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"  As record numbers of Americans are kicked to the curb from their cubicles, career counselor Nicole Williams takes a lighthearted approach to showing us how to find (refind?) and keep the professions of our dreams. Her third book, Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Tactics into Career Success (Hachette), is, you guessed it, modeled on a dating manual, bringing new meaning to the idea &amp;quot;making love work.&amp;quot;  Williams got the idea for her book, which reads like the love child of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and The Rules, after ending her marriage and moving from her native Canada to Manhattan to amp up her consulting business. Perusing a goody basket of relationship books sent by a friend brought an epiphany: &amp;quot;These concepts work the same way in your career as they do in dating! And dating advice is something young women are familiar with. For example, we all know not to sleep with a guy on the first date. Apply that to a job where you&amp;#039;re working for less than market value for years and never getting anything out of it. Employers value you more when they&amp;#039;re paying you.&amp;quot;  Even if you think relationship rules are manipulative, outdated, or simply silly, it&amp;#039;s hard not to see the on-the-job sense of adages such as &amp;quot;don&amp;#039;t give away the milk for free.&amp;quot;   In a work &amp;quot;relationship,&amp;quot; who&amp;#039;s the &amp;quot;guy&amp;quot;?  He&amp;#039;s anyone you work with: vendor, boss, client, assistant. &amp;quot;He&amp;quot; can also be a &amp;quot;she,&amp;quot; of course.   So how are work and romantic relationships alike?  The same tenets that make a dating relationship work make a relationship work at the office: communicating, sharing, respect. What&amp;#039;s different is that I ultimately have to enjoy spending time with my boyfriend. But I have more patience with a coworker: If they&amp;#039;re skilled and doing the job, it&amp;#039;s a benefit if I like them, but if I don&amp;#039;t, I&amp;#039;m not necessarily going to quit or fire them. I&amp;#039;ve loved people I would never hire, and vice versa.   One criticism of dating books is that they encourage women to act like con artists. Is there a place for scheming at work? Even more so! Your boss isn&amp;#039;t going to love you: She wants you to perform. So that relationship is inherently manipulative. I think these dating techniques are more applicable to work and career, especially as the market becomes more competitive.    Why should we refuse to settle until we find the job?  Even when you do something you love, there are days when you want to give up. Passion is energy; it helps you go the distance. And don&amp;#039;t be scared shitless if you&amp;#039;re 29 and haven&amp;#039;t found the right job\u2014that&amp;#039;s the same advice I give to my 29-year-old friends about guys. I know women who spent a lot of years playing the field in their career who are just discovering what they want to do at 40.  You say the biggest mistake women make is staying too long in the wrong job. When is it time to move on?  When women come to me in a state of &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m done,&amp;quot; it can manifest in depression and anxiety. Having been divorced, I recognize you might be afraid to leave, and you feel like you&amp;#039;ve invested so much time and energy, but ultimately, you&amp;#039;ve got to take a leap. And with a job\u2014unlike with a romantic relationship\u2014if you&amp;#039;re wrong, you can go back to what you left.   If you don&amp;#039;t quit, how do you bring back the romance? Ask for a sabbatical. A lot of companies are delighted, because you&amp;#039;re off their payroll for a month. Or do an internship. You can have one foot out, one foot in, and explore other jobs and careers.   You say women should &amp;quot;treat him mean to keep him keen.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t want to be a mean girl, and I don&amp;#039;t want to work with them.  &amp;quot;Mean&amp;quot; is expecting to be respected, not popular. You&amp;#039;re not trying to make enemies, but you are going to have to have hard conversations and make hard decisions, especially as you go up the career ladder. The nice girl who&amp;#039;s always ordering the birthday cakes is putting her time and energy into the wrong things.   Do you think men have an easier time being &amp;quot;mean&amp;quot; at work? Men don&amp;#039;t consider it mean to say, &amp;quot;back off!&amp;quot; or to assert themselves or disagree with someone. They can fight like crazy in the boardroom and then play a round of golf. Men also aren&amp;#039;t as worried about being liked at work. Women are often afraid to criticize other women because they&amp;#039;re afraid they&amp;#039;re going to hurt their feelings. This is unfortunate, because constructive criticism can be really helpful.   In this economy, when everyone worries that they have a bulls-eye on their back, isn&amp;#039;t it in our best interest to be well-liked? It actually becomes less about being liked and more about performing and being respected. I&amp;#039;m not talking about being unlikable; I&amp;#039;m talking about focusing on your performance because that&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s going to protect you in this economy. In good times, bosses prefer to promote the people they like, but in hard times, they really have to be discerning because it&amp;#039;s their ass on the line. No one wants to lay off friends, but at the end of the day, this is business.    You place a lot of importance on physical appearance. Do you feel that good looks are essential to career success?  I think most women would be surprised to the degree to which they&amp;#039;re judged based on their appearance. I&amp;#039;m not a psychologist, but I&amp;#039;ve read the studies that say that people who are attractive are thought of as smarter. It&amp;#039;s not so much about being model beautiful\u2014at work, people will actually try to take you down for that\u2014but it&amp;#039;s about investing in yourself and taking care of yourself. Spend a few extra minutes to make sure your clothes aren&amp;#039;t wrinkled, you don&amp;#039;t look disheveled, that you look put-together. It&amp;#039;s the icing on the cake. You know, when I was married, I&amp;#039;d go home after work and put on PJ&amp;#039;s every day. If I had put a little more effort into my appearance, well, I&amp;#039;d probably still be divorced, but it might have made a difference...it&amp;#039;s same thing with work.   My favorite advice here is that having a life outside of work actually makes you more valuable and interesting at work.  You can&amp;#039;t think of vacation as a sign of weakness. Think of that as replenishing yourself so you have energy to apply to your career. And employers don&amp;#039;t want you complaining about how hard you work. They just want you to be productive. They want you to focus your efforts and get out at six and have a life.   Demanding what you&amp;#039;re worth makes sense, but how do we keep employers from thinking they can &amp;quot;get the milk for free&amp;quot; with so many unemployed cows out there who&amp;#039;d be happy to produce? When you negotiate, don&amp;#039;t say, &amp;quot;I deserve this. I&amp;#039;ve been working here for six years.&amp;quot; You have to think about how your efforts affect the bottom line. It&amp;#039;s a mistake to think that only salespeople are attached to revenue. Stress how you&amp;#039;ve made the company money. You also have to have empathy for your employer. Say, &amp;quot;I get this is a hard ask, but this is what I&amp;#039;ve contributed. How do we compensate me for that?&amp;quot; If not a raise, maybe there are other perks: a course, an introduction to someone your boss knows that you really admire, more vacation time.   When it comes to plans for marriage and family, you advise women to be as cagey on an interview as they would be on a date.  It&amp;#039;s wrong for an employer to think about your reproductive schedule relative to their business, but at the same time, if you make it sound like your clock is ticking, you&amp;#039;re going to scare an employer away in the same way you&amp;#039;d scare away a guy. You can say generally, &amp;quot;I expect to have a family one day.&amp;quot; Let them get to know you first, get them to understand that even with a child you&amp;#039;re still going to be a great performer.   Do dating guides really help women find love? I think applying these dating strategies to work is the best dating strategy out there. Have a great career, make your own money, build influence and respect\u2014nothing is more attractive. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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