A no holds barred, tell it like she sees it, guide to career success, Girl on Top Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success (2009, Center Street) is the second career related book from Nicole Williams.
With a title that reeks with sexual innuendo, Williams tells readers, “Treat him mean to keep him keen; don’t tell him you want a kid on the first date (or interview); don’t expect to change him.” The author promises readers that she “didn’t make this (expletive) up” and that she “has found the key to applying it to a career in a way that will change lives.”
Building Career Success
In just 194 pages, the author introduces twenty dating rules that also happen to directly apply to growing a successful career. Williams’ theory is that most women know what they want in a romantic partner, often going so far as to making a list of characteristics. She believes that same thought process can be applied to what a woman wants to find in a career.
Just a few of the dating or career success rules Williams writes about:
- Follow Your Heart
- If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It
- Play Hard to Get
- Put on Some Gloss
- Get a Life
- Keep It Brief
- Watch Your Weight
- Be Willing to Walk Away
Successful Career Strategies
Williams, a professional career coach who works mainly with young professional women, writes, “Dating rules turned career strategies…everything needed to be the Girl on Top!”
Williams defines the three phases of a career that are parallel to dating. Each offers different opportunities and challenges:
- Phase One: Courting. Play the field and explore the fit. Don’t be afraid of choosing poorly at this stage.
- Phase Two: Dating. Time to build a more intimate relationship and understanding. Don’t stay too long in a job that isn’t a good fit.
- Phase Three: Marriage or Long-Term Commitment. Stable enough to take risks, push the limits, and learn new talents. Resist taking the situation for granted and beware that this phase one can loose interest as the thrill lessens.
Effective Career Advice
The title and the names of the twenty rules seem to make light of an often serious situation, one’s career or success. With little or no nonsense, the author provides usable, workable, and enlightening advice on advancing to the top.
Negotiating salaries, dressing for success, how not to be taken advantage of at work, saying the right things to co-workers, following the boss’s lead in meetings, and not making a life out of nothing but work are all great pieces of career advice.
Exude Confidence at all Times
Williams accentuates that women should become confident in their talents, and that each woman is their own best career asset. She writes, “Each woman is their own biggest career asset and they need to nurture, protect, and invest in themselves with a vengeance.”
There are so many unwritten rules in the professional world that it is refreshing to see topics that are generally blasé brought out into the light.
This books is one that young or older professional women can read to find one or twenty rules they can apply with confidence and make them work to their advantage.
And, really, who doesn’t want to be on top?
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