True Fit - barlowbooks

Jim Beqaj, a former president of a Bay Street investment firm, offers blunt advice to readers looking for a job: Before you start looking for a job, think about who you really are. What do you like to do? What are you good at, and what are you not so good at? Who do you like to hang out with? Then, and only then, look for a job that actually suits your skills and your personality.

This book is written for people who are in their 20s, fresh out of college, or in their 40s, fresh out of a corporate job. They haven’t had a chance to think deeply about who they are and what kind of environment suits them. In fact, they’re typically scared to stand up for themselves, because they think they won’t get a job that way. The author, speaking from personal experience as an employer who hired hundreds of people at his bank, urges readers not to be shy about who they actually are and what they like to do. They should make that perfectly clear to prospective employers. Then they will land the job where they can truly shine.

True Fit is packed with entertaining examples and sage advice from the author’s career in finance and leadership consulting. He speaks frankly about his own troubles fitting his own outsized personality into the constraints of Bay Street’s corporate environment, and he shows, with real-life examples, how the smartest people can land the wrong job that ends in disaster because it was not a good cultural fit. If, on the other hand, job-seekers are honest about who they are as they, the result will be a true fit, which creates a dynamic workplace where people are productive and happy.