In the three seconds it takes you to walk through a door and extend your hand to someone for the first time, that person has already made irreversible judgments about you. You send out hundreds of signals about yourself, and people read those signals and react to them long before you've had a chance to say or do anything of substance.

Camille Lavington is a communications consultant who commands substantial fees for teaching personal marketing to business people from corporate executives to mid-level managers. In You've Only Got Three Seconds, she shares her strategies for defining your personal career goals, taking inventory of your strengths and vulnerabilities, and determining what you must do, say, and wear in order to fit the role you want to fulfill.

Personal marketing isn't about social cimbing or trying to be someone you're not. Success at the end of the millennium comes to people who are versatile, who can make positive impressions in any group, who can peg their peers' or superiors' secret agendas, and use psychodynamics to get what they want. With this book, people from entry-level job applicants to stymied executives will be ready to take their internal and external makeovers into the world, make a smashing first impression, and follow through with finesse.