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass, Michael B. Laskoff—a Harvard M.B.A. who has flown high and flamed out more than once—offers essential advice for those of us who have recently been laid off, restructured, or plain ol’ fired. A tell-it-like-it-is bible of “reemployment,” it tackles both the practical and the emotional issues of job loss.
Because he’s not an academic, a recruiter, or a human resources professional, Laskoff has no ax to grind, no philosophy to peddle, and no corporate ideology to support. He’s been through the job-loss/job-search drill more than once, and since he consistently has gone on to do better in terms of compensation, responsibility, and job satisfaction, he’s the perfect ex-employee to share with you some hard-won wisdom, such as:
•How long to wait before launching yourself into the job arena
•How to channel anger, fear, and revenge fantasies into useful job-search tactics
•How to snag recommendations (and compensation) from ex-bosses
•How to determine your interviewers’ hiring problems and then present yourself as the solution
Whether you’re concerned about the emotional issues of unemployment (from denial and depression to anger and acceptance) or are looking for invaluable nuts-and-bolts advice (what to say about your ex-employer in an interview, how to handle financial issues, and what on earth you should do with all that free time between jobs), Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass is a straight-up, no-chaser survival guide for picking yourself up, getting back out there again, and winding up with a job that’s better than the one you lost.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Good book with a bad title
I wanted to recommend this book to my ezine list, but had to hold back. The title would have gotten us tossed off every ISP on the planet. It’s misleading anyway. Laskoff is down-to-earth and realistic but not at all profane or over the top.
The author’s own job loss stories are laugh-aloud funny. For the most part, his advice is right-on. I especially like the sections on getting a nonprofessional life outside your career – something I’ve been advising my own career change clients all along.
Other great sections include “Things to do before the resume,” which has a realistic discussion of finances. And I liked the interview section, especially the section on interviews that were doomed from the start. The networking advice is sound and complete: nothing new and some folks will have more trouble than others, often due to circumstances beyond their control.
I was a little concerned about Laskoff’s advice to remove short-length jobs, as this strategy occasionally backfires.
A more serious omission: Laskoff doesn’t help readers choose among the many resources now available for help. And personally I was a little turned off by the “confession” exercise and confused by the term “self-interview.”
These days a savvy job-hunter needs to know how to choose a career coach, consultant or counselor, which means reading between the lines on a website. Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Bait and Switch, should be considered fair warning. It’s a rare job-hunter who isn’t tempted at least once.
But no book can be 100% complete. I wrote my own downloadable guide and I would still recommend Laskoff’s as an additional resource. Job hunters could do a lot worse.
5 Stars “Landing On The Right Side Of Your Ass” is a lifesaver!!!!
I wish I had known about and bought this book 2 months ago when I was “fired” (for the first time in 30 years of working!!). It’s essential in surviving unemployment. It’s funny, sharp, urbane and touches on all the “untouchable” subjects – blaming your employer, blaming yourself, taking a vacation before beginning job hunting, how to talk to friends and family, and so forth. It discussed all the subjects I couldn’t talk about to anyone, and helped me feel sane and centered in the midst of a very trying time.
I highly recommend this book, which I have worn out two highlighters while reading!
5 Stars LMAO
The book provides good advice for dealing with job rejection but what sets it apart from others of its kind is the entertainment factor: written with good humor and several funny stories. I felt so much better about myself after I read HOW he lost his first job…. yes, I’m still LMAO.
3 Stars Not A Long-Term Solution
I agree with one of the other reviewers on this site who asks,”What if you land on the wrong side of your ass? I found this book didn’t adequately address the reality of the unemployed situation. I had much better luck with a book on this site called “Unemployment Boot Camp: Tactics for Suriving and Thriving in the 21st Century,” by R.A. Long. It offers a lot of suggestions for empowering yourself and acknowledges that you can be unemployed for long periods of time. The books’ premise is to gear up for the long haul. “Unemployment Boot Camp” makes a substantial case for implementing physical exercise as a means of strengthening your survival skills and looks at the reality of your job-search taking longer than you’d expect. But it also provides candid objectives and options for sustaining yourself until that next golden opportunity comes around.
2 Stars What if I’ve landed on the wrong side of my ass?
This book is basically about avoiding depression so you aren’t dead meat on the job search highway. Personally, it was encouraging to find a loudmouth from Harvard MBA school was going through many of the same things I was going through after emerging from slightly lesser ranking Indiana MBA school before getting sucked up into the world of ‘infinite future’ telecom consulting, and sucked down by an equally weighty ‘nothing available right now’ telecom crash. I have landed on the wrong side of my ass. My salary went from $100K to $20K. And the ONLY material out there I can find is on how to do all the things I’ve already done: networking, resumes, interview prep, etc. No one gets it. No one wants to get it.
What this book did not help me come to terms with, which is really what I still want to come to terms with, is how to maintain optimism over a longer horizon. How to recover from depression once it hits, rathern than feigning optimism to yourself through a hardly affordable hedonism. Sometimes, particularly after a brutal series of experieces like several layoffs in a number of years while a market is crashing, depression wins. And if you get depressed. Are you dead forever irrespective of your abilities? Seems so. Once you lose your enthisiam, no matter how badly you feel treated, you lose your right to work.
I’m still looking for the book on what no one still wants to talk about. What if you didn’t get work again in 6 months, than 12, than 24, than became underemployed because you needed the money? Where do you recover that sense of enthusiasm and hope again. That, to me, seems to be the real battle to stay on the right side of your ass.
I imagine I am not the only one out there that feels this way.
Diary of a Job Search One Mans Journey from Unemployment to a New Career