By: Daneal Charney & David Singh
Reviewed By: Karin Eaton
The Premise: Meant to act as a catalyst for those entering the first phase of their careers, Hitting StrYde provides useful ‘how-to’ tips for personal, work and career success. Written for a generation accustomed to receiving and consuming information at a click of a button, the messages are short and sweet. The book’s 110 lessons are easy and fast to read with many useful tips, hints, checklists and references for further reading and consideration. It covers topics ranging from simple, yet oh-so-important, time management (how do you squeeze the 25th hour into your day?) to managing tough conversations with your boss. A tool to map out your career, Hitting StrYde will leave you with valuable points to consider that, unfortunately, are not all taught in school.
The Bottom-line: While meant to be a survival guide for Gen Y, this book is cross-generational: from those who just started out to the seasoned professionals. Such topics as branding ; staying marketable; managing your boss; or deciding whether to stay or go are applicable to any professional – no matter how seasoned they are. Since Hitting StrYde covers so many topics, it allows the reader to zero in on the issue that is most pertinent to them for where they find themselves in their career. For me personally, the topic of Branding – or creating Me Inc. – stood out. As a Gen-Y’er who considers herself reasonably web-savvy, I learned about quite a few useful tools I had never heard about before, such as unhub, which helps you link all of your social networking sites together to provide you with a better overview of your online brand and presence. I’ll be sure to implement it! Because the book is written in power point presentation style, it does not go into great depth on any subject but it does provide you with references on where to obtain more information.
