Summary: Bulletproof Your Job is a book about surviving turbulent times at work, doing what is in your power to protect yourself against layoffs and offshoring. It’s filled with fifty tips you can apply to make yourself “bulletproof” in your company.
The book is broken into four sections, titled Be Visible, Be Easy, Be Useful, and Be Ready, with a number of actions you can take in each section.
It’s a quick read if you want to read it from cover to cover. However, the book is written in such a way that you can easily jump around and pick up nuggets of wisdom that apply to your situation and ignore the advice that doesn’t apply or doesn’t make sense for you.
I’d recommend it for those early in their careers or those who are sensing that things at their companies are not looking good, and want specific advice on what they can do to strengthen their career position.
Rating: 3 (1 means I didn’t find it useful, 5 means it was awesome)
Review
The number one asset you have is you have in life is your ability to produce an income. If that means you work in a job, how do you protect that job in the current climate of downsizing, right-sizing, and off-shoring?
That is the subject of the new book, Bulletproof Your Job: 4 Simple Strategies To Ride Out The Rough Times And Come Out On Top At Work, by Stephen Viscusi.
In this book, Viscusi discusses how to hold on to your job in a down economy and how to protect your job from downsizing. He says that since your job is your most valuable asset, your primary objective should be to protect it.
He provides 50 specific tactics you can use to “bulletproof” your job, broken down into four larger strategies. The four strategies for protecting your job are:
- Be Visible
- Be Easy
- Be Useful
- Be Ready
The book is divided into four sections, one devoted to each strategy.
Be Visible
In the first section, Be Visible, Viscusi provides 14 tactics to make yourself more visible to your company’s management. Raising your visibility is critical, Viscusi argues, because it’s much easier for management to layoff someone who is “invisible” to them. “The invisible guy is the first to go,” he says.
Much of what you need to do, he says, is “create a perception that makes you more visible, more notable, and ultimately more valuable to your company.”
To do that he offers some often repeated advice such:
- Arrive early, stay late
- Pay attention to your grooming
- Be detail oriented
In addition, he suggests, among other things,
- Making presentations
- Representing the company at conferences
- Volunteering to lead projects
- Networking
For each suggested tactic, Viscusi provides examples and tips for taking these action steps.
Be Easy
Being easy, Viscusi, says is about being easy to work with, easy to be around, and easy to talk to. It’s about not being a hard employee. “Hard employees are a pain in the ass,” he says, “always making noise and trouble and work for everyone else.” Don’t be one of those. Focus on being the easy guy to work with.
How do you do that?
Viscusi offers several suggestions, such as
- Quit complaining
- Leave your problems at home
- Act appropriately
- Don’t gossip
- Be dependable
These are just a few of the 13 pieces of advice in this section.
Be Useful
In this section, Viscusi, offers his advice on how to do your job even better. Being useful, he says, is not only about doing the job you’re paid to do, but going above and beyond what is expected of you. It’s about going the extra mile for your employer to show “how damn useful you are.”
Some of the topics covered in this section are
- Being a mentor to a new employee
- Being a utility player willing to take on more roles
- Training others
- Becoming a specialist in a field
- Just plain working hard
Overall, Viscusi offers 11 tactics for Being Useful in this section.
Be Ready
The first three strategies covered in the book have to do with the short-term goal of keeping the job you have – “bulletproofing it”. The fourth strategy covered in the book, “Be Ready”, is focused on your long term growth in your career. It’s about building yourself up and being ready to support your family no matter what the job market is like. It’s about building confidence in yourself and your ability to survive, no matter what.
The first tip in this section is focused on financial planning – making sure you have money in the bank you could live on if you were without a job for while. It’s about the emergency fund you should be creating just in case.
The rest of the tips are focused on being prepared to find a new job should you need to or want to. The suggestions include actions like
- Building a relationship with a recruiter
- Improving your interview skills
- Keeping your resume up-to-date (I’ve provided some suggestions of this here)
- Being active in professional associations
- Improving and updating your skills
Overall
When I first read Bulletproof Your Job, I thought a lot of the suggestions were common knowledge. There were no new ideas I hadn’t heard before. However, that being said, I have been around for a while and not everyone has heard this advice.
For someone just starting out in their career or someone who is worried about keeping their job, though, I would suggest reading this book. If you can pick out even one or two ideas that will help you protect your job, it will be well worth the price of the book (approx. $15 at Amazon). Not to mention the relief that can come from knowing that you are doing everything in your power to protect your job. That’s priceless.
Related posts:
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment