The Go-Getter Girl's Guide: Get What You Want in Work and Life (and Look Great While You're at It)

By Debra Shigley

An empowering career and lifestyle guide for twentysomethings, this is Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office for women looking to be the "it" girl and succeed on the job

Every office has one - a Go-Getter Girl - someone who seems to just know certain stuff about how to get the plum jobs/lifestyle she wants and damn, always looks great while she's at it. Magic? No, it's about strategizing--and The Go-Getter Girl's Guide shows you how.

Born out of interviews with hundreds of successful, stylish young women--including award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, and bestselling novelist Emily Giffin--The Go-Getter Girl's Guide provides a no-excuses, big-picture way of thinking about your life and career, as well as day-to-day strategies for how to:

- Navigate the tricky terrain of office politics
- Find and use a mentor
- Figure out when it's time to get a new job (or career)-and have the courage to act
- Dress (and groom!) for success
- And take care of yourself physically and emotionally

Combining the practical career wisdom of What Color Is Your Parachute? with the savvy fashion guidance of The Little Black Book of Style, this dynamite guide is sure to bring out the Go-Getter in generations of women to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781429929141

Debra Shigley

A graduate of Harvard University and Georgia State College of Law, Debra Shigley is a journalist who completed her J.D. while working as a full time senior editor for Atlanta magazine. She has appeared as a lifestyle expert on such national television programs as ABC's The View and TBS's Movie and a Makeover and has written for numerous publications, including Allure, Fast Company, Daily Candy, and Neiman Marcus's The Book. She lives in Atlanta with her husband.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

What It’s All About

Chances are if you picked up this book, you’ve always been something of a go-getter. You’re someone who’s cared about doing well in school and in your career, and you’ve worked hard—and excelled—throughout high school, college, maybe even grad school. You may have even graduated at the top of your class, with an accolade-packed résumé, and have lined up a sweet job at a Fortune 500 company. Finally, that golden door to your future edged its way open, and you entered the work world.

But then, all of a sudden, you found yourself asking an unfamiliar question: Now what? You probably never expected that you’d be feeling a little . . . lost. And it was only the beginning.

For many of us young women, the path to success starts out so very clear. In school there are grades, trophies, rankings, and degrees. There are timelines and deadlines for what we should be accomplishing when—not to mention a set schedule of where we need to be, what classes we need to take, and what concepts we need to master, at least as a starting point. A friend of mine who is now a successful reporter at a major newspaper puts it like this: In school, it was always so clear what was the ‘right’ thing to do. You do the reading and the homework professors tell you to do. If you get a B+, you go see the teacher, make the corrections, and, boom, perfect paper. If you’re good at it, you can go through all of your schooling with few mistakes and get nothing but praise. But then you get out there in the real world, and it’s just not like that. It’s a lot less clear when you’re on the right track.

As you may have already discovered, navigating the work world can be a constant question mark—and the things we as young women obsess about range from the major to the mundane and back again. On any given day, you may have wondered things like: How can I get that interview at my dream company? How do I impress my boss? Are these pants too tight for the office? Do I join in to my cubicle mate’s gossiping or tune it out? Can I leave early for my yoga class? Is this job right for me, and what job should I be looking for next? Is it okay to go stockingless in the summertime? How can I make sure I get assigned to that coveted account or project? Should I ask for a raise?

If you’ve ever asked these questions—or it hasn’t occurred to you to ask—then this is the book for you. This guide is not a gentle primer on the world of work. It is not a manual for getting by at the office or being an average employee—not that there’s anything wrong with those goals. What this book is, is a practical guide for what it takes to get ahead in your career—and to create the job and life of your dreams—and it is founded on a set of simple, time-tested principles that work. This book contains those essential secrets, those of Go-Getter Girls: the driven, stylish, successful young women (many of them famous) who’ve been there, done that—recently. Through commonsense wisdom, The Go-Getter Girl’s Guide will help you on your road to professional and personal success, and in it you will find a no-excuses, big-picture way of thinking about your life and career, as well as specific, day-to-day strategies for how to:

navigate the tricky terrain of office politics

find and use a mentor

figure out when it’s time to get a new job (or career)—and have the courage to act

dress (and groom!) for success

take care of yourself physically and emotionally

and much more

Sometimes, no one is there to tell you how to format a business letter, much less put one foot in front of the other to achieve all of your long-term career goals. But let’s face it, if being successful were so easy, everyone would be! Every young woman would have the exciting, fulfilling, challenging job; great salary; and thriving social calendar—not just a select and seemingly lucky few. And, deep down, you want what those women have got! Being in the middle of the pack is simply not enough. You want to excel—maybe even be a star. You’ve already learned that getting what you want out of life is about not just working harder but working smarter. All of which is why you picked up this book.

Maybe you’ve thought, If only I could chart out the directions when it comes to my career: how do I get from point A to point B, and what is my next step? As you know, in the working world, the answer can be far from obvious, but one thing is for sure: achieving your dreams does not happen by accident. Along the way, we all need a bit of guidance and, sometimes, a ton of inspiration. I hope this book will provide you both, along with a possible answer to help you solve virtually any work-world conundrum you may face—a Go-Getter Girl’s answer, that is.

Curious? Well, let’s get started!

1.

The Birth of the

Go-Getter Girl

The summer before my senior year at college, I really wanted to be lazy. No more shamefully underpaid journalism internships for me. I had spent previous semesters toiling practically wage free at places like Dateline NBC and Fast Company magazine. But this summer, I thought, I’m just going to have fun. In retrospect, I think this was code for, I’m about to graduate from college and I really have no clue what I want to do with my life or how to go about it, so I think I’ll just procrastinate a little longer! I took up a friend’s offer to move to New York and share a sweet rent-controlled sublet in Midtown, and the day after I arrived, I found myself a hostessing job at a hip downtown restaurant. There, the staff was a perfect slice of New York’s glittering, glamorous, wannabe life. The bartenders—all tall, dark, and Appaloosa-like—were models; the predominantly blond, buff, and all-American waitstaff were actors and singers; and the hostesses, a mix of exotic-looking beauties, were all dancers.

The weeks passed, and I scurried along, delivering menus and crossing names off the always-pages-long waiting list, less fazed than the rest of the staff by the occasional celebrity sighting. (When Keanu Reeves showed up, you’d think the president had arrived!) Less fazed, that is, until one day a lesser-known-boldface name walked in: Soledad O’Brien, then the host of NBC’s Weekend Today.

"Oh my gosh, do you know who that is?" I gushed to my fellow hosts, all hyperactive and borderline girl-crush. But I didn’t approach her. My gut told me not to disturb the famous lady with a stroller, hubby, and what appeared to be in-laws in tow. The next day, however, I was sitting in a park outside my apartment, feeling a bit bored with the hostessing gig, and at the same time a little ballsy, and I thought, Oh, what the hell, I’m going to write her a letter. I got out a pen and handwrote a three- or four-page letter, starting with the oh-so-original phrase, I’ve never written a fan letter before. I told her how much I admired her work, then explained my interest in television broadcasting and my experiences as a summer intern at two news outlets. Finally, I said that I didn’t have a clue what to pursue after graduation and asked if she would ever be willing to chat with me. I included my phone number and address and sent it off to Soledad O’Brien, c/o Weekend Today at Rockefeller Plaza—to what I figured was surely a black hole of weirdo fan mail and never-to-be-opened press kits.

A few days later, I was sitting in my apartment, watching MTV, when the phone rang. I picked up—okay, you know what’s about to happen—and heard a chirpy, television-toned voice at the other end. Hello, is Debra there? This is Soledad O’Brien. I couldn’t believe it! She said she had received my letter and asked me to come down to the show and have lunch. I was speechless. Days later I found myself sitting in the Today Show studio at 30 Rockefeller Center, and then at a restaurant with Soledad. (She ate a monster hamburger, confiding that she had just found out she was pregnant with her second child.)

Soledad was all business. Her first words when we sat down were a brisk, So what do you have for me?—meaning, fire away with the list of questions I was sure glad I’d prepared: How do I break into the field? (Producing, not on air.) How important are looks? (Very, but everyone will want you to change something so you just have to get over it.) How can you manage work and family? (You make it work.) At the end of our little meeting she generously offered to let me come visit whenever I wanted throughout the summer. I accepted her offer and went to visit every few weeks. Soledad set up mini–training sessions/informational interviews with other members of the staff and crew, and she let me sit in on some meetings and hang out with her behind the scenes, including when she was getting her makeup and hair done. She even started referring to me as her faux intern. Who could have known that a simple, honest, handwritten letter would lead to such an invaluable introduction into the world of TV news?

I certainly didn’t at the time, even if my instincts helped me stumble in the right direction. It wasn’t until after I entered the working world, first as an entry-level video journalist at CNN, and then as an editor for Atlanta magazine, that I made a startling observation: some women do know a set of unwritten, nearly second-nature rules about how to go after what they want and get it.

MEET SUZANNE

Suzanne is a young woman who, say, just started working at your office. She is smart, savvy, sophisticated, and stylish. She walks briskly into the conference room with a sparkle in her stride. She opens her mouth to speak, and all eyes turn, backs straighten, and everyone pays attention. Her words, filled with substance and thoughtfulness, pour forth polished and with just enough precision. She has presence—vibrance even. Above all else, Suzanne appears to be self-aware. But at the same time, her charisma is completely sincere.

As she speaks, you’re wondering (hoping?) whether there is anything wrong with Suzanne. You glance from her ensemble (a tidy navy Nanette Lepore–looking suit) to her hands (which, if not manicured with some pale pinky color, are always neatly groomed) to her shoes (fashionable spectator heels with just a splash of pizzazz). Even the folders of documents she’s using for her presentation that day are placed in front of her all neat and organized—not unlike her entire office, you’ve noticed, which remains relatively clutter free even during deadline week.

The degree of Suzanne’s substance and style is so impressive that, at first, you are—oh gosh, it kills to admit it—a little intimidated by her. Naturally, part of you wants not to like her—she’s just too poised and polished! She can’t possibly be down-to-earth, you think. But then you see her in passing around the office enough times to challenge that initial impression. She’s always smiling, and you’ll occasionally spot her in the break room making conversation with everyone from your boss to her secretary to the interns about, say, last night’s American Idol episode. And then you’re assigned to work on the same team as her for a project. She’s filled with ideas on how to get the job done (when did she find time to do all that extra research?), acts respectfully and appreciatively to everyone on the team, stays later than you and comes in earlier when it’s crunch time, and even volunteers to organize the food and beverage runs. Of course, she simply wows the bosses with the final product. You see that Suzanne is ambitious and focused, but you start to realize that she’s just plain cool. In other words, she is so not a

Reviews for The Go-Getter Girl's Guide

[booksniff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quick, enjoyable read. Good info.