New Girl On The Job. Hannah Seligson

      CITADEL PRESS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      To my Mom, Judy Seligson, a Woman of Valor,

       whose love and encouragement made this book happen.

      And to my grandmother, Gloria Schaffer,

       my role model and heroine,

       whose legacy of breaking boundaries inspires me every day.

      CONTENTS

      Foreword by Gail Evans

      Introduction

      Acknowledgments

      CHAPTER ONE Making a Graceful Entrance

      How to Find a Job You Don’t Want to Quit

      CHAPTER TWO Becoming a Professional

      There Are No “Do-Overs” When It Comes to Making a First Impression

      CHAPTER THREE X + Y

      Navigating Female-Male Dynamics at the Office

      CHAPTER FOUR Bad Bosses

      What to Do When Your Direct Report Treats You like an Enemy, a Lover, or Anything in Between

      CHAPTER FIVE Even Serena and Venus Williams Have a Coach

      Where, Why, and How to Find a Mentor

      CHAPTER SIX Mistakes Happen

      Dealing with Failures and Feedback

      CHAPTER SEVEN Why Is She Being Such a Bitch?

      How to Work with Women

      CHAPTER EIGHT Making Sense of Mixed Signals and Stereotypes

      Be Assertive, Not Aggressive (or, She’s Just a Detail-Oriented Perfectionist)

      CHAPTER NINE Avoiding a Bad Breakup

      When and How Do You Leave a Job…and How to Handle It When a Job Leaves You

      CHAPTER TEN The Future of Young Women at Work

      How We Can Make It and Shape It

      Glossary

      Resources

      Index

      FOREWORD

      When Hannah Seligson approached me about her idea to write a career guide for young women, called New Girl on the Job, I was heartened to see a new generation taking on the issue of how to help women succeed.

      When I was a guest on Larry King Live in 2003 to talk about my first book, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, Larry asked me, “Do women really still need empowering [in the workplace]?” My answer was: “Yes, women absolutely still need empowering when it comes to their careers.” We’ve come a long way, but we still have a very long way to go.

      Having to push women to “go for it” in the workplace seems to be a never-ending issue. No longer is the goal securing a “good job.” Today, it’s equally about how women feel about work and the companies they work for. Statistics show that more and more women are leaving the traditional workplace behind in favor of starting their own business. Why? Because, despite the advances that have been made, the workplace has been slow to change to accommodate their needs. Today’s working women are looking at the big picture. They’re looking for ways to move beyond a “job” and into a “career.” They’re looking for a high quality of life—both in and out of the office.

      Hannah Seligson has her finger on the pulse of these issues because she is one of these young women. In this book, she offers working women tangible advice about how to make the workplace work for them. In addition, New Girl on the Job touches on subjects that every young woman wants and needs to understand: the mechanics of finding a mentor, figuring out how to ally yourself with your female co-workers, and learning the art of self-promotion. And perhaps most important, this book speaks the language of your generation, in a voice you can trust.

      New Girl on the Job is the beginning of your generation’s movement toward making the role of women in the workplace even more important. Now is the time to take the next step—to seek out satisfying, fulfilling careers rather than existing in hum-drum jobs, to start getting paid what you are worth, and to use our strength in numbers not only to propel yourself into a top-level job, but also to continue advocating for equality and change for all women. The groundwork has already been laid by the women who have come before you. Now it’s your turn to build upon that foundation, for yourselves, for your co-workers, and for the future. Here’s your blueprint for how to do it.

      —Gail Evans

      December 2006

      Retired Executive Vice President, CNN

      Author of Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman

      and She Wins, You Win

      INTRODUCTION

      I don’t want to tell you this, but I have to. I got fired from my first job.

      Even though it was more than a year ago, I still remember the postfiring twinges of shame, feelings of inadequacy, and certainty that my life had ended before it had begun. The disappointment and despair I felt during my nine months of employment is what ultimately inspired me to write. Now you know how painful it was. It was in this undertaking—in the monumental effort to hone my craft, interview over a hundred amazing women about their experiences in the workplace and cull their wisdom in order to share it with others—that I discovered there are even more valuable lessons about what it means to be the New Girl on the Job than I had originally suspected.

      Writing this book helped me put my first job experience in perspective. I see now that I was mismatched for my job, and bullied by my boss. I didn’t want to spend the whole day making PowerPoint presentations and doing busywork, yet I had never bothered to ask what my job description was! I was so inexperienced: I wondered, like so many other young people starting out, was my office the way all offices were? Was my supervisor’s constant nitpicking the only humanity I could expect from my boss? No one had told me what to expect or how to handle the range of situations I was about to encounter, many of which are common to young people of either sex when they are starting out. But equally as many are specific to young women.

      Over the past year, I have had the enormous privilege of interviewing women from a wide range of industries, professions, and backgrounds. My sample consisted of one hundred women aged twenty-two to about thirty, from four major cities—New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. While women from these four cities were the bulk of my sample, I also spoke to a smattering of women from a variety of other locations. Twenty percent of my sample were women of color. Location, race, or job title, however, was not the defining factor in what young women were experiencing at work. Whether I was interviewing financial analysts in New York, assistants at talent agencies in Los Angeles, junior aides to politicians in Washington, D.C., or employees at nonprofits in Chicago, young women were all encountering the same types of workplace issues. Everyone was struggling with the basics (Is it okay to be friends with my boss?) to the more complicated (How do I avoid becoming a doormat?). The women at the lower rungs of the ladder were instrumental in shaping the topics addressed in this book. The voices of Gen X and Y are the fabric of New Girl on the Job, as they provide the real-life examples and provide the palpable context to discuss what would have otherwise been theoretical Jane Doe