About six weeks ago, I received my review copy of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success and immediately gave it to my partner and purchased two more for her brother and her best friend. The book from career columnist, Penelope Trunk is unconventional in its tone and advice and just what lost souls of Gen X & Y need to read to thrive in their work life.

Several other bloggers wrote reviews, so I wanted to round these up before I summarize my takeaways.

PunditMom in Are You “Brazen” Enough? mentions that she bought the book for her two college-age nieces. There are gems in the book irrespective of age and career stage. She writes:

Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success is an amazing little volume that should be on everyone’s bookshelf, from recent college grads to those who are old hands at the job hunt. If I had had even just a few of the pointers contained in her book when I was floundering about in my lawyering days, I might have found the focus and courage a lot sooner to leave the security of the high-paying job for the writing career I had always dreamed of.

Trunk covers everything from networking, to whether to be a “Boomeranger,” to finding ways to mine our creativity to keep from finding ourselves on the lockstep path to money but no happiness. She dispenses great advice like, “Being likeable matters more than being competent.” No one is comfortable hearing things like that, but I know from first-hand experience that truer words were never spoken.

Pamela Slim at Escape from Cubicle Nation starts by giving her post an appropriate title: Book to read for generations from any letter of the alphabet. She writes:

This book is written as the antidote to tired, old-school career “experts” like me who keep hammering the same advice over and over to the new generation of 20 and 30-something workers. As Penelope says, “the rules to success have changed.”

I think it is the aim of each new generation to provoke and challenge the next. I catch my breath when I find myself saying things like “When I was their age, I had already been working for 6 years!” or “You really need to pay your dues before you ask for so many perks.” As much as we try to act “sick,” “phat” and “tight” to prevent ourselves from appearing old and boring, we will have different opinions on work and life than the generations that proceed us.

Jason Alba at JibberJobber first runs a commentary on Trunk’s writing style (by the way, I love the way she writes. Read her blog and you’ll likely be hooked). Alba continues on with his review:

So Penelope knows about writing. She likes to write with lists, use lots of examples, and give you her raw advice and perspective. Don’t expect sugar-coating in her stuff. And if you disagree with her it doesn’t matter - most of her columns on Yahoo get hundreds of (sophomoric) comments questioning her logic but she keeps coming back with stuff that is right on target.

There is a lot to her book and I don’t want to paint it into a certain corner. But as I read through it there is one resounding theme that jumps out in every chapter: the difference between Gen Y and every other generation (somewhere Gen X seems to have gotten lost between the Baby Boomers and the YouTube/MySpace masters).

Here’s the cool thing - no matter what generation you are in this book is a must read. I found myself shaking my head a number of times saying “no way, it’s not like that” only to give in and agree with her. I’m not sure how I feel about the modern workplace as compared to the workplace of my parents, whether it’s better or worse, but the truth is it is different. And Penelope packs every single page with a broad range of information on how to compete and excel in this new environment.

At I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi likes the tactical aspects. It’s also worth clicking over for the 70+ comments. He writes:

That’s what’s interesting about the book: It includes not only advice on how to think about large, ambiguous topics like going back to grad school and office politics, but also includes tactical advice that’s actually good.

But more than tactical advice, she uses research from places like Harvard Business School – not just her personal opinions – to remind us not to feel guilty about what we’re doing. For instance, did you know that 50% of the Class of 2003 was still living at home 3 years later?

This book reminds me to stop fighting against the same things that everyone else my age is struggling with. If I wanted to live at home so I can afford to take a low-paying job that I love, that chapter on living at home would be worth the book alone. In other words, stop worrying and feeling guilty about what other people think and focus on the important goals. The best thing a book can do is reassure us, refocus us, and then give us the tools to do more than we thought we could do. This book is a great start.

You get the picture. Useful book! So here’s what I got out of it. Since I write a personal finance blog, I tapped into five tips in the book that focused on career and money. The lessons are linked and listed below.

Lesson 1: It’s not about money
Lesson 2: Professional Development
Lesson 3: Thirty is the new twenty
Lesson 4: Manage your personal life
Lesson 5: Professional Wandering

There’s a theme that runs throughout Trunk’s book: working for money’s sake is old school and passé. Trunk writes on her blog:

With little to lose, most twentysomethings use their post-college time as an opportunity for finding oneself, seeing what’s available, and trying a lot on for size. Which translates to more than eight jobs before turning 32.

So the younglings aren’t likely to be lifers or loyal and as Trunk expands in her book:

Title is not important if you’re not staying long term. And salary increases of 3 or 4 percent are ceremonial. So use the clout you earn to get training; it will make a difference in your life in a way that salary and title cannot because training can fundamentally change how you operate and what you have to offer.

People learn by experience and what better way than to have your employer foot the bill. Trunk calls this wandering. Curt Rosengren at The Occupational Adventure borrows a sailing term and calls it tacking. He writes:

There’s this myth that the path to our passions should be clear and direct. The reality is, it takes constant tacking. We take action, it carries us forward, and then at some point we realize we need to adjust our direction. Sometimes it’s only slight. Sometimes it’s big. The beauty of the sailing analogy is that as long as we have the goal in sight, it’s still taking us in that direction. We don’t have to have it exactly right.

Even Trunk didn’t get it “exactly right” the first time with her career. I’ll let PunditMom provide the final conclusion with these thoughts:

The amazing thing about Penelope is that she also lives what she preaches. She’s not just an author who happens to have stumbled on to a topic that resonates with so many. She found her own way to step off the more traditional career path, tap into her passions and creativity and carve out a successful niche for herself. And she’s nice enough to share that with the rest of us.

And share she does. BlogHer members will get to meet Trunk at BlogHer 07 during the Self-branding and Self-promotion session. She’s a master and in addition to providing career advice, she knows a thing or two about blogging and how to build the brand of you!

In case you missed it, Toby Bloomberg interviewed her earlier this year just before Trunk spoke at BlogHer Business on the panel, “Should You Blog?” I’m looking forward to hearing her thoughts at the conference in Chicago.

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Nina Smith blogs about money (and sometimes about queercareers) at Queercents.