Stay in Control: The Real Key to Job-Hunting Success

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

The author calls her formula for job hunting “the Andrade Method.”
It is based on the principles that job hunting is very stressful work
and that “practitioners” can succeed by controlling the process and
the stress it generates.

Andrade’s system is analytical. By looking at each aspect of
job-hunting stress and breaking it down into its component parts, she
shows the reader where the stressors come from and how they can be
controlled. The book is rich with 53 worksheets and forms (called
“control builders”) to help the reader translate general theory into
personalized action plans.

This method of controlling stress is applied to the immediate aftermath
of job loss, coping with change, organizing a job search, ongoing
self-motivation for long stretches of unemployment, returning to work,
and even discovering that the new job is unsatisfactory. Unlike the
authors of traditional texts for the unemployed, Andrade doesn’t
discuss job-search methods or lecture on the best way to format a
résumé. She assumes that the reader knows the mechanics of a job
search and attempts to provide the attitudinal tools needed to apply
those techniques effectively.

Stylistically the text is choppy—lots of short bits accented with
subheads and broken up by sidebars and “control builder” forms. This
is not a major problem but it does make concentrating on the message
almost a physical struggle. Nonetheless, the work has a lot to
contribute to the psychological well-being of the long-term unemployed.