John Lees: "A Good Book Encourages Someone to Engage in a Deeper Level of Thinking"
Where it all began
Just over 20 years ago, McGraw Hill said yes.
This first important yes came from Elizabeth Choules, my very first commissioning editor, who liked the ideas set out in a book proposal for a book initially titled ‘Creative Career Management’. One of Elizabeth’s first astute tips as an editor was to get me to understand what works in a book title. Short words, she suggested. And readers like book titles beginning ‘how to’.
Soon afterwards, the title almost wrote itself: How to Get a Job You Love. One of those ‘it does what it says on the tin’ titles. Importantly for me, practical as well as aspirational, taking readers in two different directions at the same time.
I also learned that editors are just like book readers, and like personal stories. I’d just got back from helping with a job club in a township in Johannesburg and that was the first thing Elizabeth asked about when she called me.
How to get a ‘yes’
McGraw Hill said ‘yes’ to me several times afterwards. I’ve counted. Together we have produced 21 books, including revised editions, and 8 new book concepts, including books that are still holding their own such as Knockout CV and Knockout Interview. The best-seller, How to Get a Job You Love, which is now in its eleventh (2021-22) edition.
I’ve worked with a very wide range of talented and enthusiastic people -editors, designers and marketing professionals, and I’m grateful to them all for keeping my mind on one thing: why books sell. Nearly two decades back I learned that booksellers have time and attention for a short pitch from a publisher about any new book. They want to hear three things: What’s it about? What does it offer? How is it better than similar titles on the same shelf?
That sort of thinking is vital for an author. I might take months refining a block of 60,000-plus words, but books sell based on a small handful of reasons.
The market for career advice
This connects strongly with the topic I write about – careers. You might have a CV stuffed with history and evidence. At interview you might be probed on 20-30 topics, but when someone recommends you, they say just two or three things – a small handful of reasons why someone might track you down.
Writing books about career change and job hunting for the last 20 years has been stimulating, fulfilling and fun. Dramatic changes in the world of work have also made writing an exciting challenge. New types of jobs are created daily. Your great grandparents’ generation had around a dozen obvious job choices, but today’s work starter has tens of thousands of paths to choose from, and many ways of working. Just understanding how to choose and how to find out about work possibilities requires a whole new set of thinking.
The other huge change is the way jobs have gone under the radar. In some professions senior jobs are rarely advertised. The significant growth of this hidden job market has profound knock-on effects for job hunters. Sending off job applications might once have looked like a mundane, brainless task. Today’s market requires a sophisticated skill set - communicating, influencing and opening doors.
The job market of 2020 offers a whole new set of challenges – rising unemployment, job openings remaining invisible, and the new difficulty of having to influence using phones and screens rather than face to face. The latest edition of How to Get a Job You Love tackles this new reality, offering a range of short cuts aimed at shortening job search time and getting better results from activity.
The market for career advice books
Is there still a market for career books? Reader feedback suggests to me that they are still useful. Although there are thousands of websites offering quick-fix tip lists for everything from competency-based interviews to portfolio working, there is still room for books designed to help people change.
Online checklists can prompt activity, but they don’t get at the underlying drivers for change and the reasons people get in the way of their own progress.
I think of each of my books as a structured, affirming conversation with each reader, opening up their thinking, dealing with their doubts, objections, and “yes, but…” moments. For me, a good book on the topic encourages someone to engage in a deeper level of thinking. This matters to me. I enjoy helping people to grow and change, and that doesn’t happen in half an hour. I’m fairly clear that the most important work I do with any coaching client is to change the way they think.
Everyone likes quick access to vital information (a well-designed careers handbook will allow people to dip in and find what they need). Other things matter, too: provoking the imagination, prompting new discoveries, and building confidence. A book allows time for that.
A book focused on changed behaviours invites someone to invest time in themselves, to find the right balance between reflection and action.
Return on investment
This time is valuable. Generally we don’t spend enough time thinking about our careers. Committing a couple of days to a book that helps you open up possibilities, discover the kind of work that feels worth doing and helps you avoid rookie mistakes, is likely to give a good return on time invested.
My title Get Ahead in Your New Job is the book I realise I should have written years ago; it provides the missing piece of the jigsaw. If readers need help reimagining their careers and then navigating the complexities of the job market, they certainly also need help onboarding themselves in a world where organisations expect new staff to hit the ground running.
So, my thanks to Open University Press for handling an average of one manuscript a year for 21 years, for its gifted editors, proof-readers, designers and promotional teams. It’s been a fascinating sequence of conversations and I look forward to many more.
Career coach and bestselling author John Lees discusses his publishing journey with McGraw Hill and Open University Press on his wide range of books around careers and work.
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