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A review of What Color is Your Parachute 2003

by Richard Bolles

The best guide going to help you find the right job

Reviewed by: Frances O. Thomas
About Frances O. Thomas

What Color is Your Parachute 2003 Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, but I can't help but think my life would have taken some different turns if I had discovered What Color is Your Parachute sooner. I wasn't introduced to the book until I was 40-something. If I ever become U.S. Secretary of Education, I intend to make this book required reading for every high school senior.

Dick Bolles is the kindly uncle we all wish we had to clue us in on how the world of work really operates. My parents, bless their hearts, didn't know this stuff. My school counselors (now this will really date me) were only concerned about skirt length. I needed this advice badly back then and didn't get it until I'd spent way too many years in the wrong field and was attempting to make a career change. I wasn't alone. Bolles says surveys generally show that, in any given year, about 45 percent of workers would change jobs if they could.

Bolles first wrote this career classic thirty years ago and has revised it every year since. In the 2002 edition, he did a complete rewrite. The latest edition is another update.

The methods most people use to look for a job are increasingly inefficient when companies get hundreds of resumes for each job they advertise. Bolles says only 4 percent of people who apply online land a job. Answering a print ad produces a success rate of from 5 to 24 percent with those in lower-salaried jobs having the higher percentage.

Bolles offers an alternative method that puts the job seeker rather than the employer in the driver's seat. But first comes a journey of self-discovery.

A series of exercises help you to pin down your skills and values. To complete these exercises will take some time and some soul searching, but trust me, they're worth the effort. The resulting picture of who you are and what you want in life, what Bolles calls your Flower Diagram, makes concrete all the nebulous things you sort of knew but never quite put into words before. Armed with increased self-knowledge, the first time job hunter or the job changer has a far better chance of finding an employer who needs precisely what they have to offer.

Bolles also offers advice on informational interviews, how to find the person in an organization who has the power to hire you, and salary negotiations. He strongly advises looking at small organizations.

In his epilogue, Bolles takes the idea of a career one step further by discussing how to find your mission in life. His definition of mission is using your greatest talent in a place that most appeals to you for a purpose needed in the world. If that is your goal, this book will help you to reach it.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: What Color is Your Parachute 2003

Copyright © by Frances O. Thomas, 2003

Reviewed by Frances O. Thomas :
-- Twelve Mile Limit - by Randy Wayne White
-- What Color is Your Parachute 2003 - by Richard Bolles
-- Fish! Tales - by Stephen C. Lundin, Ph.D., John Christensen, and Harry Paul, with Phillip Strand
-- Finding Flow - by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi









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