Never Search Alone: The Job Seeker’s Playbook

“If you’re even thinking about a job search, start here.”
– Marty Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group

Based on 25 years of experience working with thousands of leaders – from early-career product managers to CEOs – Never Search Alone gives readers a time-tested, multi-step process (with exercises, tools, and templates) to find the right job now.

This new approach to looking for a job and building a good career focuses on three big ideas learned from helping thousands of job seekers:

1. Never Search Alone. Because your emotional balance is the most important thing you need to manage in a job search, you need a support group of fellow job seekers that will help you turn insecurity and anxiety into hope, motivation, confidence, and accountability.
2. Candidate-Market Fit. If product-market fit drives company success, candidate-market fit drives career success. So, before you begin interviewing and networking you need to identify precisely what you want and what the market wants. Phyl shows how this key step will help you figure out the intersection between your hopes and dreams and market realities.
3. Four Legs to the Negotiations Stool. There are *four* legs to the negotiations stool: compensation, budget, resources, and support. The last three drive your success in the next job, which is why Phyl asks job seeker’s to emphasize that as much or even more than compensation (though, of course, they will also show you how to ask for more money).

Foreword by Marty Cagan (Excerpt)

For more than 20 years, I’ve encouraged people who are serious about their career to meet Phyl Terry.

Yes, Phyl is one of the best-connected leaders in the industry.

Yes, Phyl is a genuine human being who truly cares about you per- sonally and your career.

But what really sets Phyl apart is that he understands how to harness the power of community.

This book is all about scaling the magic that is Phyl.

I have seen Phyl and the techniques he advocates dramatically improve the career trajectories of countless people.

And not just people who are in mid-career, dissatisfied with their current job, and want to find better.

These techniques are at least as valuable for new college graduates looking for that all-important first professional job.

Or another very difficult but increasingly common situation: older employees who find themselves in need of a new job, yet encountering systemic ageism at every turn.

Which is to say, nearly everyone in the professional workforce can benefit from the techniques in this book.

And one more pro tip: it’s a good idea to learn these techniques before you need them.

When you are able to find a job that you truly enjoy, that leverages your unique skills and talents, where you can receive the coaching necessary to continue to grow and develop to reach your potential, and where you can make a real contribution, you have meaningfully improved your life.

My hope is that this book will help countless people to improve their lives.

— Marty Cagan
Founder, Silicon Valley Product Group December 2021