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What Color Is Your Parachute? 2009: A Practical Manual for Job-hunters and Career Changers | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Nelson Bolles
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Category: Book
List Price: $28.95
Buy New: $19.11
You Save: $9.84 (34%)
New (30) Used (6) from $18.06
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 381297
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2009
Pages: 407
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1580089313
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.14
EAN: 9781580089319
ASIN: 1580089313
Publication Date: October 2008
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Product Description
"What Color is Your Parachute?" is still the best-selling job-hunting book in the world. A favorite of job hunters and career changers for more than three decades, it continues to be a mainstay on best-seller lists, from Amazon.com to "Business Week" to the "New York Times", where it has spent more than six years, and has been translated into 12 languages. The 2008 edition is an even more useful book, with its updated, inspiring, and detailed plan for changing readers' lives. With new examples, instructions, and cautionary advice, "Parachute" is, to quote "Fortune" magazine, 'the gold standard of career guides'.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 First Book To Buy for Job Hunting August 13, 2008
A.Trendl HungarianBookstore.com (Glen Ellyn, IL USA)
17 out of 25 found this review helpful
"What Color Is Your Parachute" is the first book you need if finding a job is your goal. If you've not bought this yet, you haven't started looking. It is that good.
Richard Bolles is the expert. His books sell because they are fresh each year with insight, purpose and ideas for determining what job you should do, and how to get it.
I used "Parachute" to get my first job. It continues to influence me today, as I keep my eyes open for a possible career change. As I have trandsitioned from nonprofits to corporate work, to freelance/consulting to looking again at nonprofits, I take what Bolles' teaches into each situation. He helps balance out reality. No smoke and mirrors, but encouraging and candid exhortation.
Thoroughly practical, Bolles asks you questions about your mission in life. His belief is that just getting a job (any job) -- even ones you are good at -- won't be a wise decision in the long haul. He helps you see your passions mixed with skills and experience, and guides you to getting there. Though it is hardly a self-help book, it is far more useful than the ones clogging up the Top 10 list.
He keeps you accountable. Finding a job is your job if that's what you say you want. And if you aren't working, he won't let you make excuses -- you've got the time. Either you are looking or you aren't. Dr. Phil could take a note from Bolles' direct yet congenial style.
Bolles has kept current, with a significant look at the internet, starting your own business, dealing with the tempestuous employment marketplace, working in an unpleasant situation, and more.
Don't bother with the hardcover. You need the paperback. This is not a sit-on-the-shelf book, but a get-down-to-business book, and you'll appreciate the flexibility while at work or on the train.
I fully recommend, "What Color Is Your Parachute" by Richard Nelson Bolles.
Anthony Trendl
http://anthonytrendl.com
 The very best job hunting book, but a poor career design guide December 9, 2008
Bob U (New York)
13 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is, by far, the best guide for the job hunter. It is most useful for people who already know exactly what job they are looking for. As a guide to help you choose a career that will fit you perfectly it is not so good. I am a psychologist and career coach who has worked with hundreds of people seeking a no-compromise career. If you want both a successful and highly satisfying career, Parachute's primitive self-assessment tools will not get you very far in that direction. I highly recommend three other books:
The first is Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type. This book has been around for a few years and is still the best book on personality type and work. Understanding your personality and what careers fit your personality type is an important part of making the best choice.
By far the most powerfully useful career design books are both by the man who created the field of career coaching back in the early 1980s, when the word coaching was otherwise just used for sports. Nicholas Lore founded Rockport Institute, probably the best career coaching service for people seeking the perfect career, and invented many of the leading-edge tools and methods in his field. He says to have both success and fulfillment, you need to choose work that fits you naturally. In addition to your personality, he says your career should be a very close fit with your natural talents. You need to get clear exactly which job functions you do naturally and easily, what subject matter would be interesting enough, how important it is to have a purpose, a mission or make a difference, what workplace environment would be best for you, and consider several other areas you want to get right, or, like many, you may feel you have chosen the wrong career.
His first book, The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success is probably the best career design guide ever written. It takes you through choosing the perfect career for you from beginning to end. Read some of the reviews of it and you will see that many others agree with me. His new book, Now What?: The Young Person's Guide to Choosing the Perfect Career is for people under 30, students and people fairly new to the career world. The author knows his audience. Many people under 30 want their reading fast, lean and to the point. More straightforward and streamlined, than The Pathfinder, it doesn't have as much depth on some important subjects such as what to do when you get stuck, how to make the best decisions. But it is completely practical and designed to turn you into a career detective, observing what you do best and uncovering the best clues about what would make a career fit you perfectly.
I recommend you get all three of these excellent books. After all, picking your career could be the most important decision you will ever make. Most people just put up with their work. Don't let that happen to you!
I do recommend What Color is Your Parachute by Bolles as the best guide for job hunting. It will give you all the tools you need. But, I give it a one-star review because it presumes to be something it is not, a competent career design guide.
THE book for job hunters October 9, 2008
Edgar Alexander (Ed)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This is something like the 10th edition of the landmark job hunting handbook, What Color is Your Parachute? This book is great because, like all the others, it gets you thinking about what job is right for YOU. Aka, in what kind of job will you succeed because you'll be able to flourish by applying your strengths. This new, 2009 edition is also geared toward the tough job market we're facing today in our troubled economy.
Another key book for job hunting is The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book. A lot of employers look for emotionally intelligent candidates these days, and the book comes with a test to show you where you need to improve (the book shows you how to improve).
Here we are again August 24, 2008
Karen Tiede (Raleigh, NC)
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
Another time of uncertainty. Another copy of Parachute. It changes; it's eternal. Is it really the 39th edition? What's he going to do for #40? Have I been a part of this phenomenon THAT long?
My question was, "do I need a new edition?" When I looked at my 2000 copy and saw Bolles recommending metacrawler, I knew the answer was Yes. He recommends buying a new copy if yours is older than 2005.
More, do the work. It's not a book to read and shelve. I don't think my answers will change very much, in their heart, but the world has changed since the first time I filled in the petals on that flower and therefore the opportunities for using my skills / gifts / etc. have changed, too.
10M copies sold. I've had three or four myself, so maybe that only represents a market of 2.5M job hunters. Hard to say. Perhaps the tide shifts. Bolles' work and guidance complements the Strengthsfinder philososphy of finding what you want to do and are good at, rather than repairing imagined weaknesses and attempting to compete with people who are naturally good at tasks you hate. (Perhaps it's the other way around.)
I don't remember being (able to be) as clear about my values--where (in what arena) I want to apply my gifts. Maybe that's age; maybe the book changed. Kinda wish I'd kept all my copies along the way, now.
If only there were a way that an Amazon review could actually nudge a reader into not only buying the book, which is easy, but also DOING the book, which is harder, and then even more, ACTING on the knowledge that can be revealed. This IS the easier, softer way.
Great Book. Get the New Version! September 29, 2008
N. Wigle
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
The new version is worth the money. I got the 2001 (from the library) and 2009 version (from amazon). The 09 version is not only updated with the most current internet information (a lot has changed since 01 to make that version out of date), it is sequenced and ordered completely differently and includes "the parachute workbook" integrated into the text... no flipping back and forth through the appendices. I think every high school career class should use this book. It is great for any time in life, and I will use his principles/strategies for reflection on an ongoing basis. It definitely would have been helpful in picking my college major...I am going to recommend this to my younger sister, and keep using it myself.
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