In this timely and informative volume, Australian author Philip Kent-Hughes lays out a sensible roadmap for the newly unemployed reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic and its accompanying economic downturn. Kent-Hughes himself lost his job as a result of the pandemic—and given that it wasn’t his first time being made redundant, he decided to leverage his expertise in writing crisis management plans for large organizations to provide a blueprint for the newly unemployed. Aiming to give shell-shocked readers the ability to take a deep breath and plunge back into job hunting, Kent-Hughes methodically explains how to explore new career options if the reader’s current industry is devastated, ways to manage finances and inevitable stressors while job seeking, and methods for filling resumés with keywords that will entice prospective employers (and make it past automated screening systems).

Kent-Hughes organizes his book in an easy-to-understand format, assisting readers looking for a specific topic (such as emergency and crisis planning, interviews, creating resumes, and developing new career paths) to immediately find it. He also includes eminently practical tools, such as budgeting and application tracking templates, and lists career-minded websites (including Indeed and LinkedIn) designed to propel job leads.

Kent-Hughes’s empathetic tone will go a long way toward calming spooked readers who are worried about both their paychecks and the virus. Any reader trying to muscle through pandemic-related unemployment will find practical, plainspoken, and logical advice in Kent-Hughes’s well-written guide.

Takeaway: Kent-Hughes’s empowering counsel will give readers the confidence and the tools needed to seek new jobs and to overcome the anxiety of sudden unemployment.

Great for fans of: Richard Nelson Bolles’s What Color is Your Parachute?, Steve Dalton’s The Two-Hour Job Search, Jon Acuff’s Do Over.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: B
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A