What Color Is Your Parachute?, 2004: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters & Career-Changers (What...

What Color Is Your Parachute?, 2004: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters & Career-Changers (What Color Is Your ... | Richard Nelson Bolles | The venerable classic

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What Color Is Your...

	What Color Is Your Parachute?, 2004: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters & Career-Changers (What Color Is Your ... Richard Nelson Bolles Ten Speed Press, 2003 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? HOT AGAIN, 30 YEARS AFTER DEBUT." So ran the headline this past October in the Seattle Times. Actually, it has been "hot"?the best-selling job-hunting book in the world?year after year, for more than three decades now, so much so that it is referred to as "the job-hunters? bible." Each year it is updated, and sometimes vastly rewritten, by the author, giving first-time and veteran readers alike something new to discover. For those who have not read an updated version in recent years, this is a reminder of why, in the words of Fortune magazine, "PARACHUTE remains the gold standard of career guides."

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Life changing classic

Rather than following the simplistic approach of "100 useful tips that will get you hired", 'What Color Is Your Parachute' gives in-depth explanation how things work and what kind of decisions you must take to get not just any job, but a job you really want.

As people here mentioned, this book is definitely not for everybody. But if you get it right, you'll get much better control over your career. To me it helped to switch career in a direction I wasn't sure was possible at all.

Some of even vital chapters were not very relevant to me - in particular, (note to the author) US resume is written in a very different way than Australian or European. However, it didn't render the author's advices unusable.

The book is really trying to be culturally neutral; unlike many other equivalents, it is relevant not only for American job market but just about anywhere.

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The venerable classic

Although this is the legendary bible for job hunters and has now been around for three decades (and two different centuries and millenia now :-)), I have to admit that I found it only marginally useful. There's some good advice here, and a lot of interesting data and info relating to jobs and careers, but much of the author's approach is very touchy-feely and relates to analyzing and determining exactly what you want in a job, and then going after it--assuming such a "dream job" exists at all.

I think it's safe to say that in the current employment environment, such jobs don't exist and the reality is, what with more jobs having been lost overseas than any other time in the last 65 years, including possibly the Great Depression, that you will probably have to settle for considerably less than your hoped-for dream job. Although I certainly agree with Bolles that one must find one's passion and pursue it if one can, since if you're doing it 40-80 hours a week you may as well do what you enjoy, the reality is that is more difficult now than ever before.

I still give the book four stars for effort and for its historical importance, I guess you'd say, and there is a lot of good info and data on the job and career area that this book brings under one cover. Some of the ideas are useful, and Bolles's many checklists and questions may get you thinking in a more creative way about your choice of a job, how to strategize and go about finding a job, and how to zero in on exactly what you want. But overall this famous volume on getting a job really doesn't address the issue of just how hard it is to actually find one, especially for those of us who are now over 50 and have been put out of work by the recent trend of jobs going overseas.

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Soar over a universal obstacle.

I've studied this book thoroughly because I really want to master the job-hunt. Just imagine having the ability to get paid to do whatever it is that you most enjoy at the moment. I'm not referring to momentary pleasures like eating ice cream or having sex, but things that you could enjoy doing for weeks or months. And that's the trick I discovered while reading this book. It's more effective to follow the advice of the book if you think of it as ways to get a job that you would enjoy doing for a while and not necessarily for the rest of your life. When you think of your whole life it becomes next to impossible to decide on something. It's easier to decide on a job when in your mind it's just something you could see yourself doing temporarily.

The book is long and full of useful information you can put to use immediately. For example, things to say when negotiating salary.

It has titles and web addresses of a bunch of non-fiction books and alternative search engines.

It is written by someone with hard science degrees from both Harvard and MIT.

It has lengthy exercises that show you how to do research on yourself and on organizations.

It does not claim to help you gain a job overnight.

It does say that even if you work full-time at finding a job it may still take many months (depending on the job of course).

It directs you to a companion website [...]that is a compilation of the best job-hunting info and websites on the web.

You may want to check out Paul Graham's essay "How To Do What You Love" for more on this theme.

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A good book, but not for everyone

If you're contemplating a major career change, Bolles should be somewhere up at the top of your reading list. His strong suit is helping people figure out what kind of work they want to do, and he's certainly one of the best authors on that topic. Some of that material is in this book, and more in others.

His general job search advice is also very useful, but a bit rambling and certainly not systematic. I've talked to lots of people who've read Parachute. Some love it and say it changed their lives and would give it a six-star rating. Others don't like it at all and ask why everyone's making such a fuss over it. You don't need to have the latest edition of Parachute, since the annual changes are usually minor.

In parachute, Bolles now and then includes references to his Christian beliefs (He's an Episcopal minister.), but generally sticks to the work of job hunting. In case you don't already know, this is the best selling job hunting book ever written, popular for over 30 years.

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All Self-Help Books Look The Same To Me

I'm not sure which edition of this book I read. The edition I read had a section on what employers are looking for, which I enjoyed, but it had no section on career fairs.

Actually, I didn't read the entire book, just skimmed through it, reading certain sections. Perhaps this will not make my review credible, but I feel I still have a right to express my opinion as long as I make everyone aware of the circumstances.

The main thing I noticed about this book is that it contained a statistic saying that 50% of all jobs are obtained by walk-ins. My guess is most of these jobs are at places where you make minimum wage with no benefits. I've tried calling and walking in on some companies only to be told, "You have to apply on the internet. Go home."

It remains true that networking is the best way to get jobs. I however, have an unfriendly personality and would rather work flipping burgers than do a job search by attending parties and making friends. I will do information interviews though, since they're strictly business. I have to give credit to this book for giving me that idea.

But like all self-help books, none are miracle workers. It's not what you read that will get you what you want, it's hard, efficient work that will give you the opportunity to go for what you want. I believe this book makes a statement of that nature. Most people in life don't get to do what they really want, probably because they go down a path in college, specializing in some discipline and if they don't like the line of work, they're in trouble. It's tough to change disciplines, since it's very costly, and many are already in debt as it is. They decide it's best to just settle, and as long as a job doesn't break my back or make me hate life every day, I guess I'll be content with just settling.

This book did inspire me to combine all of the talents and enjoyments I think I have and put them into a project that has a (very small) chance of being profitable. Since I had the resources to do it, I went for it. But like most people, I'll probably end up working at a job I don't like very much to pay bills, looking for better opportunities during my spare time. Most people don't need a book to help them figure that out.

This book also tells you to go after something that your heart really desires, since that will give you an edge over the competition. Good advice. There's a lot of competition out there. This book really deserves more than the rating I give it, probably a 3.5, or a 4, but because I don't like seeing all of the 5-star reviews, I kicked it down a notch. I think self-help books always promise more than they deliver.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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