Welcome to the Real World: Finding Your Place, Perfecting Your Work, and Turning Your Job into Your Dream Career

by Lauren Berger

Overview

The essential book every workplace novice needs—a smart, practical, and fun guide to help them navigate the minefield of personalities, learn to work with their boss, identify priorities, and ultimately kick butt at their first job.

It’s a challenging time to be young and new in the workplace. Your parents can’t help—the rules have all changed, and faster than guide books can keep up. In Welcome to the Real World, career expert and entrepreneur Lauren Berger arms a new generation of workers like you with the tools you need to succeed. She feels your pain. She’s been in your shoes. Just a few years ago, she was you.

In a world defined by uncertainty, she argues you need to be bold, take risks, and understand your value. She shows you how to think of your job as a link that will eventually connect you to the opportunity of your dreams. It’s time to get comfortable getting uncomfortable, she advises. Her essential handbook tells you everything you should know to make the most of your first on-the-job experience, including how to:

• Think about “The Big Picture”
• Deal with rejection
• Effectively manage your time
• Navigate “sticky situations” in the office and communicate with different personality types
• Embrace entrepreneurship regardless of position, rank, or title
• Organize your financial situation and personal life
• Get promoted and (one day) take your boss’ job!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062307309
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/22/2014
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lauren Berger is arguably the nation's most in-demand career and internship expert. She is the CEO and founder of the top-internship website www.internqueen.com as well as www.laurenbergerinc.com. Her first book, All Work, No Pay, is a national campus bestseller. Berger has been featured on Today, Fox & Friends, Marie, the Hallmark Channel, and other media outlets. She has also appeared in the New York Times and Seventeen.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: The Start of Something xiii

1 My Rules for the Workplace 1

2 The Actual Work 27

3 Organize, Prioritize, Maximinze, and Other -ize Words 51

4 How to Work Your Personal Brand 79

5 Relationships and Schmoozing 93

6 Oops, I Did It Again 131

7 Channel Your Inner Entrepreneur 149

8 I'm Just Too Busy ... Always 157

9 Your Money, Your Finances, Your Life 177

10 Time to get Personal 195

Epilogue 209

Editorial Reviews

03/10/2014
Berger, founder and CEO of InternQueen.com, offers tips from the trenches to get millennials through that all-important first job. Berger presents specific proposals for new hires, such as how to schedule a successful meeting, and email templates for following up with networking contacts. The book is peppered with anecdotes from Berger’s own first job as second assistant to a Hollywood agent, including spectacular screwups like the time she sent her boss to the wrong restaurant to meet with the wrong client. Some of her “we’ve all been there” tactics may not be applicable to all readers, such as references to “piloxing” (Pilates kickboxing) or her lament about blowing paychecks on Nordstrom’s clothes and $13 martinis; unnecessary acronyms like “FIO: Figure It Out” quickly become tiresome. Still, Berger’s willingness to poke fun at herself—she shares her personal “rejection playlist”—makes for a bubbly and appealing big-sister voice. This is a solid resource for new grads who feel overwhelmed by adulthood and just want someone to tell them what to do. Agent: Katie E. Kotchman, Don Congdon Associates. (May)

Publishers Weekly