“The clearer your vision of what you seek, the closer you are to finding it. For what you are seeking is also seeking you.”

‘What Color Is Your Parachute?’ has been the job-hunting classic for decades– it remains the most complete career guide around. According to its title, your parachute is the career, or series of careers that will save your skin.

The book says that no day of work, whatever the work, is ever wasted. Your life experience is a story of survival, practice and skills acquisition. The book has sold more than 9 million copies worldwide.

The book is a complete guide to the process of getting a job, pointing out the important observed rules most commonly used by employers when they are hiring– what to look out for.

But most importantly, the exercises contained in the second half of the book provide you with an insight into your own abilities which will tell you the direction you should be going. Personal skills are matched with job characteristics. This is highly motivating.

A friend of mine says the book makes sense, as it takes the average person 18 weeks to find a new job, and 3 months to do the exercises. This represents time well-used, as you end up with the job you want, rather than one you don’t want.

He did the exercises, and said it was somewhat of a shock to him when it pointed out his true direction. He had thought he wanted something else. The book helped him gain the self-knowledge he didn’t pick up at school.

“Job-hunting is an activity that repeats itself over and over again, in most people’s lives. According to experts, the average worker, under 35 years of age, will go job-hunting every one to three years. And the average worker over 35 will go job-hunting every five to eight years.” Change is the norm. Jobs are constantly changing: being destroyed, sometimes getting replaced, new ones being created.

Not every person cuts a clear path through life, and the book says a degree is no guarantee. A lot of graduates feel cheated when there is no sure job there at the end of all their hard work. And what if you want to emigrate or move to different parts? There is a chapter in the book devoted to this. There are also very useful website addresses throughout to help you with the information you need in your quest to find the most suitable job.

The latest 2007 edition that I looked at is full of grids and tables, diagrams and lists, beautiful illustrations and funny cartoons. You will learn everything from writing resumés and sending them; how to score an interview; how to conduct the interview. “An interview resembles dating. An interview is two people trying to go steady”; how to send a thank you note (“the most overlooked step in the entire job-hunting process”); and salary negotiation, Never discuss salary until the end of the interviewing process, when they have definitely said they want you.

In the last chapter ‘How to find your mission in life’ God and one’s vocation takes a religious (Christian) perspective. It is all about how to think about God in finding your true path in life.
You spend a lifetime developing this. These are times when life coaching, career counselling and analysis are becoming more and more popular. Your life choices and direction are very much who you are.

Your career (best use of your unique person or self-realisation) and wage packet (bread on the table and what permits you to support a family) is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. So you could call this the ultimate self-help manual.

The book has undoubtedly made Richard Nelson Bolles a rich man. He receives thousands of written testimonies every year from grateful readers who used the knowledge found in ‘What Color Is Your Parachute?’