"If you're even thinking about a job search, start here."
- Marty Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group
Based on 25 years of experience working with thousands of leaders – from early-career product managers to CEOs – Never Search Alone gives readers a time-tested, multi-step process (with exercises, tools, and templates) to find the right job now.
This new approach to looking for a job and building a good career focuses on three big ideas learned from helping thousands of job seekers:
- Never Search Alone. Because your emotional balance is the most important thing you need to manage in a job search, you need a support group of fellow job seekers that will help you turn insecurity and anxiety into hope, motivation, confidence, and accountability.
- Candidate-Market Fit. If product-market fit drives company success, candidate-market fit drives career success. So, before you begin interviewing and networking you need to identify precisely what you want and what the market wants. Phyl shows how this key step will help you figure out the intersection between your hopes and dreams and market realities.
- Boss the Process. When interviewing and negotiating, you need to put yourself in charge. From how you interview to how you negotiate, Never Search Alone presents an entirely new way to think about improving the odds of getting an offer and then negotiating for all you need to succeed in the new job.
Foreword by Marty Cagan (Excerpt)
For more than 20 years, I’ve encouraged people who are serious about their career to meet Phyl Terry.
Yes, Phyl is one of the best-connected leaders in the industry.
Yes, Phyl is a genuine human being who truly cares about you personally and your career.
But what really sets Phyl apart is that he understands how to harness the power of community.
This book is all about scaling the magic that is Phyl.
I have seen Phyl and the techniques he advocates dramatically improve the career trajectories of countless people.
And not just people who are in mid-career, dissatisfied with their current job, and want to find better.
These techniques are at least as valuable for new college graduates looking for that all-important first professional job.
Or another very difficult but increasingly common situation: older employees who find themselves in need of a new job, yet encountering systemic ageism at every turn.
Which is to say, nearly everyone in the professional workforce can benefit from the techniques in this book.
And one more pro tip: it’s a good idea to learn these techniques before you need them.
When you are able to find a job that you truly enjoy, that leverages your unique skills and talents, where you can receive the coaching necessary to continue to grow and develop to reach your potential, and where you can make a real contribution, you have meaningfully improved your life.
My hope is that this book will help countless people to improve their lives.
— Marty Cagan
Founder, Silicon Valley Product Group December 2021
Phyl Terry has devoted the past 25 years to helping top talent land their dream jobs at companies they love. Phyl is the founder and CEO of Collaborative Gain, a community of senior-level leaders who are passionate about helping one another build great products, companies, and careers. An in-demand advisor, coach, and speaker, Phyl started their career in the early Internet - on the startup team of the first company Amazon bought. Phyl was also the longtime CEO of Creative Good, the pioneering customer experience firm that worked with Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and many others. Phyl sits on for-profit and nonprofit boards, and has launched several global programs including Slow Art Day, Reading Odyssey, and the Warren Buffett Reading Group, which introduces high school and college students to business, finance, leadership and ethics.A graduate of the Harvard Business School, Phyl's previous writing includes the book Customers Included, a chapter in the book The Warren Buffett Shareholder, and the Harvard Business Review article, "Who Can Help the CEO?" Phyl lives in Brooklyn, identifies as non-binary, and welcomes any and all pronouns.
