If you’re under 50 years old, you may not know who Yana Parker was. If you’re over 50 and you’ve ever needed a resume, you most certainly know who she was. She was the author of The Damn Good Resume Guide, one of the best books on resume writing out there. I say “was” because Yana passed away in 2000.
The first edition of The Damn Good Resume Guide came out in 1986 (Ten Speed Press) and quickly became a big hit. Yana’s down-to-earth writing style makes you smile even when she’s explaining solutions to daunting resume problems.
She was a fierce advocate for the underdog. She not only believed in the under-employed (those working at positions for which they were over-qualified, usually because they had low self-esteem or other issues), but she made the under-employed believe in themselves. In fact, it was for the under-employed that she initially wrote The Damn Good Resume Guide. To her surprise, the book was embraced by job seekers of all levels of employment (right up to CEOs) and it helped revolutionize the way we all look at resume writing today.
In the mid 1990s Yana became a World Wide Web pioneer, creating one of the first job search websites, appropriately named damngood.com. With limited web technology, she created a dynamic site that drew a loyal following.
Years before the word “blog” was ever coined, Yana created The Lounge, a page on her site where she invited folks to email her questions and comments, which she posted manually each day.
In Yana’s honor this blog is called The Job Lounge. Oh, how she would have loved to use this forum to joke with us and to figure out how to help overwhelmed job seekers.
By the way, The Damn Good Resume Guide is still in print. Most libraries have it (unless it’s been stolen).
Monday, September 18, 2006
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3 comments:
Susan -
I agree with your posting: Yana would have loved the hell out of having a blog. She'd have said wildly unedited and inappropropriate things
- in multicolored type and italics - and would have been both entertained
and entertaining. The world is a much less interesting place without Yana! I can never forget her tenacity when it came to problem solving, her wild creativity, her blizzard of reminder post-its covering every surface of her apartment and her passion for the underdog (which is all of us at some point in our worklife.) I miss her.
Yana's buddy mem
Susan, I met you years ago when I drove out to Berkeley to meet Yana when I was starting up my own resume writing business in San Jose. I've moved on from that, but still have her books and still write resumes for friends and family. I sure do miss her (and you!). Glad to see you are keeping her memory alive. :-)
Sallie Mattison Young
Sallie,
You did really creative resumes, right? I think you were experimenting with 2-column resume formats that looked a little like a newsletter. Right?
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