Professional Training Books

I thought this book was just okay. The questions at the end of each section were very helpful, however i noticed a few typos and realized some of the answers were wrong. I only noticed 2 errors, however it makes me wonder how many more there might have been that i did not notice.

Everybody learns differently, so this book might work for you. However, I read the first two chapters, and never opened it again. The NCE exam is a multiple choice exam... this book's fill in the blank and short essay style questions absolutely did not help me prepare for the NCE. The fill in the blank questions were extremely picky at a level of detail not on the actual NCE (I took it April 16.) Yet, the "summaries" offered in each chapter did not cover a large portion of the material covered in my Masters counseling program. I also found it to be a boring read, worse than most textbooks. Buy the Encyclopedia of Counseling instead!

If you are planning to become a nationally certified counselor or preparing to to take comprehensive exams in doctoral, specialist, or master's degree programs, Becoming a Professional Counselor is the ideal resource for you. Updated and expanded to offer you the guidance you need to become nationally certified by the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) or the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC). Clear and concise, the authors discuss, step by step, topics such as human growth and development; social and cultural foundations; the helping relationship; group dynamics, process, and counseling; appraisal of the individual; research and evaluation; and professional orientation. Each chapter provides an outline, summary, list of important terms and names (which are keyed to the glossary at the end of the book), and practice tests. This precise, insightful manual is an invaluable tool, with its success-proven formula of summarization, testing, and review.

If you are looking for an easy way to prepare for your board exams - this does a nice job. What can I say - it was my study guide and I passed. Enough said! :)

From the PGA Teaching Manual to The PGA Manual Of Golf I have had the opportunity to gain the knowledge that has help me become a good coach and teacher and not just a instructor. If you are serious about your game and want to get better I sincerly recomend that you add The PGA Manual Of Golf to your library. Coach H Turk Walker

After having some trouble with my swing, I knew that I had to better understand the basics of the game in order to improve. I got this book as a gift and it really helped me define the fundamentals of golf and improved my play. I enjoy the game more now. The concise and straighforward presentation was easy to read. The format made it easy to find just what I was looking for. I highly recommend this as a great gift to the golfer in your life!

This is one of the most comprehensive books on golf around. There is a wealth of information on virtually every aspect of the game, from the physical mechanics of making the stroke, to the mental side of playing. Everything in here is required knowledge for anyone playing golf, or someone looking to get started.

Probably my only problem with the book is the lack of exercises listed. A great many appear as pictures with short captions, but many of these drills may be helpful to a variety of players. If performed incorrectly, they may damage your game, which is probably why they were not described in detail, but given that almost every segment ends with "Listed to what your PGA instructor says", it would be nice to know that the PGA trusts its readers to do just that.

Another part that would have been nice, but not neccesary, would be a more in-depth section on club design and construction. With so many people going out to buy custom made equipment, a little more information on exactly what standards are used to determine club length etc. might have put some people's minds at ease when at the pro shop. We all trust the PGA and its professionals, but knowing what they know isn't going to detract all that much from our experience. Rather, it can help us understand why we pay more for fitted gear.

In sum, buy this before you buy any other book on golf. Then, if you still feel you need more even with an instructor, shop around.

This book was a poor choice for me.

I am taking up golf for the first time so I was looking for a book that would be very specific to the fundamentals. I wanted step by step instructions that included detailed pictures. I also wanted concise information on golf rules, etiquette, and equipment technology trade-offs.

This book has a lot of information but it depends on word after word to tell its story. Very few pictures are included to supplement the information. Therefore, it fails almost totally at my first requirement for detatiled fundamentals. The second requirement is partially met. There is information available on many topics but it is not concise.

Overall, reading this book was like sitting through a friend's vacation slide show. I listen to all the general comments and tangents(which someone else may find interesting), waiting for the specific nugget I'm interested in, but ultimately fall asleep.

If you enjoy broad discussions or want a higher level overview, this book may be right for you - but it did not meet my requirements.

I've got this book as a reference for the course I'm taking in school of public health. I got it and I finished it in 3-4 days. An excellent book, very easy to read and follow. Excellent surveys and very usefull points. I highly recommend this book for whoever that thinks (s)he want to become a teacher, a trainer and above all trains the trainer.
As a medical resident, I used lessons I've learned from this book and the result was excellent. I'm looking for other books written by the author.

The book is a good one but, be careful !!! It has only 183 pages and is useless without the Trainer's Guide of the same author that is NOT included with this book and is NOT included in the price.

An indespensible book for novice to sophistocated trainers. Anyone can learn something from this book. Perfect for managers with little training knowledge. It takes you from needs assessment through handling difficult training situations. Walks you step-by-step in a user friendly fashion. A perfect book! A must have!

This is a must read for anyone involved in training from novice to sophisticate. It's a reader-friendly book chock full of information. Karen takes the reader from assessing needs through evaluating training. She covers classroom diversity, group management, difficult training situations, cost/benefit analysis and much, much more! You'll never be bored!

This is an excellent and very easy resource to use to teach and learn training. I use it in a senior level college course as a text. It covers the all of the critical topics required to learn how to train effectively.

This book has assisted me in my growth as an office professional and as an administrative assistant. I have been in this business for at least four years and I have so much to learn. Everyone in my organization can see the changes and transformations I have made with the tips and tools I have used in this book. Even when you think you know it all, there is still something to learn that did not know yesterday. To all who are not afraid of learning, BUY THIS BOOK!!

Thanks,
ME

I order the book and I started to read it as soon as I got it out of the box. I also ordered the Webster"s secretarial handbook. This book was a lot better and had useful information. The Valuable office professional was a bit confusing to read. The information was very pointless.

Burke's invaluable 'Valuable Office Professional' has saved our organization both the headaches of administrative training as well as the cost of on-going educational maintenance. The beauty of her insight applies quite poignantly to help increase the productivity of not only the office assistant but CEO's alike. Recommended for all who endeavor to succeed in corporate America.

This book was great! I have Michelle Burke's five core competencies hanging in my office to let others know how seriously I take my career. I have read the book several times and have found it extremely useful and motivating. Great Book for anyone at any stage of their career.

I'm on my third time with this disc, you'll have to watch it at least that many times just to get clued in. This is basically Joey Lott's love letter to himself. He types and talks, types and talks, etc. He never tells the student what's coming or why. So.. you watch him type not knowing what to look for, where the project is going or how your own approach should be structured. Basically, he goes through the actionscript code lighting fast and the gives a shallow "quickie" summation at the end of each chapter of what you just saw, after you're already past it. Time and time again, chapter after chapter you'll watch Joey type. If you want to educate yourself on the "how" and "why" of actionscript and be able to formulate your own game plan for your Flash Projects, look elsewhere. The main thing you'll come away with in this DVD is the knowledge that the author knows it. (But, he just can't teach it to you.) I gave it a two, because it goes through quite a few chapters.

I only wish there were more products like this. While not delving deeply into the syntax of AS2 or the theory of OOP programming (doesn't cover authoring your own classes)it does cover the basics throughly. It walks you step by step through one useful example after another. Have ADD? No problem just load this puppy up plug in you ear phones and you're in the zone.

Honestly, before reviewing this CD, I was a little skeptical about using CDs to learn something like Actionscript. I felt that I would probably need to invest in some good reference books and take a class at a local training center.

I was very surprised how well put together I found the CD. I was familiar with Joey Lott's written work like the Macromedia Flash MX 2004 ActionScript Bible and Complete Flash Remoting MX. However, I had never used any other material from him before.

The CD interface was easy to navigate. You can rewind, fast forward, stop and other features. The most valuable feature I found though, was actually the pause feature.

Once I would watch the instruction, I would pause it, minimize (resize) and try it right then on Flash MX 2004. This helped reinforce my learning, as well as, prove to me I could do it.

Lott's examples and techniques were easy to understand and follow.

If you are not the "book learning-type person," or like me, you just don't always have the time to read a 1,000 page book, try the line of CDs from (...)

Loren is also the Group Manager of D-MAG.org, the Digital Media Artists Group in Lexington, KY.

Found this book very informative. Provides steps that could be taken to create a competency based program. Includes competency creation, assessment and delivery options. Lots of great ideas.

I was struggling to write competencies. I searched the net and questioned colleagues to no avail. I decided to take a stab at finding a book to help and found one by searching on Amazon. This was coupled with Competnecy Based Performance Improvement. I have been able to get the job done with ease.

This book is a good 100-page introduction to the use of competencies to enhance learning in organizational settings. The author overviews the nature of competencies, the creation of competency models, the design of competency-based curricula, the implementation of competency-based learning and the eventual evaluation of these efforts. The author's points are illustrated through real-world case studies of competency-based learning at the HON Company, Sears University, Kodak Latin America, the Bank of Montreal, and Myer Grace Brothers--a diverse sampling of organizational settings.

The book does not focus on non-training applications of competencies, such as employee selection or job classification. This is a limitation in scope that may cause some potential readers to look elsewhere for such information. Interested readers may also choose to engage with the more in-depth sources the author has mined for information about organizational learning (Competency-Based Performance Improvement: A Strategy for Organizational Change) and evaluation of training (Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels). The author serves the training community well by providing a condensed presentation of these works, empowering readers to decide if they will benefit from further exploration.

The author adopts Scott Parry's definition of a competency as a "...cluster of knowledge, skills and attributes...that can be improved through training and development." This restriction of competencies to the trainable matches the author's learning focus, but is not congruent with other definitions which include personal characteristics that may not be easily trainable. Because of this, the author's approach may not be useful to readers that use competencies more broadly. Many competency frameworks--such as the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's, cited in the book--include competencies based on mental abilities and personality constructs. They are regarded by psychologists as less trainable that "subject-matter domain" competencies such as Legal Knowledge or Human Resources Management. The author--and his readers--need to face this distinction in deciding how to develop--or whether it is possible to develop--specific employee competencies.

Books are valuable both for the questions they answer and for the questions they raise. This book does both. It is worth stealing from your company's corporate library. Enjoy!

This book is good but not the best, if youre studying for an entry level civil service test. Many of its questions are on motors. A good basic electricity textbook by Floyd would help better. Good Luck!

J.J. CORTEZ SAYS IT IS GREAT

I took the intro test and I've got an MSEE (almost finished a PHd. Admittedly I've been away from practice for years. However, I found at least three arguable choices and one outright wrong answer in the first exam. "Autoranging" does not mean the capability to change scales, it means scales are changed automatically. Anyway I enjoyed the test and found it fairly comprehensive and a good refresher. I just HATE finding typos in technical books, especially if it's something I'm being graded on. I hope the rest of the book is more accurate and I'll be happy to trade email with the editors if they wish to do so.

It's so refreshing to review a six sigma publication that doesn't pretend to be "rocket science", I particularly enjoyed the extremely simple application of the six sigma methodology and the de- mystifying of the six sigma methodology that tends to be extremely mystified in the majority of six sigma publications. This publication would be an excellent addition to any internal training initiative endeavouring to educate and inform employees of the intentions of this quality tool in a non intelectual way that allows for the integration of more complex mathematical methods of data collection, the clear way that the selection and use of control charts were presented was even understood by my colleauges who admit to being affraid of math. All in all this publication is a practical handbook for breaking the uninitiated into the six sigma philosophy.

The author skillfully manages to make learning relatively advanced statistics easy through stories, examples and anecdotes. Where the skills comes in is the wide range of complex topics that are introduced and clearly explained. To a highly technical reader this may come across as either condescending. However, the fact is that all of the important details and techniques are covered in great detail, and are wrapped in friendly prose. This ensures that hard-to-learn concepts need not be hard to learn, nor the learning process intimidating.

What I like is the systematic coverage of key concepts and knowledge areas, each of which builds upon the preceding topic. The book starts with compelling business reasons for embarking on a 6-Sigma initiative, and what 6-Sigma entails. It them introduces an approach for reducing cycle time and improving quality in a 2- and 4-step process. After establishing that framework, the book shows how to sustain the improvements using key indicators for process stability and capability, and how to effectively employ statistical process controls to proactively track them.

The foregoing alone would make this an excellent introductory book on 5-Sigma, but the author goes on to tackle advanced topics such as design of experiments, quality function deployment and benchmarking. These are certainly integral components of a complete 6-Sigma initiative, but I didn't expect to find them covered in an introductory book. I also liked the complete coverage of basic TQM tools and techniques at the end of the book.

If you need to either learn the fundamentals of 6-Sigma or train a non-technical workforce this is an ideal book. If you are going to teach or facilitate a 6-Sigma workshop you'll also want the author's "Six Sigma Instructor Guide" (ISBN 1884180140), which provides a syllabus and learning objectives that use this book as the student text.

As I was reading this book, I felt like I was at a sales presentation. Lots of razzmatazz and little substance. It just skimmed over everything and didn't really explain anything. Then I got to the back of the book and found all the pages of products for sale by the author's company and realized that it was a sales presentation.

Wendy, if you have a sister named Sarah, I am your first cousin (in California)....if not, please disregard...sorry to bother you. Sue Browning sbrowning@vision-quest.net

Because it's written by an MD and written for parents plus professionals, you'll find a
little bit better advice than most sources. Chapters cover general information, causes,
"looks like ADD but isn't", learning disabilities, perceptual motor difficulties, mood,
evaluating ADD children, treatment, drugs, and management techniques. Its short and
concise. You won't waste a lot of time reading through tech stuff OR fluff stuff.

the book isn't that great to read, especially for a organizational behavior class. it doesn't really go in depth about certain things.

I took a bachelors course on Organizational Behavior from Dr. Shani at Cal Poly in 1996. Since then, I have used the book as a resource in graduate studies and in my team and leadership development work. The experiential learning method is a fantastic method that works especially well with teams. I highly recommend this paperback. I would rate this edition higher but have yet to see the updates. If it is anything like the fifth edition, you will not be disappointed.