About

Bob Wilson is beginning his third career. After graduating from the University of Illinois and serving two years in the U.S. Army, he joined Follett Publishing Company in Chicago for four years. He then moved to New York for one year as a Reader’s Digest promotion copywriter and three at Scholastic Magazines, where one of his duties, as National Secretary of the Teen-Age Book Club—and under the unfortunate pseudonym “Pamela S. Bell”—was to take numerous member phone calls in falsetto. This led to six years at Silver Burdett Company, then a subsidiary of Time Inc., followed by editorial management positions at Houghton Mifflin and McGraw-Hill publishing companies.

After 22 years in publishing, Wilson’s second career started as an executive recruiter at Career Blazers, in New York. Success there led him to found his own career management company, Wilson McLeran, Inc., with John McLeran, a former Reader’s Digest marketing executive. Together they added other career services—most notably “outplacement” (helping recently fired or laid-off men and women find work) their clients being individuals as well as corporate clients including two divisions of General Electric, Signet Bank, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Home Insurance, and the State of Connecticut Department of Labor. The principal product used by clients—along with three-day workshops of from 3 to 50 people—was “Job-Bridge,” a multimedia career transition program named by HR Magazine as one of its “best products of the year.”

Over the course of his 23-year second career (which brings us to the 21st century and career number three), Wilson wrote the 86-page text for Job-Bridge—which included as well an “Actionbook,” Planner, and 33-minute video. Over those two-plus decades he also published ten books covering various career management topics. These were produced by John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, Career Press, and Wilson McLeran. (One of these books justified four editions; the second edition of another was printed in five languages.) Covers of all his books are shown on Wilson’s Amazon.com author page, which is part of the Vermont . . . Who Knew? presentation. Another book, Vermont Curiosities, preceded the current book and will be discussed in a blog post down the line if interest exists. Both, of course, are quite different from the constrained “how-to” style and approach of the previous ten. Articles he wrote for The New York Times Magazine, New York, and Tennis magazines over this period helped him to differentiate these styles. This was not easy. Just ask him.

ABOUT WILSON MCLERAN, INC.

Back in the 1980s, a corporate service called “outplacement” assured high-level executives that if they were laid off, the company would provide coaching and job-search assistance to help get them back to full-time employment as quickly as possible.

Wilson McLeran, Inc. created Job-Bridge in 1988 to provide the first service to help lower level employees find new employment after losing their jobs. Over the next decade, this pioneer multimedia program helped thousands of managers and clerical workers with job-search assistance. Dozens of companies—such as General Electric, Home Life Insurance, and Signet Bank—offered Job-Bridge seminars, two-day workshops, and one-on-one counseling. Job-Bridge was named a top-20 product of the year by Human Resource Executive magazine.

Then the inevitable happened. Larger outplacement companies copied our content and strategies, and eventually took much of this business for themselves. One of the components, though, our interviewing video, was based on a book—Conquer Interview Objections—we had written for the business publisher John Wiley & Sons. Seeing the job-search problems college grads were having after the turn of the century, we decided to rewrite our video and produce it for college seniors and recent graduates based on interviewing strategies introduced in the book. It is now the heart of the video program available today on this site.

The biggest difference between "Interview to Win Your First Job" and other interviewing guides is that we teach interviewees never to assume they have performed well enough to get a job offer or second interview. Before they leave the interview, we instead show them how to ask the interviewer if any weaknesses in their background might have damaged their chances for a job offer. If so, this is an opportunity to neutralize negatives—either real or perceived—and thus be sure that candidates have done all in their power to pass the first test.

WHERE I'VE WORKED

I spent 23 years as an editor, marking my start in the working world with six publishers: Scholastic, Time, Revell, Macmillan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and McGraw Hill.

WHERE I'VE PUBLISHED

I've worked with the following publishers since then, writing books and articles, and producing videos: McGraw Hill, New York Magazine, Tennis Magazine, Scholastic, The New York Times Magazine, Barron's, Globe Pequot, Wiley, and Job-Bridge.

COUNTRIES I'VE VISITED

The photos below—two to a country, taken by me or a photographer on assignment with me—represent settings in 30 countries over five continents of some of the books and articles I'll be writing about next. The photos number among the hundreds and will change every two weeks or so. Covers of previously published books appear on my Amazon.com author page; copies of my published articles are archived on this site.