January 18, 2022
Hey everyone,
I want to share some good news: the manuscript of my next book, Never Search Alone: The Job Seeker’s Playbook is done and submitted as of 8:58am NYC time today, Tue, Jan 18, 2022 (publication will be in a few months – more soon on that).
Woo!
To celebrate, I’d like to share with you how I built this book – and I use the verb “build” because I treated this like a software development project with English as my programming language.
As such, you will not be surprised to hear I did *not* write this alone.
Like with any good product development, I included customers.
First, Never Search Alone, is based on coaching more than 2,000 job and promotion seekers over the last 25 years.
Then five years ago, before I started to write down and structure what I had learned from all those job seekers, I conducted 250+ in-depth interviews with a range of people (including many of you) from college students to CEOs.
After that, as I began writing, I asked more than 250 job seekers to read and put into practice early versions of the book. These early users included college students looking for their first full-time jobs, early-career professionals looking for their first promotion, mid-career professionals finding Dir/VP/SVP/CEO roles (including board seats), and even a few people retiring from full-time work.
Along the way, these job (and promotion) seekers provided more than 2,500 pieces of feedback, which I then used to iterate through more than *400* major and minor drafts.
As a result, this morning I submitted the well-honed 401st draft.
Special thanks to many, many including many of you, *and* to Marty Cagan.
Marty has believed in me and our community for 20 years, and has done so much for this book including writing the Foreword.
Happy new year!
Phyl
