What Color is Your Parachute? Richard Bolle’s tips for a successful job hunt.

What Color is Your Parachute?

Richard Bolle’s tips

for a successful job hunt

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-hungers 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 Waysto 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

Employers don’t want to be inundated with resumes or calls from unqualified applications.

Advertising costs money and consume more staff time to process applications

Advertised search processes are legally riskier Employers like to rely on word-of-mouth

recommendations from within. Applicants who call or apply without an ad are

more likely highly motivated and qualified

Why Knocking on Doors and Making Telephone Calls Works

You find out about non-advertised, recently created or recently vacated jobs

You make a personal impression on someone, even if it’s a secretary

It shows you are an ambitious self-starter It shows you really want to work there. Because 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

To speed up your search, you must think of yourself as already having found a job. Your job, in this case, is that of hunting for work. You 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