Heather Huhman: Book Review: Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success

For Generation Y, the rules for career success have changed dramatically. Doing your job well isn't enough anymore. You have to realize your own potential and maximize your success to take your career to the next level.

The person who knows this best is Dan Schawbel, a Gen Y career expert and the founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting company. In his new book, Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success , Schawbel shares exactly how to use your current job to achieve success. It's all about what happens after you land a job, how you continue to grow and advance in your career.

"In order to advance in your career, it's essential that you become indispensable at work," Schawbel writes. "You can't just sit back and wait for things to happen on their own." You need to take charge of your career success. To stand out, you need to learn new skills outside the workplace and use them to your advantage inside.

In the book, Schawbel looks at the steps to career success in today's workplace. First, he talks about the skills you need and how to get them. Next, he looks at how to get yourself known for your skills. Then, he presents data to explain what managers are looking for when promoting young talent. From there, he explains how you should use your passions outside the workplace to get promoted inside. Finally, he explains how to decide when it's time to make changes in your career.

The Impact of Gen Y

Schawbel kicks off his book by looking at all of the qualities that make Gen Y (the generation Schawbel is part of) unique. They're affecting the way businesses related to communities, the flexibility of the workplace, and the way career advancement is achieved.

"By understanding the impact your generation will have on the workforce in the years to come, you'll know what you need to do now to get noticed at work and get people interested in your ideas," he writes.

Gen Y is responsible changing the culture of many workplaces, and it's important to understand these changes if you want to succeed in these new conditions.

Soft Skills Get You Promoted

One of the most interesting points Schawbel brings up in his book is the value of soft skills in comparison to hard skills. "Hard skills are what will help you navigate the technical elements of your job, but it's soft skills that will enable you to move ahead," he writes.

While it's true technical skills are very important to career success, after a certain point it's the soft skills that get you noticed. In a time where company culture plays a large role in hiring decisions, things like communication, work ethic, optimism, and empathy make a big difference when you're up for a promotion. And Schawbel provides a list of statistics to back it up.

In addition to explaining the importance of soft skills, Schawbel takes it a step further by providing a way for readers to evaluate their own soft skills. Once you've taken his mini assessment, he explains exactly how to improve your problem areas. Pretty useful!

Promote Yourself

Once you've figured out who you are and where you need to improve, it's time to take the book's title to heart: promote yourself.

This is where Schawbel's expertise in personal branding shines through. He explains the difference between self-promotion and bragging (and the difference definitely matters). As he says, "self-promotion is about your accomplishments." Your accomplishments come first.

Schawbel shares his six rules of self-promotion, starting with, "Make yourself worthy of being talked about." Each of these rules is essential if you want your self-promotion to lead to career success.

Promote Yourself gives you the tools you need to excel in the workplace. Schawbel demonstrates exactly how to take your career into your own hands and push forward. It's the perfect instruction book to help Millennials get the edge they need.

You can read more about the best ways to sell yourself throughout your career in Schawbel's book, Promote Yourself, available on Amazon.com. Also, check out the live web book launch on Tuesday, September 10.