“Let’s face it; most first dates are like job interviews with cocktails.” — Carrie Bradshaw, “Sex and the City.”
While your parents may have advised you to keep your social life separate from your career, Carrie Bradshaw found success by twisting her dating tales into a weekly newspaper column. Like the independent Carrie, University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Wendy Straker sees a parallel between single life and the job hunt and has created a new book, entitled “Sexy Jobs in the City: How to Find Your Dream Job Using the Rules of Dating” (2003, Hangover Media).
After graduating from Wisconsin with a Creative Writing degree in hand, Straker flew back home to New York and entered the daunting job search. Landing her first “real” job in the account management department of an advertising agency, Straker was discontent and longed for a more envious job.
“During the day, I would go on these informational interviews, and at night I would go on these blind dates.”
Inspired, or perhaps turned off by this ceaseless search, Straker wrote “Sexy Jobs in the City” to educate young women about how to apply the time-tested rules of dating to the job hunt.
On her quest for more creative employment, Straker explored New York and dabbled in television and magazine writing — working for ElleGirl, the New York Press, Crunch and Cosmogirl.
To create “Sexy Jobs,” Straker applied her own job experience and that of forty successful, glamorous and admirable people with great jobs. By knocking on the office doors of leading industry women, Straker interviewed designer Cynthia Rowley, well-known publicist Lara Shriftman, TV anchor Julie Chen of CBS’s “The Early Show” and Dany Levy of “DailyCandy,” and Amy Harris, story editor for “Sexy and the City.”
“Sexy Jobs” highlights the ins and outs of nine creative industries — fashion, film, publicity, television, music, magazines, broadcast journalism, advertising, and the Internet. Each chapter vividly describes the look of the field, the typical girl to guy ratio, average starting hours, potential salary, and required skills and responsibilities.
Straker hopes her book will assist students in making the transition from the comfortable, fun college environment into a real world filled with countless uncertainties.
“Wisconsin is such an amazing place and everybody seems to be so happy,” Straker said. “I was so content. It was the ideal place in so many ways, and when you’re at school, it’s hard to leave it in your mind.”
While at UW, Straker said she was left in the dark about the competitive, cutthroat industries.
“In college nobody tells you how these jobs work,” said Straker. “Nobody from HBO, CNN, MTV or Glamour comes to Wisconsin to recruit.”
Confused and ill informed about what these careers actually entailed, Straker created fantasies about such work.
“I asked myself, what are the different departments’ jobs within a certain field? Am I making up what these jobs would be like? And do I even want to be in it?”
Acting as a personal matchmaker of sorts, Straker sets readers up with sexy jobs and the women who have them, and ultimately empowers readers with the information pertinent to scoring highly coveted employment.
“Too many talented women enter the job market feeling helpless simply because they don’t know what their options are,” Straker said. “Women can do whatever they want.”
