Get Noticed: How to master the process of getting noticed
By Marcus Taylor and Rob Lawrence
PROS:
- Systematic guide to networking by being noticeable.
- Encourages you to ask important questions.
- Easy, intelligent, readable style.
- Easy to re-read
CONS:
- WIll cover familiar territory for some.
SUMMARY: A good guide to networking by getting noticed – that helps make it into a system and helps you explore your goals and options.
I was approached to review this book by Marcus Taylor, one of the authors. Always ready to see what's out there, I gladly gave it a read – with the understanding I'd let people know what I really thought.
"Get Noticed" is about that "being noticed" part of networking. No matter what you do or where you go it people don't notice you, your efforts to connect can be in vain. So the book focuses on how you get noticed, which you could kind have guessed from the title.
This isn't just about standing out though – it's about connecting with people, and all that entails. After all, getting noticed isn't good if you can't do it right or do something with it as part of a strategy – and thats where the book shines. It could probably be called "Get Noticed As A Strategy" but that's just not as snappy and the URL would be too long.
So how does this book help you out? Well . . .
- It has organized ways to think about getting noticed, even including diagrams and flows of standing out and connecting.
- It forces you to think about why and how you're networking and what your goals are. This was one of my favorite parts as people get taught to network for networking's sake.
- Examines the tools out there that you may use.
- Looks at specific situations you can be in and how to get noticed in them.
No section, chapter, or idea is overly long or overly complex. The book instead focuses on delivering ideas, techniques, and methods for given ituations, so you can put them to use. There's little BS, and plenty of advice.
Indeed, any one section of the book could have been published independently as an article or blog entry with a bit of extra content. This is actually an advantage as you can quickly note what you want to remember and review it – something they encourage throughout the book. The entire book holds together as a whole, but this "modular" writing serves it very well.
You will find that this book has tips and tricks you knew, frankly. I'd say an inexperienced networker will find it 90% knew, but an experienced one may find, perhaps 50% to 30% new material. This is entirely expected, frankly, and doesn't decrease the value of the book at all – if nothing else, it's a good review.
So do I recommend it? Yes I do. I actually would have purchased a copy myself had I known it was this useful. it's smart, low-BS, systematic, and effective, a good addition to networking books, and probably with less fluff than many of them.
For progeeks, I think it's actually a better book than average because many of us have ways to be noticed, events to be noticed at, and a familiarity with technology. It's also one that will make you think about why and how you network.
You really can't loose for $9.99.