In the summer of 2009, Paul Merrill was laid off along with about twenty of my colleagues. The company was getting rid of its local office. Paul got a severance package and decided to use it to realize a life-long dream of starting a company. He called it “How To Geek On.”

How to Geek On’s mission was to help individuals in Information Technology get jobs
during the worst economic downturn in recent decades. The idea of helping people
move forward during this difficult time appealed to him.

Like many software engineers, he’d been through the job search several times in the previous decade. He had learned a ton about the hiring process from his
experience switching jobs. As a hiring manager, he’d learned about the other side of the
process. Paul had performed hundreds of interviews and screened thousands of resumes.

How to Geek On helped hundreds of people find jobs and remain motivated during
their job searches in 2009.

Now, Paul has taken his blog postings from HowToGeekOn.com, expanded on them, and
offered them to you. This collection of tips and thoughts about the job search and how
it works in the digital era has helped countless individuals attain the positions they
desired.

This book is for anyone searching for a job or looking to progress their career by
changing jobs. It is for those who have recently lost their jobs. It is for those who’ve
given up hope in a crowded job market.

This book is not a panacea. It is not a silver bullet. It will not deliver an offer letter to your door.

It provides a set of skills, techniques and insights that will raise your chances of
landing the job you want.

The hope of this book for you is that you learn from it. That you pick up a few skills that you didn’t have before. Job searching after all, is a skill set like any other. It can be learned!