What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters & Career- Changers, 1999 Edition News & Views Book Review

Bolles, Richard Nelson, What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters & Career-Changers, 1999 Edition. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. ISBN 1-58008-008-01 (paper), 366 pages, $16.95 n By Al Brown Senior Editor at Okidata Originally published in News & Views March 1999 issue. Copyright 1999 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

This seems to be a year for reunions: a number of college roommates, Army buddies-even a long-lost cousin who moved to Sweden one step ahead of the draft board-have resurfaced recently. It was in that spirit that I renewed my acquaintance with another old friend after almost twenty years: What Color is Your Parachute. Like the others, Parachute has changed outwardly over the years. The complexity of the job market caused some middle-age spread (up to about 525 pages in the 1997 and 1998 editions). In tune with the times, however, the 1999 version shed some weight-almost 200 pages-through restructuring and moving a substantial amount of resource information to the Internet (http://www.tenspeed.com/parachute). Interestingly, a section on "Job-Hunting Tips for Special Populations"-including not only the expected ethnic and sexual minorities, but also such groups as clergy, ex-military, "people in recovery," and ex-offenders-has disappeared in the latest edition. A sign of the conservative times? Flower power If you look past the shorter haircut and the relaxed-fit jeans, you'll recognize the same flower child. Parachute was, and still is, a product of the late '60s and early '70s, when freedom and self-fulfillment ran up against the realities of earning a living. It offered a radical alternative to the conventional resume-and-want-ad approach, which not only reduced your chances of getting a job, but also seemed to guarantee that any job you were lucky enough to find would be one you'd hate. The method is brilliant and simple. First, examine your transferable skills (a term author Richard Bolles claims to have popularized) and decide what you enjoy doing most. Second, decide where you most want to exercise those skills-the field and type of organization you feel most comfortable in-and target specific companies. Finally, use all the contacts you can muster to seek out the person in the chosen organization who has the power to hire you, then convince him or her to do so. This is the technique used by the "Creative Minority" to find the job of their dreams. Notice that this bypasses all of the established corporate hiring mechanisms. Bolles asserts that approaching the Human Resources department is the kiss of death; that resumes are simply a means of eliminating job-hunters; and that want ads are the last refuge of the unemployable-and he fills the book with statistics to prove it. There are also plenty of testimonials from satisfied customers who have found the perfect job; call me cynical, but I looked in vain for information about how long these dream jobs lasted. And today How does this approach fit in with the current state of the technical communication profession? Does today's info- wrangler need a parachute, regardless of the color? Many of the concepts pioneered by What Color is Your Parachute have entered the mainstream. Transferable skills virtually define the technical communicator, and we constantly maintain and add to our repertoire of skills to stay competitive. Networking is also second nature to anyone concerned with career development in today's business environment. These are areas where active participation in professional organizations like the STC pays concrete dividends. It seems that we don't spend as much time with what Bolles calls the "Where" component of a career: the context in which we work and the use to which we put our talents and skills. Yet this is most likely to be the source of career dissatisfaction. This book takes a holistic approach to career planning, which is what makes it most effective for those considering a career change. Starting with an organized inventory of skills and interests, it builds a definition of an ideal occupation. Turning that ideal into a reality is a different question altogether. Nonetheless, it's a valuable exercise to go through this process from time to time. It's a good way to take stock of how far you've come and whether you're on the way to where you really want to go.

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Last updated: March 28, 1999 (mvh)