What Color Is Your Parachute? 2013: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers

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Overview

The world's most popular job-search book is updated for 2013 to tailor its long-trusted guidance with up-to-the-minute information and advice for today's job-hunters and career-changers.

Career expert Richard (“Dick”) N. Bolles has now written forty-one books all with the same title: What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. In order  to tailor his authoritative guide to the current job- market, Bolles not only updates the book ...

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What Color Is Your Parachute? 2013: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers

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More About This Book

Overview

The world's most popular job-search book is updated for 2013 to tailor its long-trusted guidance with up-to-the-minute information and advice for today's job-hunters and career-changers.

Career expert Richard (“Dick”) N. Bolles has now written forty-one books all with the same title: What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. In order  to tailor his authoritative guide to the current job- market, Bolles not only updates the book each year,  but he also reconceives it, reinvents it, and rewrites it,  so that one year’s edition is often vastly different from  the year before. This is the case with the 2013 edition.  Inventions in the book this year include a brand-new  transferable skills grid, a novel way to discover what fields  you would most like to work in, and a revamped version  of his famed self-inventory instrument, the Flower Exercise.

What Color Is Your Parachute? is the world’s most popular job-hunting guide, and it has helped millions discover their unique gifts, skills, and interests. This has allowed them to land a job even in hard times, and to create for themselves a new, interesting, and inspiring career and life.

With fresh insights into resumes, networking, interviewing, salary negotiation, entrepreneurship, and social media, What Color Is Your Parachute? has everything you need to dust off your motivation and find your dream job.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher
One of the first job-hunting books on the market. It is still arguably the best.  And it is indisputably the most popular.”
—Fast Company
 
“Ideally, everyone should read What Color Is Your Parachute? in the  tenth grade and again every year thereafter.”
—Fortune
 
“What Color Is Your Parachute? is about job-hunting and career-changing,  but it’s also about figuring out who you are as a person  and what you want out of life.”
—Time 
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781607741473
  • Publisher: Ten Speed Press
  • Publication date: 8/14/2012
  • Edition description: Revised
  • Pages: 368
  • Sales rank: 15,508
  • Product dimensions: 6.12 (w) x 8.84 (h) x 1.09 (d)

Meet the Author

RICHARD N. BOLLES has led the job-search field for more than 40 years. A member of Mensa and the Society for Human Resource Management, he has been the keynote speaker at hundreds of conferences. Bolles holds a bachelor's degree cum laude in physics from Harvard University, a master's degree from General Theological (Episcopal) Seminary in New York City, and three honorary doctorates. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: How to Find Hope

     It is a strange world we find ourselves in, these days. Old rules are being rewritten. Things are changing that we never thought would change. Events are happening that we thought we would never see. Things we used to take for granted, now are vanishing. Things don’t work the way they used to. And here we are, trying to plot a new course for our life, still needing help with the essential question of our existence: 
Where do I go from here with my life? 
     Maybe things are going well in our lives, right now. Or maybe they’re not. We may have a life that is unfolding just as we’d hoped. Or our lives may have turned into a nightmare, and we have no idea how we’re going to get out of our present predicament. Never mind. So long as we have hope, we’ll be all right. The one thing we must not be is hopeless. So, it must be hope that we seek, above and before all else; the only question is, how do we find it? Well, there are four keys.
 
The First Key to Finding Hope
     Experts have discovered, over the years, what is the absolute minimum for finding Hope. And it is just this: Hope depends upon taking care that we have at least two alternatives, in every situation we find ourselves, and with every task confronting us. 
 
Not just one way to describe ourselves, but two ways, at least. 
Not deciding upon just one career, but two careers, at least.
Not getting trained or retrained for just one kind of job, but two different kinds of jobs, at least.
Not just one way to hunt for a job, but two ways, at least.
Not hunting just for one job, but two jobs, at least.
Not going after just one size company, but two sizes, at least, small or large.
Not just choosing one place where we really would like to find work, but two places, at least.
Not finding just one way to approach a place that interests us, but two different ways, at least.
Not securing just one job offer, but two job offers, at least.
 
And so on. And so forth.
     To have only one plan, one option, in any situation, is a sure recipe for despair. I’ll give you a simple example. In a study of 100 job-hunters who were using only one method to hunt for a job, typically 51 abandoned their search by the second month. That’s more than half of them. They lost Hope. On the other hand, of 100 job-hunters who were using two or more different ways of hunting for a job, typically only 31 of them abandoned their search by the second month. That’s less than one-third of them. The latter kept going because they had Hope. 
     And so this truth should always be on your mind: In order to never become hopeless, you want to be sure that in every situation you find yourself, you’re not putting all your eggs in just one basket. You must determine to always have at least two alternatives, in every challenge you are facing, that you may overcome—and live what the ancients called “a victorious life.” 
 
The Second Key to Finding Hope
     In any situation, no matter how much we may feel we are at the mercy of vast forces out there, that are totally beyond our control, we can always find something that is within our control, however small, and work on that. 
To illustrate my point, some years ago, when I was doing a lot of counseling, not just about careers, a friend of mine asked me if I would be willing to see someone he knew. Her name was Mary. She had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or MS. She had been to a wide range of medical specialists: neurologist, psychologist, internist, you name it. They all had declared there was nothing they could do to help her with the disease. My friend said, “Would you see her?” “Sure,” I said, “but I’m not sure there’s anything I can do.”
      The next day my friend brought her over. She walked very stiffly up the front sidewalk, came in, sat down, and after exchanging a few pleasantries, I got down to business. “Mary,” I said, “what is multiple sclerosis?” “I don’t know,” she said, in a dull, emotionless voice. “Well then,” I said, “that makes us even; because I don’t know, either. But here’s what I propose. I’m sure that a huge proportion of whatever MS is, is out of your control. There’s nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can’t be 100 percent. There’s got to be some proportion—let’s say it’s even just 2 percent, or 5 percent—that is within your control. We could work on that. Do you want to begin that journey?” She said yes. Over the next few weeks she improved, and finally was free of all symptoms (typical of the disease for a spell, but this lasted for a very long time), and now—free of all stiffness—she became a model on 57th Street in New York City.
So it is, that in any situation you find yourself, no matter how overwhelmed you may feel, no matter how much you may feel you’re at the mercy of things that are just beyond your control, some part of it is within your control: 2 percent, 5 percent, who knows? There is always something you can work on. And often, changing that little bit results in changing a whole lot. Maybe not as dramatic a change as with Mary; but change nonetheless.
     Above all else, it gives you Hope. I am not as powerless as I thought.
This certainly applies to any time we are out of work, particularly if it drags on and on. To paraphrase what I said to Mary, but now I’m talking to those of you who are job-hunters or career-changers: I’m sure that a huge proportion of the situation you are facing, is out of your control. There’s nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can’t be 100 percent. There’s got to be some proportion—let’s say it’s even just 2 percent—that is within your control. Determine to find what that is. Then throw all your energies into working on it. Who knows what a difference that may make!
     [Oh, by the way, some examples of what is within your control: getting more sleep; drinking more water (we usually need more water than we think we do); walking more; reading the book 14,000 Things to Be Happy About1; doing the Flower Exercise (chapter 5, here), learning to become more observant of the world around you; listening harder to other people; getting into a supportive community with other job-hunters; reading this book twice; rethinking your job-hunt; talking more to successful job-hunters, asking them what they did, step by step, to find work. And, like that.]
 
The Third Key to Finding Hope
     Assume that nothing that happens to us is just senseless and meaningless, including being out of work for a long time. In the context of our total life, it will eventually turn out to have meaning. 
     I recall a talk I heard many years ago, that made a deep and lasting impression on me. It was a doctor speaking; a doctor turned researcher, as it happened. He was reporting on a study that some colleagues had made of Healing, at the hospital where he worked in New York City. They had long known that some people healed faster than others, but now they wanted to find out why. I cannot cite the study; I lost track of it, over the years. But I can tell you what I remember.
     As I recall, they searched through their records of discharged patients to find matched pairs: essentially two people of the same age, with the same background, the same basic health record, who had undergone the same procedure or operation in that hospital. They chose the pairs where one member of the pair healed faster than the other, often by a wide margin. The doctors then contacted each pair and questioned each one of them at length, to find out what was different about the person who healed faster. 
     The common explanations that would occur to any thoughtful person proved to have no correlation with the rate of healing. Was the one who healed faster more physically fit than the other? No. More optimistic than the other? No. Well, then, was it their habits: eating, sleeping, exercising? No. Was it their family history? No. Was it their status as single or married? No. Was it whether they believed in God, or not? No. Well then, what was it?
     To the researchers’ great surprise, it turned out that those who healed faster believed that everything that happened to them had meaning, even if they didn’t know what that meaning was, at the time. The ones who healed slowly did not believe this. 
And so, our learning: what you think, can influence your body. It follows that it can influence also our ability to heal as we go through a crisis. 
     I was most struck by that part of his report which said “. . . even if they didn’t know what the meaning was.” Apparently, just to believe that nothing about our life is meaningless is sufficient. 

Naturally, to believe that, always gives you Hope. 

     So, when we are out of work, for example, we can avoid hopelessness if we believe that nothing that happens to us is senseless and meaningless. We may not see that meaning right now. But in the context of our total life, this experience will eventually turn out to have meaning. 
     But what do we mean when anyone says, “This time in my life has meaning, even if I don’t know what that meaning is, right now.” Why don’t we know it right now? 
Well, who knows? If we want to speculate, I think one reason may be that the time we are in, is like an Act I in a two-act play. 
     I came to this realization in my own life. One time when I was fired without warning, I had an appointment that very afternoon with my dentist. He was an old man and upon hearing my news, he pointed his finger at me, and said, “You won’t believe a word of what I’m saying right now, but this will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. I’ve seen it happen too many times to doubt it.” 
     Well, he was right; that was only Act I. Act II was that which led me eventually to writing this yearly “journal” (for that is how I think of this book) which by the grace of God has helped change the life of millions over the past forty annual editions.  
The first Act, being fired, seemed meaningless to me, until the second Act, the writing of this book, came along to give the first Act meaning.
     So, if you’re in—say—a dreary time of unemployment, and it all seems pointless and meaningless to you, remember it may be only Act I. If it seems meaningless now, you would do well to watch for Act II, that follows it. You may yet discover that everything that happens to you does have meaning.
 
The Fourth Key to Finding Hope
     Pay no attention to statistics if they discourage you. Alternatives do give you hope, but statistics can take that hope away, if you give them undue weight.
Much of it depends on what statistics you pay attention to. The media, the Internet, blogs, tweets, twenty-four-hour news channels on TV, newspapers, and magazines, all love statistics. But they generally are in love with a very particular kind of statistics, namely those that convey bad news. Discouraging news. Doom and gloom.
Why is this so? I dunno. But it is. Example? Let’s take the month of February 2009, the height of the recent Recession. As reported on a website called JOLT (Job Openings & Labor Turnover)2 4,360,000 people in the U.S. found jobs that month. Yes, you read that correctly. And at the end of that month, 3,006,000 additional vacancies remained unfilled and available. Good news, right? 7,366,000 vacancies were available or filled, that month alone. At the height of the Recession.
     Ah, but every month there is a second set of statistics, reported on the first Friday of each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, called the Current Population Survey.3 It is typically called The Unemployment Statistic, though it is more accurate to think of it as “the monthly measure of the size of the working work force in America.” Anyway, the CPS said that during that same month, February 2009, the size of the total labor force in the U.S. shrank by 726,000 jobs. And so, the unemployment rate rose from 7.6 percent to 8.1. Bad news, to be sure.
     Okay, there you have it: two sets of statistics, one good news, one bad news. Now, which of these two sets do you think the media pounced on? Yep, you guessed it: the bad news set. “726,000 workers lose their jobs,” commentators and news analysts shrieked. “Unemployment rises to 8.1 percent.” Along with that, they threw in “There are six unemployed workers now for every vacancy.” All in all, it was enough to take the heart out of even the most optimistic job-hunter that month. Or any month.

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Table of Contents

Preface- I’m Desperate: How Can a Book Help? 

  A Grammar and Language Note  

The Basics for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers

Chapter 1  How to Find Hope   
Chapter 2  The Seven Secrets About the Job-Market Today  
Chapter 3  The Best and Worst Ways to Look for Jobs   
Chapter 4  Life/Work Planning: Designing a Plan of Attack  
Chapter 5  You Need to Understand More Fully Who You Are   
Chapter 6  Networking and Social Media   
Chapter 7  Five Ways to Choose or Change Careers  
Chapter 8  Do I Really Need a Resume?   
Chapter 9  Sixteen Tips About Interviewing   
Chapter 10  How to Deal with Handicaps (Real or Imagined)  
Chapter 11  The Six Secrets of Salary Negotiation   
Chapter 12  Starting Your Own Business   

The Pink Pages
Appendix A  Finding Your Mission in Life  
Appendix B  A Guide to Dealing with Your Feelings      While Out of Work  
Appendix C  A Guide to Choosing a Career Coach or Counselor  
Appendix D  Sampler List of Coaches  

About the Author  

Index  

Update 2013  

Foreign Editions of What Color Is Your Parachute?  

Additional Helpful Resources from the Author: Books 

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 6 )
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Sort by: Showing all of 6 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted August 21, 2012

    Good book. Bad on NOOK

    While the concepts and activities are extremely good. The NOOK verisons of this book is not handled well on the NOOK device. It is however nice to have links to the worksheets sothat it is easy to print

    3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 26, 2012

    An amazing book! After reading this, you will look at job-huntin

    An amazing book! After reading this, you will look at job-hunting (and even life) in a whole new light. I highly recommend this book. 

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted March 20, 2013

    What Color is Your Parachute 2013 ed. is the latest in a series

    What Color is Your Parachute 2013 ed. is the latest in a series of books designed for those who are either in-between jobs or looking for a new career. It written in a very smooth and friendly style, but Bolles is careful to make sure that all of his information is current. I'm glad he takes the time and trouble to update his material. In fact, he says early on that he rewrites the book every year. I didn't quite believe it, so I tried a number of the links, and they are all still good. I also appreciated the illustrations, which lighten the tension of, let's face it, a difficult experience like unemployment.

    Parachute has well-thought out (and sometimes surprising) sections on networking, resumes, interview techniques, current lists of reliable career counsellors (pink section in the back), and all the latest technologies, but it goes further. I was surprised to read that unemployment (while scary) could have a positive side. In the first chapters, you are encouraged to learn about yourself, get in touch with your priorities, and find a niche that suits you and your future employer. Parachute helps you learn what you are passionate about, where you want to work, the environment you most enjoy, the kinds of people you get along with, etc. It was challenging but fun to dredge out all the quirks I never really thought about when I went looking for work.

    Bolles makes no bones about being a Christian (a former Episcopalean priest yet), but he has a very light touch, so even if you are uncomfortable about faith, you should still be able to use Parachute to find the perfect job (or one that comes pretty close).

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted March 7, 2013

    Real life advice

    Reading a revised 2008 version now this book had great tips on searching for work but also realistic things you should expect as a worker.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 5, 2012

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 9, 2013

    No text was provided for this review.

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