Schmoozing: Insider Advice on Making Contacts and Building Rapport to Boost Your Career (Vault Reports Career Guide)

Like it or not, getting ahead in the workplace has always been as much about whom you know as what you know--and the youth-oriented media and consulting company Vault Reports now takes the art of connecting with those who can further this professional ascension to new heights in its Guide to Schmoozing: Insider Advice on Making Contacts and Building Rapport to Boost Your Career. Derived from the Yiddish expression for talking informally, "schmoozing," according to the firm's editorial team, "is the development of a support system, a web of people you know who you can call, and who can call you, for your mutual benefit and enjoyment. Schmoozing is the art of semi-purposeful conversation: half chatter, half exploration. Schmoozing is neither project nor process. It's a way of life." Through informative sections like "Do your research," "Listen up!", and "Starting the conversation," it offers fundamental advice in a lighthearted but realistic manner. Through pointed interviews with famous schmoozers such as author George Plimpton and attorney Bob Bennett, as well as non-celebrity schmoozers including CNN producer Sid Lipsey and Mark Kay Cosmetics Texas sales director Bridgett Bailee, it shows how schmoozing works in real life. --Howard Rothman