“YOU, Incorporated” is written by Ines Temple, President of a talent development organization named Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH), a successful entrepreneur and a bestselling author.
This book is all about personal branding, professional development, and employability. The author argues that change in professional life is inevitable and instead of avoiding it, it should be embraced. She adds that the concept of “Job of a lifetime” does not exist today.
The book is divided into 5 chapters, which are arranged in a specific order based on 3 following factors:
The clarity to understand new rules in today’s employment world
What attitudes are expected from us to have in today’s professional world?
We need to manage our career as if it were our own business
There are several practical exercises mentioned that the readers can do for their professional assessment. To state one example, the author mentions that in the LHH outplacement program, participants are required to write down a minimum of 25 tangible achievements throughout their careers.
This book changed my perspective on several subjects regarding my professional life and pointed out many actions I can take to improve my career path. Additionally, this book guides a reader from the basics to assessing him or herself on the most crucial questions for example what is employability, how one can measure it, what questions one needs to ask him or herself to measure employability, how to keep one’s employability levels consistently high, etc.
This book not only guides you in improving yourself as a service provider but also opens a window into the minds of headhunters, HR professionals, and organizations whom you may come across in the hiring process, and how to maintain a healthy professional relationship with your employer.
In addition to technical skills and knowledge, this book provides valuable insights into what soft skills and moral code a service provider needs to have to thrive in the job market and how one can improve them, etc. and all this is backed by research studies, surveys, reports, etc. mentioned throughout the book.
If you ask me, the chapters I liked reading the most were Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.
In Chapter 4, the author guides us step by step on how you should groom yourself as a professional, what points you need to focus on to improve your career path, and a specific list of questions is mentioned in each part of this chapter to ask yourself in that particular discipline such as questions you need to ask yourself as your marketing manager, your own research and development head, as your own CFO, etc.
Chapter 5 is all about networking, building connections of trust, social media impressions, and maintaining them.
And, if you’re wondering, “Ok so that’s all?” Not yet.
After the Epilogue, a long list of additional resources and a collection of infographics are provided for readers, who want to go the extra mile for maximum comprehension.
This is the first book I have read on Personal Branding, Marketing & Career Advancement and I have learned from every page of this book.