How would you like it if you never had apply for a job again?

"Never Apply for a Job Again: Break the Rules, Cut the Line, Beat the Rest" by Darrell W. Gurney (Career Press, Feb. 2012, $14.99, 218 pp.)

Wouldn't it be great if you never had to apply for a job again?

Unfortunately, that's not going to be the case for most of us. But not to worry, author Darrell W. Gurney has penned a book filled with advice to help you stand out from the pack of jobseekers.

Gurney, who also calls himself "The Career Guy," has spent 25 years in the career coaching and recruiting business. He knows what it takes to stand out, and also knows pertinent job search facts such as 80 percent of advertised jobs are filled before they're even advertised. Stats like that are a bit discouraging to folks like me who've "followed the rules" all these years. But basically Gurney's message is, stop looking for jobs like you always have and try some new "outside the box" methods that force you to put yourself out there a lot more.

The meat of this book is chapters outlining 10 principles for launching an effective stealth campaign for job searching. Here's a very truncated form of that list:

Principle #1: The Best Way to Get a Job is: Don't Be Looking For One

Desperation in the job search doesn't work, Gurney says. Instead of looking for a job, you should stop looking and start working on your networking skills.

“The minute your outreach to people is that you need a job from them, you will get nowhere,” he explains. “You want to pull people in because of your passion and enthusiasm, rather than [repel] them because of your desperate need.”

Principle #2: An Ounce of Research is Worth a Pound of Job Search

Gurney advises jobseekers to let go of the dual-reality idea that work and your real interests and passions are separate worlds.

"I will begin to accept that there are ways in which those worlds can come together in forms in which I am paid handsomely, and I will begin my exploration to find those ways. I’m different from every other human being on the planet, and there are things that light me up that others may find dull," he said.

Principle #3: A Question-Able Person Creates Enthusiastic Relationships.

Asking the right people the right questions helps you get information. "Opportunities and jobs take care of themselves, arising naturally from the relationships and knowledge" you gain, Gurney said. "To determine where to look next in your career, answer this: What's your pleasure?"

Principle  #4: You Can Never Have Too Much Information … And the Higher the Altitude, the Better

Find research-focused ways to connect with people in high-level positions to get the information you need around your areas of "passionate interest."

Principle #5: A Friend in Need Repulsion Doth Breed

Take every opportunity to connect with those around you. "Everyone is your friend until you see it otherwise," Gurney says. Accept that the “elevator pitch” was created for just this reason.

Principle #6: Call Me Expert, I’ll Open My Door 

Find people involved in your area of interest, and then request to meet. "All you have to do is dig up the folks you will question," Gurney writes.

Principle #7: Eyes to Eyes Gets You the Prize

Turn every current and future relationship, if in any way possible, into a face-to-face meeting. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter "relationships" don't count. Gurney suggests writing to a contact and requesting a five minute meeting on some topic of interest.

Principle #8: Building Relationship Equity…One Meeting at a Time

When you're in the meeting, begin every conversation with a subject that everyone likes to discuss most: themselves. You've landed yourself an interview at this point, and you're asking the questions and listening to the answers. At the end, Gurney suggests, tactfully slipping the person your resume and asking his or her input on some point. Then you ask:

"Your input has been extremely valuable to me as I continue to gather information on this subject. Do you know of others who can be as helpful as you have been with whom I could speak?"

The key seems to be, never let on that you're looking for a job. And then to make them a permanent contact in your life for the foreseeable future.

"It becomes exponential.You begin to form your own career tribe," Gurney writes.

Principle #9: Top of Mind is Easy to Find

Don't let your network die. "You've opened the door, now you just need to keep it open," the author writes.

Principle #10: Treat Myself Like a Business to Stay in Business

Lifetime career management is smart business, Gurney says.

"The small effort and time you invest regularly in maintaining your career tribe relationships can pay big dividends," he writes. 

Win the book:

If you'd like to "win" my brand new copy of "Never Apply for a Job Again," courtesy of Career Press, simply comment on this post with your email address. If you're selected as winner (at random), I'll contact you to find out where to mail the book. If no one comments or otherwise claims the book it will be donated to the Pottstown Regional Public Library.

About the author:

DARRELL W. GURNEY

Darrell W. Gurney is founder of CareerGuy.com and a 25-year career advisor. As a coach, speaker, and workshop leader, he helps people locate their passions and fulfill them whether through a job or their own business. Gurney has consulted for the world’s top outplacement consulting firms, and his first book," Headhunters Revealed! Career Secrets for Choosing and Using Professional Recruiters," was reviewed in Publishers Weekly and won the Clarion Award for Best Book from the Association for Women in Communications. He has served as a guest editor for the industry’s journal, "The Career Planning & Adult Development Journal," and has been featured in TheLadders.com, Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal.com, BusinessWeek Online, MSN Careers, CareerBuilder.com, and on Wall Street Journal Radio. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Gurney is at work his next book about midlife transitions, entitled "The Back Forty: 7 Critical Embraces for Life’s Purposeful Second Half," due out this year. See more on his website, www.careerguy.com

Author challenges you to change the way you look at failure

I usually carry a book with me to appointments so I have something to read other than stale copies of "Highlights" magazine.

But when I took out my copy of Ralph Heath’s book "Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big," I got a funny look from my hairstylist … and in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.

While the title does sound a bit self-helpy, this book is geared toward anyone who has to take creative risks. The author is promoting the idea that not only is it OK to fail, making mistakes in business should be applauded.

"Celebrating Failure" (Career Press, 2009, $14.99, 189 pp.) gives kudos to corporate risk-takers and fearless generators of "the big idea."

Heath’s not exactly giving carte blanche to go out there and screw up in the work place. He is suggesting that people are empowered by leadership, and that taking "big idea"-type risks is part of the process.

Funny thing is (or maybe not so surprising at all, considering this chap’s can-do attitude), the failures he mentions in the book seem wildly insignificant to the successes.

One of Heath’s big ideas is described in a chapter called "Anaerobic Activity." He talks about how employees at his former company, Ovation Marketing in La Crosse, Wisc., were encouraged to work out. The company even paid for their health club memberships and encouraged employees to work out before or after work, during lunch or anytime they could fit it into their schedules. The only "rule" was the employees were asked to put in an honest day’s work.

After a time, the company stepped up the effort by encouraging employees to do a "stretch" event, such as a road race, and actually paid those employees $250 for the successful completion of that event.

"Providing a physical outlet for stress is the best dollar-for-dollar investment a leader can make in his or her company. Rip off a successful program such as the one I mentioned, or invent one of your own," Heath writes.

Another kind of "out there" idea he championed is to help employees who wanted to leave the firm find a new job.

"In one instance, an associate wanted to work in an area that we could not offer. Providing a job reference for him during his search made an outstanding impression on the new company’s human resources department. It also demonstrated to the new company that this was an above-board, open and honest person who had such a great relationship with his current employers that, when he told them he was looking for a different career, they wanted him to succeed to the extend that they helped him in the search and gave him a stunning job recommendation."

The premise for this was pretty basic: Heath didn’t want someone working for his company who would be happier elsewhere. Although Ovation had very low turnover, there was some.

"There are too many opposing forces to keep everyone 100 percent happy, year in and year out," Heath writes. "Sometimes it’s just time to move on."

Every chapter includes "insights" at the end — things to work on; tips for success.

Former president of Ovation Marketing, an ad agency, Heath writes, "In some ways, analyzing failure is even tougher than stepping up and taking risks, but if you can master analyzing your failures as easily as you roll out of bed, you can make huge improvements in the way you execute your work."

Heath, in addition to being an author is currently managing partner of Synergy Leadership Group, also based in La Crosse, Wisc.

I was not surprised — even in this short book — to find a "postmortem" chapter in which Heath asked for readers’ help as to how to improve "Celebrating Failure." He wants to incorporate the feedback into the writing of his second book, which he’s tentatively named "Thoughtful Leadership."

"One of the basic premises of this book is to encourage you, the reader, to analyze whatever you do in life to continuously improve," he writes.

I’ll leave you with a quote from basketball star Michael Jordan that Heath includes in his book:

"I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."