New Book!
Did you know?–every purchase helps create jobs to end poverty.
Unique Focus and Content
Coauthors Suzanne and Sanam worked together for two years on our book.
My young coauthor, Sanam Yusuf, was still in high school when we began concept and market research on this book … Now a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles, she’s spent more than half her higher education in her childhood bedroom, quarantined during the pandemic. (More about how we became coauthors in Sanam’s preface to our book.)
We learned that scores of books exist on how to market to Generation Z (those born 1995-2015), since they already wield 40 percent ($143 billion) purchasing power. But we found very few books that offer guidance on how to land your first–or dream–job, and none that featured a Gen Z author with input from her peers.
What You’ll Find Inside
We started off determined to survey actual Gen Zers about their job experience and career goals and compare that to every scrap of research data we could gather. We outlined a book that offers four sections:
- Chapter 1: Who is Gen Z: official research versus our findings on what makes this generation different from any preceding, and what they desire from work and life.
- Chapter 2: Ordinary Gen Zers either working toward or already in their dream jobs. (We surveyed over 100 and feature forty-three.)
- Chapter 3: Famous Gen Zers earning fame and fortune, building companies, inventing products, and wielding impact on the world. (We include seventy-seven rockstars in such fields as marketing, food, beauty, real estate, tech, sports, music, TikTok, environment, and social and racial justice.)
- Chapter 4: Tips, tools, best practices, and resources for landing your first internship or job, creating your resume and online professional profile, interviewing and follow-up, negotiating and advocating for yourself … all you need to advance toward your own dream job.
How We Keep It Real
Determined to offer the most inspiring, pragmatic resource for middle-, high school, vocational, and college students, we:
- Keep our focus by, about, and for Generation Z–not “they should try this” but “I did that and succeeded,” and “we want this, and here’s why.”
- Clearly outline each chapter’s sections with subtitles that help you scan quickly to find the content that interests you.
- Design Chapters 2 and 3 to resemble Instagram Posts with vivid images of Gen Zers at work along with brief vignettes on their diverse careers and how they feel about them.
- Offer step-by-step guidance in Chapter 4 from figuring out your skills and career goals to breaking into your field, to climbing the ladder to your dream job.
- Meticulously document every fact and claim and link to hundreds of resources that offer deeper dives into such topics as drug testing, mental health, job-hunting apps, racial justice and values at work, and podcasts and videos featuring Gen Zers at work.
Where to Get Your Hands on Our Book
Online: MY JOB Gen Z is available on Amazon (PLEASE take two seconds to write a brief review–it helps enormously with sales and credentials!) or wherever you buy books online.
Brick and mortar stores: You can empower indie bookstores by choosing to purchase there. You may have to request MY JOB Gen Z–or the entire three-book series–but that will give our sales a boost as well.
Schools and libraries: The best gift you can give Sanam and me is to pass our book on to students pondering their future careers or striving to attain good jobs. If you know a librarian or teacher, please consider gifting MY JOB Gen Z! (ALL author proceeds are donated to job-creation programs to end poverty, so your gift works both ways.)
Open source: Just a few months into the COVID pandemic, we decided to fire our amazing hybrid publisher and step into self-publishing, because that was the only way to offer the ebook version FREE to anyone who cannot afford to purchase it. All you/they have to do is sign up for Suzanne’s blog to get a free copy.
We want every young person to be inspired, empowered, and equipped to pursue the job they desire!
As always, we thank you for supporting our social-mission book series and our amazing job-creation partners!
Cover photograph courtesy of Suzanne Skees, Suzanne headshot by Guy Viau, and Sanam headshot courtesy of Sanam Yusuf. Video courtesy of the ubiquitous pandemic Zoom office.