Recommended with reservations.

This book was published over 11 years ago and I was hoping it would still retain much of its value. While some parts can still be applied, the book seems in need of an update by modern standards, especially the social-media sections: I’m not convinced job searching on Twitter is still a thing, and no book that talks about both self-esteem and LinkedIn should lack a mention of ‘doomscrolling’ through ‘suggested’ posts that try to farm engagement by telling jobseekers we’re useless as AI will replace us all. I’m not even sure networking on LinkedIn works anymore in 2025 and I wouldn’t recommend the platform to any developer who can’t take a constant assault of gloom (unless you’re lucky enough for their algorithm to have assessed you as not to receive this stuff). Also the employee vs contractor advice for over-50s may be US-specific, and there isn’t really much advice about how to find actually-helpful recruiters (seeing as so many of them aren’t) and I’d like an update on how frequently these really are told about non-advertised senior posts.

Rothman suggests use paper-based kanban to keep the job-seeking process moving and to avoid low self-esteem, with retrospectives if and only if you’re not likely to be hard on yourself for everything. Not likely to work for everybody, but might be OK as a default organisation method for somebody not otherwise sure how to organise themselves (I’d like to try it on a visually-oriented person with ADHD). This section of the book should still stand; I’m less sure about all the LinkedIn-related advice. There are occasional minor typos, and the PDF has links to references without URLs and not all of them are listed in the bibliography; I don’t know how usable these are in the paper version, but that shouldn’t be a major problem as we have search engines.

I was able to contact the author and ask if she plans to update the book and yes she does when she’s finished her public speaking book, and she’s hoping to make the new edition more ‘evergreen’. If you’re reading this review in a back-issue do please check to see if that second edition now exists as it’s likely to be better than the first.

Website: https://www.jrothman.com/books/manage-your-job-search/