Maybe you’re in college and freaking out about finding a job when you graduate. Maybe you are a college grad who sent out a million résumés to companies across dozens of fields and didn’t get any responses. Maybe you expected the folks at your college career center to open doors for you, but they didn’t. Or maybe you took a job that you didn’t love because you weren’t sure what you wanted to do, and now you feel stuck.

Or, you don’t have a college degree at all and are totally lost on the question of what to do with yourself. (We can’t lie—not having a degree makes it tougher. But it is possible. More on that inside the book.)

We have found that among people who are looking for a job, there’s an overwhelming sense of paralysis. You don’t know how to start. You sit down every morning at your computer and psych yourself up by saying, “Today is the day I will find an awesome job!” But you don’t know what to do, so you troll unhelpful job boards and send off résumés to nameless entities.

We want to help you beat the statistics and find a fulfilling, challenging, lucrative career that you will love. Even in this cruddy economy, with newspaper headlines blaring about unemployment, you can do it.

The point of this book is to help you focus. To switch your goal from the vague, paralysis-inducing Get a job to the specific, strategy-friendly Get a job in the beauty industry.

A lot of people are getting paid a lot of money to keep your bathroom stocked with beauty products. You could be one of those people. Employers are looking for experience and passion, and you’re about to have that in spades.

This book is designed to help you stand out from the competition, so that when you do get an interview, you have a better chance of landing the job.