 | What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers |
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Product Description
"How many jobs are out there, in this economy?"
"Where do I go from here with my life?"
These are some of the questions at the forefront of the modern job-searcher's mind. And they are thoroughly and thoughtfully answered with all-new chapters in the 2011 edition of What Color Is Your Parachute?, the best-selling job-hunting book in the world for more than three decades--in good times and bad. A longtime fixture on best-seller lists, What Color Is Your Parachute? features life-saving information that is updated each year to cater to the specific requirements of today's job market.
Career guru Richard N. Bolles leads job-searchers to find meaningful work. He asks, WHAT skills do you most love to use? WHERE--in what field--would you most love to use them? And HOW do you find such jobs without depending on agencies, ads, and online postings?
This book is not only about finding a job in hard times, it's also about finding your passion. In the words of Fortune magazine:
"Parachute remains the gold standard of career guides."
What Color Is Your Parachute? is the world's most popular job-hunting guide, with 10 million copies sold, in more than 20 languages. Written by career guru Richard N. Bolles--who coined the terms "informational interviewing" and "transferable skills"--this New York Times and BusinessWeek best seller answers such questions as:
"What are the five best--and worst--ways to search for a job?" See chapter 3 (starting on page 31).
"What are the most helpful job sites on the Internet, out of the thousands that are out there?" See pages 53-54.
"What interview questions can I expect to be asked, and how do I answer them?" See chapter 6 (starting on page 93).
"I want to use a resume. What should I include?" See chapter 5 (starting on page 71).
"I haven't a clue how to do salary negotiation. Help!" See chapter 7 (starting on page 121).
"There are no jobs out there, so I'm thinking of starting my own business. Where do I begin?" See chapter 9 (starting on page 147).
"Since I'm out of work, I'd like to use this opportunity to find more purpose and sense of mission in my next job. How do I do that?" See pages 15, 179, and 269.
"What are the ten biggest mistakes made during interviews?" See page 92.
"How is the way employers hunt for people different from the way people hunt for employers?" See page 44.
"How do I figure out what my best skills are?" See pages 201+.
"If I decide I need some career counseling, how do I avoid getting 'taken'?" See Appendix b (starting on page 288).
"I had a job dealing with manufacturing. Now it's gone. How do I find jobs in related fields?" See page 45.
"I'd like to emphasize my traits in my next job interview, but I don't have 'a trait vocabulary.' Got any lists?" See page 50.
"I have a handicap. How can I get around it, in interviews?" See page 57.
"I am painfully shy. I dread interviewing. What can I do?" See page 62.
"I want to use a resume. What should I include?" See Chapter 5 (starting on page 71).
"In general, what are employers looking for?" See page 48.
"How long should I expect my job-hunt to last?" See page 32.
"I'm over fifty. What special problems do I face when I go job-hunting? " See chapter 10 (starting on page 167).
"I'm just starting on my job-hunt. I know 'networking' is important. I haven't got a network. How do I build one from scratch?" See page 86.
PARACHUTE has all the answers you're looking for and more. It's the guide that millions of job-hunters have turned to for more than three decades.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #307 in Books
- Published on: 2010-08-17
- Released on: 2010-08-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.09" h x 6.08" w x 8.96" l, 1.07 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9781580082709
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee.
Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Review
"What Color Is Your Parachute is deservedly the world's most popular job hunting book…. This 2011 edition is as relevant today as when it was first published. Dick Bolles insightfully stays on the cutting edge of job searching and the book is full of new and updated suggestions, along with the classic advice that continues to hold true today."
--Alison Doyle, About.com Job Search Guide
"If I were job hunting, I would pick up a copy of this book without hesitation."
--FOXBusiness.com, 8/25/10
"There's Parachute, and then there's all the rest. . . . A life-changing book."
--Career Planning and Adult Development Journal
"Parachute is still a top seller and it remains the go-to guide for everyone from midlife-crisis boomers looking to change their careers to college students looking to start one."
--New York Post
"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
"Ideally, everyone should read What Color Is Your Parachute? in the tenth grade and again every year thereafter."
--Anne Fisher, Fortune
"It was 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
About the Author
RICHARD N. BOLLES has led the career development field for more than thirty-five years. A member of Mensa and the Society for Human Resource Management, he has been the keynote speaker at hundreds of conferences. Bolles was trained in chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and holds a bachelor's degree cum laude in physics from Harvard University, a master's in sacred theology from General Theological (Episcopal) Seminary in New York City, and three honorary doctorates. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Marci.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1. There Are Always Jobs Out There
The job-market is a mess, right now. People have lost jobs they thought would go on forever. Whole households have been plunged into financial ruin. Hunting for a job is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The future, to many people, looks bleak. Welcome to "Normal."
Yes, this is what always happens after a Recession. It's just been worse, this time, because this has been a bad Recession. Really really bad. There's still a tremendous amount of misery, out there. When you talk to those who are unemployed, as I do constantly, you feel the kind of pain that strikes at the very heart of why people want to live. Or not live. So many souls are living quiet lives of desperation. Their job is gone. Their home is gone. Their dreams are gone. Their savings are gone. Their plans for retirement are gone. Their hope is gone. And they feel heartbroken, abandoned, forgotten. To see what disastrous events in the economy, like a Recession, or disastrous events in nature, like the Gulf oil spill, have done to so many people's lives, is to weep. You hear discouragement and despair, on every side:
"There are no jobs out there, I know, I looked. I went on the Internet every single day. After two months, I gave up."
"I'm hearing all the experts say we are entering into a jobless recovery. They say some people are just going to have to get used to being permanently unemployed. I think they're right. I can see a grim future ahead for me. It is the death of all my dreams; all I'll have after this is a series of regrets."
"I heard there are six people out of work for every vacancy that appears; those odds mean my situation is hopeless."
"With the labor market so tough for the foreseeable future, even if I find a job, I imagine it will have to be one that I settle for; there is no hope of my ever finding work that I could feel passionate about, or find anything remotely approaching a 'dream job.'"
"I always thought you were supposed to start your job-hunt by learning all you can about the job-market: what the hot jobs are, what vacancies are posted by employers on the Internet, and so on. I was taught that you have to take the job-market as the given, and then try to depict yourself as one who matches that given. But with this awful recession we are just coming out of, this doesn't seem to work at all. Employers simply aren't posting any vacancies. Hot jobs are nonexistent. I'm thoroughly bummed out."
These, and similar sentiments, circulate in the media in the air, and in the blogosphere, 24/7.
All we want, now, is relief. We want the government to do something. And create jobs. Don't just sit there; do something! And we will sweep out of power any government that does not make Jobs their number one priority, and come to our rescue.
How Jobs Get Created
The unfortunate news is that Recessions--not this bad, but bad enough--come around regularly in history, and recovery from them always works the same way: it is not the government, or employers who pull us out of our tailspin. No, it is the consumer who re-creates the job-market (and therefore "jobs") after a Recession ends; but right now--after getting all banged up from what we have just been through--we consumers are basically operating in Cautious mode. That's normal. If we have any money we consumers are first using it for other things than consuming, as is our custom whenever we come out of a Recession.
We are using our income first of all to pay off any debt we have; and then, to cut down our addiction to credit cards; and then if any money is left over we are using it to build up a safety net for ourselves, setting aside more into our savings. And only then, do we--will we--get back to spending at the levels we did before the Recession. (And thus create jobs and restore the job-market to the size it used to be, or more.) It's going to take a while. Maybe a long while. Meanwhile, the job-market remains weakened, and good news comes only in fits and starts.
Of course, to know that all of this is "normal" after any Recession, is small comfort indeed to those of us who have been set adrift on the Sea of Despair. We've been trying all the things that used to work, except they don't anymore. We used to troll the Internet to find interesting vacancies; now, no interesting vacancies are there (to our eyes, anyway). We used to look for employers who were hiring people with our job-title; now, our job-title seems to have vanished. We used to send out our resume by the bushels, and get interested responses; now, there is just the sound of silence. And we used to brush up on our interviewing skills, so as to win the day with a prospective employer; now, no employer even wants to see us.
In all of this, I exaggerate, of course. It isn't that bad for everybody. But for many of us it is as bleak as I have just described it. For example, some six and a half million of us here in the U.S. have been out of work for twenty-seven weeks or more, as I write. That's almost half of all the official unemployed, the worst figures since records began to be kept, back in 1948.
The Good News
On the other hand, millions of job-hunters have found jobs this year, in spite of everything, as we are going to see. And I want to help you join them. I am writing this to give you hope about your future, and to help you chart a winning path for yourself, out of this mess. So, let's begin with a description of what the job-market is really doing, at the moment, not what the media say it is. Let's begin with the truth that there are always jobs out there. Maybe not exactly the ones you are looking for, maybe not exactly where you would hope they would be, maybe not as easy to find as they were in good times--but they are out there. You have to be convinced of that, before it makes any sense to start looking. So, how do we know this?
Well, to begin with, simple logic will tell you there just have to be job vacancies out there. After all, at least 138 million people in the U.S. do have jobs; and they need (and can pay for) services, products, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. Not to mention, travel (so long as a volcano doesn't get in the way), recreation, vacations, hobbies, games, and amusements. Someone's got to provide these for them. That creates jobs. In addition, some of those 138 million workers die, retire, move, fall sick, get restless, get fed up and change careers; so there just have to be vacancies opening up, constantly. Simple logic tells us that. But to put a floor under that logic, there are continuing studies of the job-market's actual behavior. And according to the experts, during the decade 1994-2004, in good times or bad, fifteen million jobs disappeared each year in the U.S., but seventeen million new jobs got created, each year.1
But doesn't all this change during, and after, a Recession? I mean, look at the monthly Unemployment Figure. It's been dreadful. It adds up to 8.4 million jobs that have disappeared since the Recession began. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that Figure. It has led to more mischief in people's understanding of what's going on, than I can possibly tell you. Part of the problem is its title. Instead of calling it "the unemployment figure" we would be far better off if we called it "The Relative Size of the Employed U.S. Workforce." Once a month, after the end of each month, the government does something like a "sounding" (think Mississippi riverboat) to measure the size of the employed workforce at the end of that month. They then subtract that figure from the figure at the end of the month before that, and tell you if the employed workforce has shrunk or grown overall that month, and by how much. If the workforce has grown, that means there has been a net number of jobs added that month to the U.S. workforce, and the government will tell you how many. On the other hand, if it's shrunk, then obviously jobs have vanished that month; and again the government will tell you how many. And that's the figure these past two or three years that has been causing job-hunters, the media, and the government to wring their hands, or lapse into depression and despair. With good cause, I might add.
What Happens During the Month?
But--and this is crucial--it is only a net figure computed once a month, at the end of the month, after all the dust has settled. Ah, and there's the rub. A lot can happen during the month, in between the "soundings." And does! To find out exactly what, the government (fortunately for us) maintains a site for exactly that purpose, which is cutely called "JOLT" (for Job Openings & Labor Turnover), and is to be found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website at www.bls.gov/jlt.
Now, you're probably not going to take the trouble to go there, so let me summarize for you what it has reported for the past twelve months (at this writing), and I'll precede it, for each month, with the monthly "sounding," traditionally called "The Monthly Unemployment Figure," but as I mentioned earlier, should be called "The Relative Size of the Employed U.S. Workforce." Okay, here goes:
February 2009
By the end of that month, the overall size of the employed U.S. Workforce had shrunk by 726,000 people, since the end of the previous month. During the month, jobs were lost, jobs were found, but the net change at the end of the month was the figure above.
But as JOLT reported, during that month 4,360,000...
Most helpful customer reviews
69 of 83 people found the following review helpful.
By Colin Macqueen
While WCIYP may be a classic book of its genre, the formatting of this Kindle edition makes it useless to all intents and purposes:
- Highlights are picked out in the palest shade of gray, rendering key phrases almost illegible.
- Tables and diagrams are filled with tiny, fuzzy fonts that are unreadable, even when zoomed (I have a K2, these may be better on a DX but I suspect that they would just be larger and fuzzier).
- Hyperlinks are provided to online versions of the tables and diagrams, but they lead to PDF files that the Kindle cannot download
- It even opens with a piece that defends why it needs to be published in a paper edition
Kudos to Amazon for allowing a prompt and easy return and full refund (even though I'd had it more that the requisite seven days) but the publishers need to do a far better job.
44 of 52 people found the following review helpful.
By Scott Carter
This excellent book has been in multiple reprints since about 1970 and is extremely helpful in many ways.
Some of the areas I found most helpful included:
1. How Employers Hunt for Job-Hunters. In this chapter, Bolles clearly lays out the harsh realities of the differences between people looking for work and those seeking jobs. The power lies with the employer, and the sooner I realized that truth, the better off I was. This chapter also pointed out that different types of resumes work better for different types of employers, so it's important to tailor your resume to your audience. This was a great lesson for me.
2. Tips. What I loved about this chapter was the reinforcement that job hunting is hard work and takes effort, there is no getting around it. I also thought it was great advice to be open to changing my tactics if what I was doing wasn't working. Too often I get caught up in the thinking that just doing more of the same will change my result. I now realize that sometimes I am just doing the wrong things, so need to try something different.
3. Interviewing Tip For Smarties: Another great chapter that reset how I think about interviews. One of the best tips for me was sticking to the time I asked for from the interviewer. Too often in the past if I thought the interview was going well, I would keep talking. Now I realize that one of the best ways to impress a potential boss is to stick to the time (e.g., 20 minutes) that I originally asked for. The other very helpful tip was to let the interviewer do 50% of the talking. This balance of time lets the interviewer know that you know how to listen as well as speak. Too much talking by me tells them I might ignore the needs of the company: too little speaking by me might tell them I am trying to hide something. Good input!
Overall, I thought this book could be extremely helpful to a lot of job seekers, since it provides a wealth of insight into what the employers are looking for and how they are approaching the hiring process. After all, it involves two parties trying to see if there is a match, so it's very important to know what the hiring manager is thinking and how they are approaching this process.
Another book that I thought was extremely helpful in terms of applying to my job search was "GOAL! Your 30 Day Game Plan" Goal!: Your 30-Day Game Plan for Business and Career Successwhich helped organize my efforts and kept me motivated along the way towards my new job.
29 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
By JustReading
I used this book several years ago to help me get direction in life once I got out of college and actually had to act on the age-old question of "what do you want to be when you grow up?"! In 2010 I am revisiting this classic. And I am giving it 4 stars because the newest edition is definitely still jammed full of useful advice about career choices and the job search process. HOWEVER, this book has the same flaws as the older versions: it is too long and too scattershot in its approach. The book has way too many charts/diagrams/grids - many of which you must complete, including the "Flower Diagram." I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want to spend hours on end working through a career book and drawing diagrams.... SO I greatly prefer Scott Smith's "FIND YOUR PERFECT JOB." It is MUCH more concise and easier to use while still being jammed full of useful advice. FYPJ's "Perfect Job Profile" accomplishes much more quickly what 300+ pages of Bolles' book tries to do. And if you are a young professional then FYPJ is specifically tailored for you (it includes very interesting info on business and law school programs, two areas that Parachute has no information on). Find Your Perfect Job: The Inside Guide for Young Professionals.
http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/158008270X
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