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

This book attempts to provide a little advice about a lot of things, ranging over practically every aspect of navigating the job search. It even touches briefly on advice for the self-employed, for example.

I appreciate that they make an effort to update the guide each year to allow for current issues, even though that must increase their expenses, and makes it harder to accumulate a large number of reviews for any one version.

I appreciate that they tried to make a structured approach to helping people find work. I'm all about documented, structured processes that can be improved over time. It's far from perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing, and could be legitimately useful for people without much job searching experience.

The advice isn't always correct. Ok, I thought, maybe I should cut them some slack. It must be hard to fact-check on so many different topics... even though they've been publishing this book for half a century. So what if they say punching pillows is a great way to work off anger (incorrect - it tends to enhance feelings of aggression) or that "enthusiasm" means the Christian God is inside you, inspiring you (misleading - not only is it irrelevant, but a quick Google of the etymology shows that it means more that you're inspired or possessed by "a god" or some kind of spirit, and was often used in a deragatory sense).

Still, it seemed like a good guide. Not great, but good. Something I might recommend to people early in their careers.

And then I hit the last chapter.

The authors maintain that promoting Christianity is absolutely essential in a book about job hunting. Why? Because, essentially, the majority of humans say they are somewhat religious (although they might be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, Jain, or vaguely spiritual). Therefore, it would be a great disservice to the majority of people to NOT talk about religion in a business book. I'm not convinced by that logic. I think the authors would do well to survey random international readers and see if they feel the book is better with or without that section. I think the answer would surprise them. And of course, it conflates all religion - including people who have a general sense of being religious, without actually attending any services or ascribing to any particular beliefs. Then it promotes a specific American evangelical worldview, as if it is equally applicable to all of them. Furthermore, and likely most damning, the author seems to be convinced that it is impossible to have purpose in your life without religion.

I'm sorry, but religion is NOT necessary to be an ethical, moral person. It is NOT necessary to have religion to have purpose in your life. You can still be focused on raising your children, achieving recognition in your field, making discoveries, saving the planet or helping the less fortunate without needing to participate in any sort of mystical belief.

What Colour is Your Parachute? looked like a promising read for "job hunters and career changers". But after reading the whole thing and doing most of the exercises, it's really not.

Also, what is this?
"Economists say that a decent middle-class job these days should be a stable, dependable job that pays between $40,000 and $80,000, annually." (5-6)
>> $80,000 yeah, but how the hell is $40,000 middle class?? That's basically living in poverty, ESPECIALLY if you're living in a big city. What economists said that, and when? (20 years ago?)

Things I Liked
The Flower Exercise was pretty good. It mostly made me think about things I already knew, but it also made me consider what working space/conditions I would like to have.

This quote (edited out the bad parts):
"What is success?
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of [intelligent] people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded." (232).

Tests to check out:
Dewey Colour System (www.deweycolorsystem.com/tests/color-...)
UPDATE: I tried this and it SUCKS. The author said it was free, but it costs $19.95 USD. So I entered my email for them to tell me that. And they picked the ugliest shades of most colours possible, so that's very disappointing. And I thought it would actually be more than "which color do you like? here, you should be this career now."

The main part of the how to start your own business chapter (Skills you need (A) - skills you have (B) = Skills you need to learn/hire someone else to do (C) formula) was good, but the chapter didn't go into enough depth and was too short. The main thing covered was that formula and a couple case studies.

There was some other helpful miscellaneous information.

Now, the bad things...
(Get ready for religious rant)

ALL THE RELIGIOUS CRAP
Started towards the end 1/3 of the book, it was so annoying.

"[Y]ou only have one life here on this Earth, and that life is yours (under God) to say how it will be spent, or not spent" (259)

I thought the Finding Your Mission in Life chapter would be interesting or insightful, but no, it was just religious crap. Honestly it made me drop the rating by 1.5 stars; it was so awful to read, it gave me an actual headache. What a horrible way to end the book.

Richard Bolles sounds like an old religious quack for part of the book, at the end. Also, his annoying misuse of commas annoyed me.

Finding Your Mission in Life (aka CHRISTIANITY SHOULD BE YOUR LIFE) Summarized
Almost EVERYBODY is religious in the world. Only 18 tiny percent of the world doesn't believe! Nobody should care about the measly ~1 billion+ people in the world who aren't religious. More importantly, "6 billion" (not that accurate) people do believe! CARE ABOUT THEM!

Mandatory comma abuse/badly worded sentence must be inserted here: "So, leaving out a section that 84% of my readers worldwide might be interested in, and helped by, in order to please just 16% of my readers, seems to me insane." (265)

Next section: POOR CHRISTIANS: They're a minority so hard done by :(
Bolles quoted this: "Christians... have now experienced the full impact of the world's hostility and indifference. Numerically we are drastically reduced.... [T]he Church, contrary to all appearances, is stronger than the world." Then Bolles said, "I do not want to add to that feeling by keeping silent. Faith is welcome in this book." (265)

Next section: God decides everything and nothing you've ever done has anything to do with yourself, it's just "God's" doing
Bolles is A N G R Y that there is "an increasing trend in our culture to try to speak about religious subjects without reference to God" (268). Spirituality, soul, and "Mission" should NEVER be spoken about without being tied to GOD, do you hear me???? More and more people think that your mission is "a purpose you choose for your own life, by identifying your enthusiasms". While that may not be totally true, Bolles thinks Mission is dictated by God only.

Then, we must insert some arrogance here:
"Most of the leaders who have evolved creative job-hunting ideas were--from the beginning--people who firmly believed in God, and said so: Sidney Fine, Bernard Haldane, 10 other people, Ralph Matson, and of course myself." (268). Tone your ego down, Mr. Bolles.

"[W]e need to unlearn the idea that what we have accomplished is our doing, and ours alone. It is God's Spirit breathing in us and through us that helps us do whatever we do, and so the singular first-person pronoun is never appropriate, but only the plural. Not "I accomplished this" but "WE accomplished this, God and I, working together.." (272)
Oh god. You control nothing, God controls everything! You don't do anything "alone", some magical deity's spirit helps you!

Next section: Bolles' personal thoughts on God (because that's relevant and people care about it)
"[S]ome sort of relationship with God is a given for us, about which we have absolutely no choice." (274). Nope, we actually do, as can be seen by the 1,000,000,000+ people who ARE. NOT. RELIGIOUS. AND. HAVE. NO. RELATIONSHIP. WITH. A. GOD.

Next section: Making sure every life purpose is directly related to God even though it's not related
"My mission is to create the purest foods I can, to help people's bodies not get in the way of their spiritual growth."
>> Okay, woah, hold up, I have so many problems with this one. First of all, why would you relate this to spiritual growth before PHYSICAL HEALTH???? How about people can be physically healthy because of good food? Why the hell would spiritual growth be the priority here? And secondly, people learn a lot and change and grow spiritually from illness (not that it's a pleasant thing to go through at all). Speaking of, how does GOD explain the millions of people suffering from cancer, rare diseases, incurable diseases, etc.? If it wasn't the god's "plan", why is it happening? Is it God's fault? Good luck getting out of that one.

(By the way, this review of ranting is just like the way Richard Bolles wrote the last chapter in the book - describing all his thoughts on religion that go on forever!)

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I am torn about recommending this. Without all the religious nonsense, it is a decent 3.5 stars book, most relevant for someone who is aware of what they want to do and needs some job hunting tips. There are a few things good for career changers, but was more disappointing in that category (I expected more). It is worthwhile IF you skip all the sections you aren't interested in (I didn't until midway in, which is why reading this book dragged on and wasn't enjoyable). Also, I'm sorry Richard Bolles, but you aren't as relevant as you think you are. Please take your egotism down a notch.

I find this book vastly over-rated.

I got it my Sr. year of college, at the recommendation of an academic advisor (the need for which I also found to be highly over-rated), and it did nothing for me. Yes, I ended up in an industry I LOVED, in a job that fit me well, but with no thanks to this book. It taught me nothing about myself I didn't already know and gave me little useful knowledge to go about my job hunt.

I suppose it could prove quite useful for someone who 1) lacks an intuitive introspection, 2) is entirely without direction, or 3) is largely without empolyable skill that really would benifit from focusing on a niche.

The questions posed in the book might also be very beneficial for high school students to read and may help focus their efforts, thoughts, and actions toward an end goal--even if they change their mind, a teen pondering questions like "what do I want to do?" and "where do I want to do it" will have a serious leg up on their peers.

Fuck this book. I just found it in an old bag, I had it hidden away there because I didn’t wanna look at it. My mom got it for me to figure out my career path. Fuck this book. I’ll probs go back and read it again tho

(I read the 2013 version.) I mostly read this to make my mother happy. The cheesiness aside, it committed one of the mistakes of the self-help genre that most aggravates me: it convincingly and with great detail outlined the problem with the traditional approach to its subject, namely job hunting; its stated problem is that just emailing your resume out to job postings online won't work for a variety of reasons. It made a pretty convincing argument for this approach being pretty pointless. But then rather than presenting a wide array of solutions, he insists that the only way around this problem is to follow his guide in the book. And if you're skeptical about the system that he suggests, as I very much am (his solutions for how to get better at networking are laughably unrealistic and hokey for any person who has a hard time with networking because of shyness or whatever), then you're up shit creek: you've been convinced that your old way of doing things is wrong, but you're left with no solutions if you don't 100% buy the author's step-by-step guide. Bleh.

I picked up this book at a time in my life when I was like, "ok, Rachel, it's time to figure some stuff out." Along came Richard Bolles, like my own sweet little Grandpa giving me life advice. He actually had me doing all the cheesy exercises -- lists, graphs, venn-diagrams, even a flower chart for Pete's sake. And in the end, gosh darnit, I knew I was going to move back to the Midwest and become a librarian!

FYI, this book does have some serious Christian overtones, but Grandpa Bolles is pretty low-key about it. It kind of makes you want to hug him, actually.

I chose to read "What Color Is Your Parachute" because it was the most referenced manual for job-hunters and career-changers in my article readings. Although the core idea that job hunting starts with figuring out who you are does not seem very revolutionary these days, I can see how ground-breaking it must have been when the first editions of the book came out. Bolles's manual is, indeed, practical, formatted in a way that makes it very easy to quickly grasp the most essential information in each chapter. In addition, it features several exercises and lists that facilitate self-exploration. However, I do not feel I got many important insights out of them, despite how time-consuming they were. I also take issue with the fact that there's only one chapter in the book dedicated to career changing. Granted, the whole approach put forth by Bolles can be used by career changers and as well as first-time job hunters, but the intricacies of the former are greatly glossed over. It also seems that the book assumes that one's personality, or calling, or yet "mission" is static (all you have to do is figure out what it is), but that contradicts the personal changes many of us experience over time and that may, in fact, lead to career changing. Despite these caveats, I'd say the best thing about Bolles's book is that it teaches you how to network and think about the job-hunting process from the perspective of employers, and thus the reading is still recommended.

literally the most helpful career guide made me rethink my whole life 10/10