Those lucky enough to be employed are hopefully smart enough to realize that these days, no job comes with a lifetime guarantee.

It’s a message Harvard Business School grad Michael B. Laskoff knows from experience. In his first book, the newly published “Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass: A Survival Guide for the Recently Unemployed” (Three Rivers Press, $14), he gives some practical, been-there, survived-that advice to all those whose fruitful employment has suddenly soured.

“The lessons are applicable to anyone who lost a job suddenly or believes they’re about to, which is a pretty big audience these days,” says Laskoff, a New York resident whose expertise comes from experience.

The book doesn’t contain any touchy, feely anecdotes about discovering the color of your parachute or following your bliss to unmask your career aspirations.

“I am not a career consultant, HR professional or empowerment guru, and I don’t believe in aspirational messages,” Laskoff says. “If you’re not realistic about what it takes to get a job in today’s environment, then you won’t.”

Laskoff recently talked about the job-hunt suggestions he outlines in “Landing.”

Q: What do you recommend the recently unemployed do?

A: I say basically that there are three things everyone has to do in any sudden job loss. Whether they’ve been fired, laid-off, downsized or their position eliminated, the result is their professional life, and therefore their personal life, just got turned on its head. You’re gone. You’re done and you have child care and car payments and you can’t pay for those things, so life is a good deal less pleasant.

Q. What’s the first of the three things?

A: The first is, get angry. It’s contrary to everyone’s advice, but something bad and personal has happened, and you have to find a way to release that or it’s going to come out of its own accord (when you interview for your next job). If you act defensively in an interview, an interviewer can smell that kind of behavior and will begin to worry about it the moment it happens. In the book, I talk about taking a bit of time off before your job search so you have time to deal with this.

And, it’s important to assign the appropriate blame to yourself. It’s just too easy to say, “None of this is my doing.” That puts you into a dangerous position. It’s about understanding that you own your own fate. Even if there was nothing you could have done, you accepted the job to begin with and you stuck around while things got bad, and waited until there was no choice but to let you go. Even if you were the perfect employee, you bear some of the responsibility.

Q: What’s the second step?

A: No. 2 is, get organized. It’s premised on the idea that good job searches primarily consist of good preparation. I write about how everything you need to know about writing a good resume you can learn from the personal ads. If you look at a great personal ad, it’s short, makes clear what the writer is looking for and makes clear what that person has to offer. The resume is a marketing document, its sole job is to help you get meetings where you can market yourself.

I also strongly advocate practicing how to interview yourself. Most hiring managers have no idea how to interview you, and practicing can help you learn to walk through your background, and frame the discussion in the most self-serving way during an interview.

Q: What else do you recommend?

A: The third part of the book consists of getting out there. I don’t believe it’s possible to work on a job search 40 hours a week; I recommend about 20 to 25 hours. Then, make a serious commitment to something else, whether it’s school, volunteer work or interning in an area you might want to pursue. All things being equal, I’d rather hire a person who volunteered than someone who never missed an episode of “Oprah.”

Networking is important. There are different kinds. The notion that you should meet people and expect things to magically happen just isn’t true. You have to treat each type of networking meeting differently. Use the big dogs, the most powerful people sparingly. In most cases, they don’t have jobs to offer, but they can help you build more contacts with people who have jobs. It’s different from networking with a peer who might view you as competition in the job market. It’s about breaking down who you are meeting with in ways that help you understand who they are and what you might get.

Q: Why did you write this book?

A: I’ve lost lots of jobs and always found better ones than those which I’d lost. That’s why.

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AP-NY-03-09-04 0605EST