What Color is

Your Parachute?
 Credit:

What Color Is Your Parachute: A Practical Manual for Job-

Hunters and Career-Changers
by Richard Nelson Bolles

For more information:

www.jobhuntersbible.com
 The Best-Selling
Job Hunting Book in the World

This book was first published in 1970 and has

since sold eight million copies in twelve
languages. An average of 20,000 people buy this
book every month.
Five Worst Ways to
Find a Job
1. Using the Internet
If you are seeking a technical or computer related
job, I estimate the success rate to be 10 percent.
For the other 10,000 job titles, probably one
percent. That means for every 100 job hunters who
use job-postings and resume postings on the
Internet, one of them will find a job; 99 will not.

Richard Bolles
2. Mailing out resumes to
employers at random.

This search method has a 7 percent success rate.

That is, out of every 100 job hunters who use this
method, 7 will find a job thereby; 93 job-hunters will
not.
3. Answering ads in trade or
professional journals in your field.

This method also has a 7 percent success rate. Only 7

of 100 job-hunters will find a job by answering ads in
professional and trade journals in their field.
4. Answering local newspaper ads

This method has a 5-24 percent success rate.

The fluctuation is due to the level of salary being
sought; the higher the salary being sought, the
fewer job-hunters who are able to find a job using
this search method.
5. Going to employment agencies
or search firms.

This method also has a 5-24 percent success rate;

again it depends on the level of salary being sought.
The Five Best Ways
to Try To Find a Job
1. Ask for job-leads from: family
members, friends, professors or
anyone you know.

Ask one question: Do you know of any jobs at the

place where you work or elsewhere?
This method has a 33 percent success rate.
2. Knocking on the door of any
employer, publisher or company that
interests you, whether they are known
to have a vacancy or not.

This search method has a 47 percent search rate.

 3. By yourself, using the Yellow
Page’s to identify subjects or
companies that interest you in
the city where you wish to work.

This method has a 69 percent success rate.

4. With a group of friends, using the
Yellow Page’s to identify subjects or
companies that interest you and then
calling up and asking if they are
hiring for the type of position you
want.

This method has an 84 percent success rate.

5. The Creative Approach to Job
Hunting or Career-Change.

This method has an 86 percent success rate.

You must decide just exactly what you have to offer the
world.
You must decide where you want to use your skills.
You must go after the organizations that interest you
most, whether or not they are known to have a
vacancy.
 Why The Best Jobs are Not Advertised
o Employers don’t want to be inundated with resumes or calls from
unqualified applications.
o Advertising costs money and consume more staff time to process
applications
o Advertised search processes are legally riskier
o Employers like to rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from
within.
o Applicants who call or apply without an ad are more likely to be
highly motivated and qualified
 Why Knocking on Doors and
Making Telephone Calls Works
oYou find out about non-advertised, recently created or
recently vacated jobs
oYou make a personal impression on someone, even if it’s a
secretary
oIt shows you are an ambitious self-starter
oIt shows you really want to work there.
oBecause so few people do it, you stand out from the crowd.
 Bolle’s 23 tips
for a successful job hunt
No. 1 – Work hard
No one owes you a job. If you want a job, you are going
to have to go out and hunt for it—hard.

One third of all job hunters give up during the first

months of their job-hunt.
They give up because they thought it was going to be
simple, quick and easy.
No. 2 – Keep at it
Job hunting success yields to job-hunting effort.
The more you try and the more hours you put into
your job hunt, the more likely you will find the job
you are looking for.
If, that is, your effort is intelligently directed.
No. 3 –Change tactics
Successful job-hunting requires a willingness to
change your tactics.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, move on

to another strategy.

Don’t be afraid to take risks and try something new.

No. 4 – Get advice
Go talk to the successful job hunters among your
family, friends and acquaintances—people who
were out of work and since then found a job they
really love—and learn what they did.

Then go imitate it. If you do that, you probably

won’t have to buy this book.
 No. 5 – You have a job
oTo speed up your search, you must think of yourself as
already having found a job.
oYour job, in this case, is that of hunting for work.
oYou must think of yourself as having a full-time job
(without pay) from 9 to 5 every weekday. “Punch in”
at 9:00 and “punch out” at 5:00, just as a worker
does.
No. 6 – Patience is still a
virtue
You must be mentally and financially prepared for
your job hunt to last a lot longer than you think it
will.
The shortest job hunt lasts between two and
eighteen weeks, even if you work full-time at it.
Experienced job-placement people claim that your
search for a job will probably take one month of
full-time searching for every $10,000 of salary you
are seeking.
No. 7 – Never give up
Keep going until you find a job.
Persistence is the name of the game.
Persistence means sending an e-mailed resume
then sending a formatted resume by mail then
following it up one week later with a phone call.
One thing a job-hunter needs above everything
else is hope, and hope is born of persistence.
No. 8 – Be prepared to change
Do not expect you will necessarily be able to find
exactly the same kind of work that you used to do.

Define some other lines of work that you could do,

can do and would enjoy doing.

But don’t just take a job for the sake of a paycheck,

unless you absolutely have to.
No. 9 – Go for it
Forget “what’s available out there.” Go after the job
you really want the most.

Don’t assess the job market and then decide what

you want based on what’s available.

Decide what you want and go for it.

No. 10 – Solicit help
Once you know what kind of work you are looking
for, tell everyone what it is; have as many other
eyes and ears out there looking on your behalf as
possible. Enlist your friends and families.
No. 11 – Be creative
You might even consider putting the kind of work
you are looking for on your answering machine:
“Hi, this is Sandra. I’m busy right now looking for an
magazine editing job. Leave me a message and if
you happen to have any leads or contacts for me,
be sure to mention that too, along with your phone
number.”
No. 12 – Strength in Numbers
To speed up your search, find some kind of support
group so that you don’t have to face the job-hunt
all by yourself.

You’d be amazed how much the support of others

can keep you going when you would otherwise get
discouraged. Organize a group if you don’t know of
any.
No. 13 – Eggs in many
baskets
Go after many different organizations that interest you
instead of just one or two.

Don’t wait for a favorite job to “pan out” while they make
a decision. Keep on searching every day.

You lose valuable time when a job that looked like a sure
thing falls through.

Nothing is ever sure until it’s sure.

No. 14 – It takes chutzpah!
Determine to go after any employers that interest
you.
Pay no attention to whether or not there is a known
vacancy at that place.
Underline this rule, copy it, paste it on your
bathroom mirror, memorize it and repeat it every
day: Pay no attention to whether or not there is a
known vacancy.
No. 15 – Small is better
To speed up your search for one of the jobs that are
out there, concentrate on organizations with 20 or
less employees.

There are always companies that are hiring, but

they are usually small companies.

Talk to people and find out which local companies

are growing and hiring people.
 No. 16 – Go face to face
Go face-to-face with at least 4 employers a day; or if
you’re contacting them by telephone, 40 a day
minimum.

One study found that if a job hunter went face-to-face

with two employers a week, the job search took a year.
If the job hunter meets 20 employers a week, the job
search drops to less than three months.
No. 17 – Use the telephone
To speed up your search, use the telephone. Make
40 to 60 calls per day.
Call every company in the Yellow Pages that looks
interesting to you.
Write out what you plan to say on paper
Describe your best skill in one sentence, your
experience in one sentence, and ask if there’s a job
opening for someone with your qualifications.
No. 18 – Knock on doors
To speed up your search, knock on doors,
particularly if you hate to use the telephone.
Travel to cities where you would like to work. Find
companies you would like to work for, go in and ask
if they might be looking for someone with your
skills. Try to talk to a manager or decision-maker.
47.7% of job-hunters who use this approach get a
hiring interview and then a job according to one
study.
No. 19 – Be flexible
To speed up your search for one of the jobs that are
out there, be willing to look at different kinds of
jobs: full-time jobs, part-time jobs, short-term
jobs, temporary jobs, working for others, etc.

If it’s a company you really want to work for, get

your foot in the door with any job you can live with.
No. 20 – You don’t have a handicap

To get a good job, just remember that you have no

handicaps: you are not too young, too
inexperienced, too fat, too shy, too assertive, too
unsuccessful, or not from the right kind of
background.

Companies today are interested in what you can do

for them—not in where you came from.
No. 21 – The typical job hunt
looks like this:
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, YES. We’d like to have you
come to work for us.
No. 22 – Write “thank you”
notes
Every evening after an interview sit down and write
a thank-you note to each person you saw that day.
This means not only employers, but secretaries,
receptionists or anyone else who helped you or
were nice to you.
Mention something specific about the way that
person treated you.
No. 23 – Courtesy at all times

Treat every employer with courtesy, even if it

seems certain they can’t offer you a job. Someone
there may be able to refer you to someone else
next week if you made a good impression.
P.S. What if nothing works?
Following the strategies in this chapter, which were
learned from successful job hunters, you should
dramatically improve your chance of finding a job. You
do not need to read the rest of the book. But if you
faithfully try everything in this chapter and if none of it
works for you, flee to Chapters 6-11 of What Color is
Your Parachute?
- Richard Bolles