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Career Advice, From The Front

Great, another career book!

Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It (McGraw-Hill, 216 pages, $31.95).

It's by Davey D'Alessandro. In Y2K, at age 49, he became the youngest CEO ever at John Hancock Fin Svcs and the only marketeer to get to the top of a major insurance company. Wow!

Now, he's pushing career advice for other ambitious guys and gals like our readers. And here it is:

Large firms are not run by reason. Advancement is driven by judgements based on stereotypes, instant evaluations by the boss, or the way your peers perceive you -- accurate or not.

Therefore, to be properly noticed, you've gotta create a personal brand.
Here's how the author did it:

As a young man, Dally was called in to meet with his boss. He was sure that he was about to be fired so he was feeling very tense.

When he was told he was going to be promoted, he was so shocked that he barfed straight at the boss, with incredible force.

It obviously worked - maybe the boss liked his energy - but if you try it don't say I told you.

Here are more great rules:
1. Never show you're smarter than your boss.
2. Don't bad-mouth your boss - unless asked to by his boss.
3. Jump ship when your boss can't help your career.
4. Don't bring a date to the company picnic (might tarnish brand).
5. Hire lots of skeptics who tell you when you're wrong. (Yeah, sure).

Find more here and here and here.

For the basics of Branding see our posting of Sun. Jan. 18/04 entitled Brand Your Company For Recruiting. (Click the Archives at the right).