The book proposal for The Resume Journey to Better Paying Employment: A Job Search Guide for the Average American is complete, and writing is underway! This book is the culmination of a lifetime of helping low-wage earners find better-paying careers based on their talents, skills, and varied experience. I am very excited to be moving forward with this project.
Interested agents or publishers can email thewordsmithkc@gmail.com to receive a detailed book proposal including an analysis of the target audience, a marketing plan, a competitive title analysis, a table of contents, and chapter summaries.
In the meantime, here is what you can expect from the book and what makes it unique.
Who This Book is For and How It Helps the Average American
What do I mean by “average American?” About 30 percent of Americans live at or below 130% of the poverty level, which is the cutoff for receiving government assistance. This means that a third of American households qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance, daycare assistance, and other programs. Many of these are minimum-wage earners.
Meanwhile, another 25% of Americans also earn less than $15 per hour, which many consider to be a living wage. Yet this still isn’t the full story.
A three-bedroom apartment in the Kansas City Metro starts at about $1200 per month. To qualify for such an apartment, a household’s income must be three times the rent. This means that a family of four must earn at least $3,600 per month. If only one parent is present or able to work, the one wage-earner must make at least $20.75 per hour to meet the minimum income requirements for housing.
Meanwhile, Statista reports that the average hourly wage of all workers in the United States is just $11.01 per hour.
The biggest reason people over the age of 25 work low-wage jobs is a lack of confidence or understanding of career options. Food service, retail, and other service jobs develop skills and competencies that are easily translated to other careers. There are also significant obstacles to stable and gainful employment that job seekers are clueless to overcome, such as job searches after a significant period of unemployment or “job hopping.”
The primary goal of The Resume Journey to Better Paying Employment is to help these low-wage earners overcome such obstacles and explore better-paying careers in which their skills, experience, and natural talents and competencies will help them shine. However, this book can be applied to any position, career opportunity, or career level.
This book is appropriate for all job seekers, regardless of their ability or willingness to write the resume themselves. The book helps them discover new career paths and opportunities and conduct a targeted job search for desired positions. A chapter on how to work with a resume writer and what information from the self-discovery exercises to provide a resume service is included for those unable to write a resume themselves.
Topics Not Covered By Other Resume Books
There are several other topics that are covered in-depth in The Resume Journey to Better Paying Employment that are either covered poorly or not at all in other resume books. These include:
- In-depth guidance for conducting a targeted job search
- In-depth guidance for career changes
- High-level overview of resources to overcome obstacles to employment
- High-level overview and how-to guide for using the Occupational Outlook Handbook, a free career planning resource from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
- How to overcome specific obstacles to employment including periods of incarceration, returning to the workforce after disability or parenthood, other periods of unemployment, daycare needs, being labeled a job hopper, and more
While other resume books have touched on these topics on occasion, none go in-depth and offer as many resources as The Resume Journey to Better Paying Employment.
About the Author
I first started writing resumes in the early 90s, and the skills I learned at that time have served me and my clients well over the years. The principles in The Resume Journey to Better Paying Employment are backed by this experience, as well as decades of best practices. To learn more, please send your request to thewordsmithkc@gmail.com, or visit the Job Seeker Resources category of my blog.
Nicky Foster @TheWordsmithKC 