cover image Be Your Own Best Publicist: How to Use PR Techniques to Get Noticed, Hired, and Rewarded at Work

Be Your Own Best Publicist: How to Use PR Techniques to Get Noticed, Hired, and Rewarded at Work

Jessica Kleiman and Meryl Weinsaft Cooper, Career Press, $14.99 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-60163-148-0

Kleiman and Cooper are both accomplished public relations professionals (Kleiman having spearheaded PR for Hearst Magazines for 10 years), experienced in the use of public relations tools both classic, such as image shaping, positive language, and simple communications goals, and contemporary, like effective use of social media and managing your online presence. With their first book they seek to provide readers with both sets of tools, and a good amount of advice for how to use them. They believe that even non-celebrities can have a brand, and use this guide to gain promotions, raises, and other career successes. To that end, they offer readers simple suggestions, like run a spell check before sending a cover letter, never send an angry email, and always dress like you may have a networking opportunity (which means different things depending on your industry). The authors' style is straightforward, occasionally funny, and refreshingly free of pretention, resulting in a highly readable guide that may not be news to many, but just might save the skin of the few not already "in the know." (Jan.)