What Color is Your Parachute? A Book Review

What Color Is Your Parachute?, Richard N. Bolles, Ten Speed Press, PO Box 7123, Berkeley, California 94797, © 2005 edition, pp. 400.

What Color is Your Parachute? is all about discovering what your dream job is, and how to obtain your dream job. In fact parachute color is a euphemism for your dream job.

When someone asks if you are employed yet, don’t you say I haven’t landed yet, as in “landed a job.” Jumping out of a plane in a parachute takes a leap of faith just like job hunting does. Your dream job is your color of your parachute whatever that color may be.

What Color is Your Parachute? was written by a former Episcopal priest, who was fired from his parish by his Bishop, and was not offered another parish. He wasn’t fired for any scandalous reason just simply the Bishop felt he wasn’t doing a good enough job.

The former priest then had to find a new career, and he realized that he was good at counseling people how to job hunt, and change careers because he had been through it. Also, as a priest he had a background in counseling and felt that he had found his true calling in writing this series of Parachute books. I guess so; his book has been called one of the definitive career counseling books, and more than 8 million copies have been sold.

He feels that writing these books are his “true calling”, and he wants to help you find your true calling. Callings are usually described as a religious vocation, but the author feels that this does not have to be. Callings can be anything that you were born to do, and his goal is to help you find your “calling” or mission in life in regards to a career.

This doesn’t mean that the book is overtly religious; it’s just that he asks you to consider your faith, whatever that may be Christian, Judaism, Moslem, Hinduism, etc. in making major decisions in your life including your career. I believe that even Atheists or Agnostics wouldn’t be offended by his take on this and the book is carefully and intentionally written by Richard Bolles so that you can substitute fate, higher power, destiny, or whatever in the place of God in this book.

His book is full of active exercises that you can do to accomplish this goal of discovering your true calling or your dream job.

One of these exercises, the most helpful one in the book at least for my own personal past unemployment situation entails imagining yourself at a party. The room is in the shape of a hexagon with six corners. There are six different types of people gathering in each corner. Which every corner you choose gives you an inclination where your dream job lies.

In one corner Realistic people or “R” people as author Richard Bolles calls them are hanging out. These people have athletic or mechanical ability, like professional football players, and mechanics. So imagine your personal mechanic, and your neighbor the electrical engineer is hanging out there talking to Peyton Manning, Quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts. If you say who is Peyton Manning, and you think your mechanic is a dodo bird, and your neighbor is a nerd in your eyes this would not be your corner, and you wouldn’t want to join this group.

The next corner is the “I” people, Investigative people who like to observe, learn, investigate, analyze, evaluate or solve problems. So your old college professor is talking to the Chief of Detectives from your home town in this corner. Do you make a beeline for this group after walking through the door?

The third corner is the “A” people. Artistic people have artistic, innovating or intuition abilities, and like to work in unstructured situations, using their imagination or creativity. So the local sculpture who designed the city’s new art exhibit is yapping with your local painter who has been hailed as the next Vincent Van Gogh, and both of them are speaking to the current New York Times best-selling fiction author, John Grisham. Are you salivating to meet them all?

The fourth corner is the “S” people “S” is for Social, of course. These people like to work with people, in informing, enlightening, helping, training, developing, or curing them, and/or are skilled with words. So Steve Harvey and co-author Denene Millner who wrote a book on dating advice for woman titled, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man are talking to your family physician, and the Training and Development Director for your old company in the S corner. Is this the corner you head for first?

The fifth corner of the hexagon is for “E” people. This is where Donald Trump, business tycoon and Drew Barrymore, actress, and producer are drawing a crowd. These people like to work with people, influencing, persuading, or performing. They also lead, and manage organizational goals for artistic, social, or economic gain.

And the last corner is for “C” people. “C” is for conventional, of course. These people like to work with data, have clerical or numerical ability, carrying things out in detail or following through on others instructions. Bill Gates is hanging there with all the computer engineers in town. He is joined by statisticians, file clerks, and data entry personnel. Are you rushing to this corner?

So you can see it’s time for a little truth in advertising. Don’t pretend to run to see Bill Gates because he is rich, but because you love to talk “computers.” And don’t run over there to that C corner because that’s where your Dad or your spouse pulls you to either. This is your dream. You have attended this party alone.

This exercise in imagination really helped me narrow my focus. The author’s exercise is to rank from one to six the order you would mill around between the corners. And the participants aren’t allowed to leave their corner either; Bill Gates isn’t going to wander over to talk to Donald Trump, and Drew Barrymore. So forget that scenario. You are the one wandering.

Are you curious? This is my ranking. I would make a beeline for Artistic first, and then Enterprising, and then Social, and then Investigative, and then Conventional, and Realistic is dead last.

As you all know in real life business tycoon Donald Trump is allowed to go over and visit Bill Gates, computer tycoon and vice versa. We also all know the anomaly where your friend the computer engineer is also a first rate gourmet cook too!

So because of these real life scenarios Richard Bolles advice is to use your top 3 corners in determining your career focus, because as we all know the old saying “Birds of a feather flock together.”

In my case, I am a freelance Business writer who enjoys training people in finding their true calling in the field of work. I also enjoy operating several online Amazon affiliate stores while working as a Customer Service Representative in the automotive industry. (I have always enjoyed automobiles, and working with people. Automobiles as in driving, and admiring historic collectibles, not as a mechanic, or automotive mechanical engineer. There is a difference, you know.) Also, after working in the training field for several years, I would also like to expand my human resource skills, and break into the recruiting field.

Can you see how these endeavors would incorporate artistic (writing), enterprising (business), and social (educate) skills, and interests? Unfortunately, none of these current endeavors are paying all my bills, not yet anyway, so I’m still looking to add something more stable to the equation. I am also taking into account Richard Bolles concept of adding my “favorite” values into the equation. One of my values is… you guessed it money, or as I would like to put it economic stability. I also like to have enough money to well …eat. I guess I’m more of an “R”, Realistic Person, than I previously thought.

So as you can see this book is full of helpful advice in helping you to decipher what your dream job is, and it also gives advice on how to obtaining this dream job once you have discovered what it is. It also discusses what happens when your dream job doesn’t materialize, what do to about it, whether that involves moving to a new location, pursuing an alternative career, finding a “stop gap” job until your dream job comes along, or simply trying a different job hunting strategy.

A “stop gap” job is defined as a job to pay the bills on a temporary basis until your dream job comes along. It would be a job that would drive you stir crazy long term. So for me an “A/E” artistic/business person with a college education that would mean taking a lower level Customer Service position until I can write, publish and sell that Great American Novel, or move up that corporate ladder!

We all have heard of those “E” actors who before making it big as a movie star, waited tables in LA. Following routine directions waiting tables is a C type person, with a little bit of S, as in Social thrown in for good measure, a far cry from the silver screen; however.

Although the author pushes following your dreams, he also claims one needs to be open to changing what you think is your “true calling.” After all, the Richard Bolles the former Rev. Bolles thought that the clergy was his true calling until he was forced to make a change, which goes to prove if you think you are a brain surgeon as your true calling, you still have to have a medical license. Or in the author’s case in order to be a Reverend, you can’t have the Bishop take away all of your parish assignments, because your parishioners don’t like you. Richard Bolles is also as practical, as he is visionary.

Personally, I found his exercises extremely useful, especially if you actually put in the intense work to actually do the exercises in his book, instead of just well…reading them.

Another interesting aspect of his book is that he includes indexes of career counselors in your area, which I think is useful for some people, who can’t decide what “their dream job” is without professional guidance.

The author updates the book every year to keep pace with new trends in job hunting such as the Internet, search engines, etc., but basically his 2009 edition that I found at the library wasn’t much different from the used 2005 edition that was given to me as a gift. The only difference I found between the 2 editions was that he had dropped the career counselors that had gone out of business, and added some new entries into the market. And he also branched out. The author has written different versions of the book for different reading audiences such as a young adult student version, and one for mid-life career changers.

I like that. But take this as a warning this is not a book that teaches you how to write a resume, cover letter, and etc. It does however cover networking, and other job hunting strategies. But you know he never billed this as a resume writing book; he tells his readers that this was not the purpose of the book, and there are other books that cover that topic much better than he can. He bills this book, and the bookstore bills this book as a career planning book, and that is exactly what it is.

I urge every job hunter to read it, and to perform the exercises in the book. If you can’t afford it at least check it out of the library. Just look for the latest edition the library carries. The periodical Today’s Librarian lists this book as one of the seven essential popular Business books in the library.

L Wagen lists What Color Is Your Parachute? as one of the most popular Job & Career books on her bookshelf, and in her new Amazon store, Wagen’s Bookstore.,