what color is your parachute 2011 by richard n. bolles - excerpt

8/9/2019 What Color Is Your Parachute 2011 by Richard N. Bolles - Excerpt

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What Color Is Your Parachute?
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown


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TEN SPEED PRESS

Berkeley

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR

A Practical Manual

for Job-Hunters andCareer-Changers

PARACHUTE?

RICHAR D N. BOLL ES

2011

EDITIONREVISED AND

UPDATED

ANNUALLY


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This is an annual. That is to say, it is revised each year, often substantially, with the new

edition appearing in the early fall. Counselors and others wishing to submit additions,

corrections, or suggestions for the 2012 edition must submit them prior to February 1,

2011, using the form provided in the back of this book, or by e-mail ([email protected]).

Forms reaching us after that date will, unfortunately, have to wait for the 2013 edition.

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regardto the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not

engaged in rendering professional career services. If expert assistance is required, the

service of the appropriate professional should be sought.

Copyright 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000,

1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1989, 1988, 1987, 1986, 1985, 1984,

1983, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1978, 1977, 1976, 1975, 1972, 1970 by Richard Nelson Bolles

Front cover photograph copyright iStockPhoto/DNY59

All rights reserved.Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the

Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon

are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The drawings on pages vi-vii, 43, 57, 201, 248, 248-49 are by Steven M. Johnson,

author of What the World Needs Now.

Illustration on page 71 by Beverly Anderson.

ISBN: 978-1-58008-270-9 (paper)

ISBN: 978-1-58008-267-9 (cloth)

ISSN: 8755-4658

Printed in United States of America on recycled paper (20% PCW)

Cover design by Katy Brown

Interior design by Betsy Stromberg

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Revised Edition


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The wonderful actress

Anne Bancroft (19312005) was once

loosely quoted as saying

about her husband, Mel Brooks,

My heart flutters whenever I hear his keyTurning in the door, and I think to myself,

Oh goody, the party is about to begin.

That is exactly how I feel

about my wife,

Marci Garcia Mendoza Bolles,

Gods angel from the Philippines,

whom I fell deeply in love with, and marriedon August 22, 2004.

What an enchanted marriage this is!


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The 2011Table of Contents

Preface: In This Internet Age, Why Do Job-Hunters

Still Want a Printed Book? x

In Gratitude xvA Grammar Note xix

PART I

Finding a Job . . .

1 There Are Always Jobs Out There 3

2 Where Do I Go from Here with My Life? 15

3 Once You Know Exactly What You Are Looking For:

The Five Best Ways to Look for a Job 31


How to Deal with Handicaps 57


Resumes and Contacts 71


Interviews 93


Salary Negotiation 121


How to Choose a New Career When You Must 137


How to Start Your Own Business 147


Entering the World of 50+ 167


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PART II

Finding a Life . . .

11 The Flower Exercise: The Parachute Workbook 179

WHAT Do You Most Want to Do?

WHERE Do You Most Want to Do It?

HOW Do You Find Your Ideal Job?

Appendices

Appendix A:

Finding Your Mission in Life 269

Appendix B:

A Guide to Choosing a Career Coach or Counselor 288

Appendix C:

Sampler List of Coaches 304

About the Author 327

Index 329


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x

Preface: In This Internet

Age, Why Do Job-Hunters

Still Want a Printed Book?

May 26, 2010

Ive been thinking. Next years edition of this book will mark its fortieth

anniversary. Thats how long this book has been out, and in fact thats

how long this book has been on best-seller lists. Its sales are closing in,

now, on eleven million copies sold, in twenty languages, in twenty-sixcountries. It is the best-selling book in the world on the subject of job-

hunting, career-changing, and just generally figuring out what you want

to do with your life, from here on out.

The remarkable thing is, I had no such intentions for this book, when

first I self-published it. I just wanted to help some of my friends who

were in something of a life crisis, to say the least: out of work, trained

to do only one thing, with skill-sets the world no longer wanted. So, I did a

lot of research to find for them alternatives to the traditional ways ofjob-hunting or career-changing, and then typed out my findings (there

were no computers in those days) in a little hundred-page book, which

my local copy shop reproduced.

But in 1972 I met a wonderful bookman, Phil Wood, who owned

a little publishing company in Berkeley, California, called Ten Speed

Press, and he wanted to publish my book commercially. I said yes, and

so we have, since November of 1972, put it out through his publishing

company, updating it every year but one. No words can express howwonderfully kind Phil was to me, over the years, as now have been


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In This Internet Age, Why Do Job-Hunters Still Want a Printed Book? xi

the folks over at the Crown division of Random House, in New York

City, who bought Ten Speed Press from Phil, a year ago. I continue to

research, and I continue to write, updating the book, faithfully.

Looking back, a lot has happened over the past forty years, obviously.

Big changes in the world, big changes in the economy, big changes in the

job-market, andbig changes in the publishing world, too. In case you

havent heard, the form of the bookas a thing printed on paperhas

been undergoing a major challenge. While three thousand books con-

tinue to be published every day of the year,1according to experts there

are as many as three times that number that are now published digitally,

electronically, rather than on paper. So, in the excitable media you will

see doomsday articles with such titles as The Death of the Book, As We

Know It? Well, not exactlyyet.

But things arechanging in the publishing world, and increasingly

paper books and digital books are appearing side by side. Amazons

Kindle, Apples iPad, Barnes & Nobles Nook, Googles Android, and

Sonys PRS-700 are accelerating that change.

In the time ahead, I will be a participant in that change; part of me

is, after all, a techie. My college education was at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology and at Harvard, and my major was physics.

Still, the changing form of the bookis, IMHO, nothing to get down-

cast about. Changing form is what books do. Down through history,

books have alternatively been written on stone, clay, tree bark, wax

tablets, parchment, and papyrus. They have been written as volumes,

codices, scrolls, and individual leafs. It was apparently the Arabs idea

to copy books on paper, and Gutenbergs idea to produce many copies of

the same book. The Printed Book, as we know it, began in 1455, shortly

after the invention of the printing press.

Skip to the present. When I wrote the first edition of Parachute, back

in 1970, there were thirteen books in print, in this field which we may

loosely call job-hunting, career-changing, careers, or lifework planning.

None of them sold very well. But after seeing the popularity of Parachute

(which even I didnt see coming, and still cant explain) publishers have

since been publishing literally thousands of job-hunting or careers titles.

So, this brings us to the question that I have been turning over and

over in my mind, this year in particular: with the availability of all the1. http://ask.metafilter.com


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xii Preface

electronic information about the job-hunt that is out therethese days,

why doso many job-hunters still want to hold in their hands a book

printed on paper, to aid them in their job-hunt (Im thinking, of course,

specifically of my book); why isnt the Internet, with its succinct answers

to specific questions, quite sufficient for the job-hunter? Why have

eleven million people gone out and bought a book? Doesnt that strike

you as strange?

I guess my first response is that basically I havent a clue. But, on fur-

ther thought, five thoughts or hunches occur to me:

1. I think some job-hunters want a printed book because we love to

touch things. A printed book can be touched, handled, and car-

ried about. You feel possessive of it. It is, in fact, yours (you boughtit). Thats a delight to your mind. And the feel of the paper it is

printed on, is often a delight to the fingers. (Parenthetically, one

human resource expert told me that when dealing with mailed-in

resumes, it is the employers fingers that first tell them to be favorably

or unfavorably inclined toward the job-hunter whose resume they

are about to read. It all depends on whether they like the feel of the

paper the resume is printed on, or not.)

2. I think some job-hunters want a printed book because they lovethree dimensions. An e-book or a print-out of job-hunting infor-

mation from a website, has two dimensions: height and width.

A book adds a third dimension: depth. Thats both a fact and a

metaphor.

3. I think some job-hunters want a printed book because they like all

their information on a topic to be gathered in one place. Using the

Internet is often like standing on Mount Olympus and calling the

winds from the four corners of the earth to gather before you. One

packet of information arrives from the East. Another from the

West. Still another from the North, and then the South. A book, if

it is broad enough yet focused, has already gathered the informa-

tion from the four corners of the earth, and presents the gathered

information to you, as afait accompli.All in one spot.

4. I think some job-hunters want a printed book because a book often

plays a role in that job-hunters life that is normally reserved for a

person. Its more common to speak of a book, rather than the
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In This Internet Age, Why Do Job-Hunters Still Want a Printed Book? xiii

Internet, as a kind of Personality. In my own case, I meet people

every week who say, Oh that book saved my life or That book

turned my whole life aroundthe kind of language you normally

use about a person.

5. I think some job-hunters want a printed book because a book pre-

serves memories. You read it, use it, put it on a shelf, and as you

walk by it in later years, you smile at the memories it evokes when

your eyes fall upon it. The book has a history, not of its own, but

of you. You are in that book now. Especially if you underlined and

marked it up. Whenever I speak some place, people will come up

to have me autograph a copy of my book. And often it is a dog-

eared copy, all marked up and underlined, of an edition from tenor fifteen years ago. They want me to autograph that, even if

theyre also carrying a copy of the current edition. That old edition

has a history in their lives that the current edition does not. And

they treasure that history. Hence they treasure that book.

I never tell a job-hunter they ought to use a book. Each of us ought to

get our information in whatever form feels most congenial to us. But if

observers of the common scene are puzzled as to whythey see so many

job-hunters buying a printed book for help, despite this digital age andAge of the Internet, maybe some of the above reasons help explain that

mystery. Or, maybe not.

[Full disclosure: I am the author of a job-hunting book. Or did I

already mention that? Id take what I have to say, on this subject, with a

grain of salt, if I were you.]

Dick Bolles

P.S. This book is substantially rewritten and updated every year, as you

probably know. People ask how I keep up, so let me briefly tell you. I come

from a newspaper family, and have a voracious appetite for information.

I read four newspapers every day (the New York Times, the San Francisco

Chronicle, USA Today, plus a local paper), three news or business maga-

zines every week (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and Newsweek), and

I relentlessly search the Internet, daily. Also, four times a year, for fivedays in a row, I do nothing but interact with job-hunters, gathered in my


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xiv Preface

home. I stay very up-to-date on the current problems men and women

are running into, out there in the job-market.

I do not think of this any longer as just a book. Its much more a living

organism, evolving, changing, growing. It takes on a life of its own, each

year. I love this work. Its thrilling and exciting, and you never know

whats going to happen next.

And what have I learned, when all is said and done? I have learned that

when any of us turns into a job-hunter or career-changer, as we inevitably

do, we need two things above all else: we need hopedesperately. That

includes encouragement and inspiration. And we need tools for discover-

ing our truest vision for our own life, plus practical strategies for finding

that vision, that work, and that mission.

Hopefully, this book will give you both.


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xv

In Gratitude

I think a lot about gratitude. I didnt get here, alone. I do not stay here,

alone. I am not inspired, alone. I am not able to write, alone. Everyoneof us is part of a community; I like to say Im a member of an earthly

orchestra (Im the piccolo player).

I thank God that I am still in splendid, vigorous health, that I still

have all my marbles and wits about me, that I love to write more than

ever, that I love to help people more than everand that I am enchanted

by every moment of my life with such a wondrous woman as my wife,

Marci. We laugh together, all day long.

Now I know that life is serious: we only get one shot at it, so far as weknow. And that should lend a solemnity to life, that prevents us from

just taking it casually. I have experienced my share of tragedy, on this

Earth; sometimes I felt that I would never recover. So I empathize with

everyone going through hard times. But still, there is a lot of humor to be

found, day by day, in the ridiculous way we humans sometimes behave.

I love laughing. I particularly love laughing at myself. So does Marci.

Laughter keeps us young.

Im grateful for my family, and I want to name them here: Im grate-ful for my dear sister Ann Johnson, and for my own dear children, and

their families: Stephen, Mark, Gary, and Sharon, plus their most-loving

mother, my former wife, Jan, not to mention my former stepdaughter,

Dr. Serena Brewer, whom I helped raise for twenty years. Im grateful

also for Marcis two grown children, Adlai and Janice, with their mar-

riage partners respectively, Aimee and Marcel, and Marcis one-year-old

grandson, Logan. I love them all dearly.

My especial thanks to Marci for playing hostess to the Five-DayWorkshops we conduct quarterly, in our home in the San Francisco Bay


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xvi

Area. It is a rare woman indeed who will let twenty-one strangers come

be guests in her home for five days at a time, as she cooks breakfast and

lunch for them all, while radiating grace and individual concern for

each, throughout. 1

I want to express my gratitude also to my dearest friend (besides

Marci), Daniel Porot of Geneva, Switzerlandwe taught together two

weeks every summer, for nineteen years, and still talk regularly; Dave

Swanson, ditto; plus my other international friends, Brian McIvor of

Ireland; John Webb and Madeleine Leitner, of Germany; Yves Lermusi,

of Checksterfame, who came from Belgium; Pete Hawkins of Liverpool,

England; Debra Angel MacDougall of Scotland; Byung Ju Cho of South

Korea; Tom ONeil of New Zealand; and, in the U.S., Howard Figler,

beloved friend and co-author of our manual for career counselors; Marty

Nemko; Joel Garfinkle; Richard Leider; Richard Knowdell; Rich Feller;

Dick Gaither; Warren Farrell; Margaret Dikel; Susan Joyce; and Gerry

Crispin.

Speaking of dear (and I was) there is this

dear man, whose mischievous picture you see

here. His name is Jim Kell.

He died this month (as I write). At least

twelve thousand job-hunters will know his

name instantly. Thats how many of your

e-mails he answered over the years. Patiently,

thoroughly, helpfully. He was never paid a

cent for doing that. It was his offering, and

his pleasure. He told me, many times, how

he went about answering them. He would

read them each night before retiring. Then he

would rise at 4 a.m., meditate a while, then

read them once more to see what insights his

mind had come up with while he slept, and

then pray to The Great, Good God as he

used to say, to ask for inspiration as to what he could say that might be

helpful. Many of you have written me, over the years, to say how helpful,

indeed, was his answer to your e-mail. What you may not know is what

a divine sense of calling he had, and what a wicked sense of humor he1. For more information, you can e-mail [email protected].


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In Gratitude xvii

displayed. He was always so much fun to be around. Now he has gone,

peacefully, to his well-deserved rest. The word is bandied about much

too idly these days, but if you ever wanted to meet a real saint, you had

only to meet Jim, and you instantly knew. (Unless you were a dunce.) We

will never see another one like him.

Another dear friend who died earlier this year was Sue Cullen. She

was from the same place as Jim, and they in fact knew each other well.

Sue taught Parachute for some twenty-six years, and was the most loving,

gentle soul you would ever want to know. She died tragically young,

leaving a bereaved husband and grown family. I will miss her like crazy.

But I end up being so grateful for her life. She was a treasure. I spent

dozens of days in her presence. I wish it had been hundreds.

In closing, I want to publicly acknowledge our Creator. A lot of folks

dont believe in God; but I have been a man of faith all my life. I men-

tion this here because all I do, springs from that. He is the source of

whatever grace, wisdom, or compassion I have ever found, and it is He

who has given me my burning desire to help others. I am grateful beyond

measure for such a life, and such a mission as Our Creator, known to me

through Jesus Christ, has given to me. I am grateful to Him for being

as real to me as breathing, and the Rock of my life through every trial

and tragedy, most especially the assassination of my only brother, the

crusading newspaperman Don Bolles, killed by a car bomb at high noon

in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, back in 1976now memorialized in

one of the rooms at the new Newseum building in Washington, D.C.

Dick Bolles

[email protected]

www.jobhuntersbible.com

P.S. My thanks also to all the folks over at Ten Speed Press here in the

San Francisco Bay Area of California. (Ten Speed, now an imprint

of Crown Publishing in New York City, just moved into new digs out

here on the West Coast, at: 2625 Alcatraz Avenue #505, Berkeley, CA

94705.) Anyway, my profound thanks to Phil Wood, who as I mentioned

earlier was my friend and publisher for forty years; he is now publisher

emeritus; Aaron Wehner, current publisher; and to George Young, KaraVan de Water, Lisa Westmoreland, and Betsy Stromberg. My thanks also


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xviii

to Doug Abrams, a remarkable man whom I bumped into this year, and

now work with; he has been a great continuing help to me. As has Glenn

Jones, my videographer, who has been putting together the beginning

of what will ultimately be a library of videos of me. If that is of any inter-

est to you, you can turn towww.dickbollesworkshop.com.

I also want to tell all my readersmore than ten million of youhow

much I appreciate your not only buying my books, but more to the point,

trusting my counsel, and pursuing your dream for your own life. I have

never met so many wonderful souls. I am grateful for you all.


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In Gratitude xix

A GRAMMAR NOTE

I want to explain four points of grammar, in this book of mine: pronouns,

commas, italics, and spelling. My unorthodox use of them invariably

offends unemployed English teachers so much that instead of finishingthe exercises, they immediately write to apply for a job as my editor.

To save us unnecessary correspondence, let me explain. Throughout

this book, I often use the apparently plural pronouns they, them,

and their after singular antecedentssuch as, You must approach

someone for a job and tell them what you can do. This sounds strange

and even wrong to those who know English well. To be sure, we all know

there is another pronounyouthat may be either singular or plural,

but few of us realize that the pronouns they, them, and their werealso once treated as both plural and singular in the English language.

This changed, at a time in English history when agreement in number

became more important than agreement as to gender. Today, however,

our priorities have shifted once again. Now, the distinguishing of gender

is considered by many to be more important than agreement in number.

The common artifices used for this new priority, such as s/he, or he

and she, areto my mindtortured and inelegant. Casey Miller and

Kate Swift, in their classic, The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, agree, andargue that it is time to bring back the earlier usage of they, them, and

their as both singular and pluraljust as you is/are. They further

argue that this return to the earlier historical usage has already become

quite common out on the streetwitness a typical sign by the ocean that

reads, Anyone using this beach after 5 p.m. does so at their own risk.

I have followed Casey and Kates wise recommendations in all of this.

As for my commas, they are deliberately used according to my own

rulesrather than according to the rules of historic grammar (whichI did learnI hastily add, to reassure my old Harvard professors, who

despaired of me weekly, during English class). In spite of those rules,

I follow my own, which are: to write conversationally, and put in a

comma wherever I would normally stop for a breath, were I speaking

the same line.

The same conversational rule applies to my use of italics. I use italics

wherever, were I speaking the sentence, I would emphasize that word

or phrase. I also use italics where there is a digression of thought, and


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xx

I want to maintain the main flow of the sentence. All in all, I write as I

speak. Hence the dashes () to indicate a break in my thought.

Finally, some of my spelling (and capitalization) is weird. (You say

weird; I say playful.) I happen to like writing it e-mail, for example,

instead of email. Most of the time. Fortunately, since this is my own

book, I get to play by my own peculiar interpretations; Im just grateful

that ten million readers have gone along. Nothing delights a child (at

heart) more, than being allowed to play.

P.S. Speaking of playful, over the last thirty-five years a few critics

(very few) have claimed that Parachuteis not serious enough (they object

to the cartoons, here, which poke fun at almost everything). On the

other hand, a few have complained that the book is too serious, and too

complicated in its vocabulary and grammar for anyone except a college

graduate. Two readers, however, have written me with a different view.

The first one, from England, said there is an index that analyzes a

book to tell you what grade in school you must have finished, in order to

be able to understand it. My books index, he said, turned out to be 6.1,

which means you need only have finished sixth grade in a U.S. school

in order to understand it.

Here in the U.S., a college instructor came up with a similar finding.

He phoned me to tell me that my book was rejected by the authori-

ties as a proposed text for the college course he was teaching, because

(they said) the books language/grammar was not up to college level.

What level was it? I asked. Well, he replied, when they analyzed it,

it turned out to be written on an eighth grade level.

Sixth or eighth gradethat seems just about right to me. Why make

job-hunting complicated, when it can be expressed so simply even a

child could understand it?

R.N.B.


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1

PART I

Finding a Job . . .

PART II

Finding a Life . . .


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It was the best of times,

It was the worst of times,

It was the age of wisdom,

It was the age of foolishness,

It was the epoch of belief,

It was the epoch of incredulity,

It was the season of light,

It was the season of darkness,

It was the spring of hope,

It was the winter of despair,

We had everything before us,

We had nothing before us,

We were all going direct to heaven,

We were all going direct the other way . . .

CHARLES DICKENS

A Tale of Two Cities


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3

1. There Are Always

Jobs Out There

The job-market is a mess, right now. People have lost jobs they thoughtwould 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. Its just been

worse, this time, because this has been a bad Recession. Really really

bad. Theres 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. Ornot 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 peoples 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.

Im 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 theyre

right. I can see a grim future ahead for me. It is the death of

all my dreams; all Ill 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.


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4 Chapter One

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 doesnt

seem to work at all. Employers simply arent posting any vacan-cies. Hot jobs are nonexistent. Im 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 dosomething.

And create jobs. Dont just sit there;dosomething!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 Recessionsnot 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 nowafter getting all

banged up from what we have just been throughwe consumers are

basically operating in Cautious mode. Thats 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 wewill weget back tospending at the levels we did before the Recession. (And thus create jobs


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There Are Always Jobs Out There 5

and restore the job-market to the size it used to be, or more.) Its 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. Weve been trying all the things that used to work, except they

dont 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 isnt 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. Thats 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, lets begin with a description of what the job-market is reallydoing,

at the moment, not what the media say it is. Lets 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 timesbut 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 least138 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


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6 Chapter One

volcano doesnt get in the way), recreation, vacations, hobbies, games, and

amusements. Someones 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-markets actual behavior. And according to the experts, during

the decade 19942004, in good times or bad, fifteen million jobs disap-

peared each yearin the U.S., but seventeen million new jobs got created,

each year.1

But doesnt all this change during, and after, a Recession?I mean, look at the monthly Unemployment Figure. Its

been dreadful. It adds up to 8.4 million jobs that have dis-

appeared since the Recession began.

Well, Im glad you mentioned that Figure. It has led to more mischief

in peoples understanding of whats 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 Mis-

sissippi 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 netnumber of jobs added that

month to the U.S. workforce, and the government will tell you how

many. On the other hand, if its shrunk, then obviously jobs have van-

ished that month; and again the government will tell you how many.

And thats the figure these past two or three years that has been causing

1. http://tinyurl.com/yjbtwal. An address by Ben Bernancke at Duke University March

30, 2004, concerning his study of the previous ten years, which included bad times as

well as good: A reasonably conservative estimate is that, excluding seasonal and other

short-term layoffs, about 15 million jobs are lost each year in the United States, equal to

nearly 14 percent of the current level of nonfarm private employment. Of course, . . .these losses were more than offset by the creation of about 17 million jobs per year

during the same period.


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job-hunters, the media, and the government to wring their hands, or

lapse into depression and despair. With good cause, I might add.

What HappensDuringthe Month?

Butand this is crucialit is only a netfigure computed once a month,

at the end of the month, after all the dust has settled. Ah, and theres

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

(forJob Openings & Labor Turnover), and is to be found at the Bureau of

Labor Statistics website atwww.bls.gov/jlt.

Now, youre 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), andIll 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 people found jobs.

And at the end of that month, 3,006,000 vacancies remained unfilled.

MARCH 2009

By the end of that month, the overall size of the employed U.S. Workforcehad shrunk by 753,000 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.



APRIL 2009

By the end of that month, the overall size of the employed U.S. Workforcehad shrunk by 528,000 people, since the previous month. During the


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8 Chapter One

month, jobs were lost, jobs were found, but the net change at the end of

the month was the figure above.



MAY 2009


had shrunk by 387,000 people, since the previous month. During the





JUNE 2009







JULY 2009







AUGUST 2009








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SEPTEMBER 2009



month, jobs were lost, jobs were found, but the net change at the end ofthe month was the figure above.



OCTOBER 2009






NOVEMBER 2009


had grown by 64,000 people, since the previous month. During the




DECEMBER 2009






There are always vacancies out there, jobs waiting to be filled;

our problem lies in how we go about looking for them.


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10 Chapter One

JANUARY 2010

By the end of that month, the overall size of the employed U.S. Work-

force had grown by 14,000 people, since the previous month. During the




Yeah, I know. All of that made your head hurt. And I know youre

bright, and you certainly got the point by the third month, above; but I

droned on, because I wanted to convince you that this cant be explained

away as only happening for a month or two. This never changes, monthin, month out: even in the worst of economic times there are always

vacancies out there, jobs waiting to be filled; our problem lies in

where they are, what they are, and howwe go about looking for them.

During and following a Recession, the methods we use successfully

to find a job when times are goodsending out resumes, plying the

Internet looking for job postings from employersdont work very well

at all when times are tough. We need new strategies, new thinking.

Thats what this book is about. A lot of people arefinding jobs; whyshouldnt you be among them?

Enough Jobs for Everyone?

The media have made much, this past year or two, of the fact that some-

one calculated there are six or so people out of work for every vacancy

that opens up. That is a huge societal problem; it raises the spectre of

the possibility that as a nation, the U.S. (and other countries) may havean underclass of permanently unemployed peoplefor all the foresee-

able future. What that may mean in terms of social unrest, general dis-

content, political divisiveness, and just plain unfairness in the way the

workplace discriminates, will inevitably play itself out in the years to

come. And somehow it simply cannot be ignored.

But there will never be enough jobs in this country for those who want

them, and there never have been. Even at the height of the prosperous

time prior to this Recession, there were eight million people in the U.S.who couldnt find jobs. Currently, that figure is around seventeen mil-


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lion. Thats awful; after all, there were only thirteen million people out

of work during the Great Depression.

As I said, this is a hugeproblem for our whole society, and for any

government in power. But as far as its implications for your destiny as an

individual job-hunter are concerned, the situation is quite different. The

implication that has been falsely drawn from this, has run something

like this: Hey, you never had to compete for a job before, but now youre

going to have to.

This is just plain nuts. As I said, even before this Recession, when

times were prosperous, there were still eight million people who couldnt

find jobs. As a country, we have neverproduced enough jobs for all the

people who want to work, except for a brief period during World War II.

In all other years we always have an unemployment rate, and even if it

stands at only 4.7 percent, thats 4.7 percent of a labor force that is now

154,000,000 in size. So, in actual numbers that works out to be seven

million people who cant find work in the best of times. (Maybe more,

since the government tends to play around with these potentially explosive

numbers politically speaking.)

In other words, you have always had to compete with other people

for a job, and you always will. You need to know how to do this well. It

begins by first studying Yourself, before you study the job-market and

the job-hunt.

Conclusion

For now, I hope this is your major takeaway from this chapter:

Even during hard times, people in the U.S. have been finding

new jobs by the millions, this month and every month. Moreover,even after that, millions of vacancies remain unfilled. Now maybe

these jobs are located in a different place than where youve lived

for just ages. And maybe the job-titles are different from what

you were looking for. But somebody wants the skills you have;

maybe in a different location, maybe under a different job-title.

But somebody wants you.

All of this is an opportunity for you, if you are willing to roll upyour sleeves, and spend some decent time doing some hard work


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12 Chapter One

figuring out where you want to go from here with your life, and

then mastering job-hunting skills that are more than just elemen-

tary. You can find not just an okay job; you can find a piece of

your dreams.

Why be surprised at this good news? Im here to tell you lots of good

news. After all, this is really a Book of Hopeonly masquerading as a

job-hunting manual.

January 22, 2010:

Just wanted to say Thank You for your book, it was such an

encouragement to me when I was laid off last February afternearly 25 years with the same company. I learned some practi-

cal things that seemed to help, in fact I went on four interviews

in a two-month period and was offered three jobs, one because

a former coworker had recommended me to the company, the

others I found online. The hardest thing was deciding which

one to take, but the answer was pretty clear and so now Ive

been at my new job for 6 months and it is going very well.

Thanks again.

A Former Job-Hunter


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what color is your parachute 2011 by richard n. bolles - excerpt

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