What Color Is My Parachute?

“What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers” is the best-selling job-hunting and career-changing book in the world. Twenty thousand people buy the book each month, and there are more than 8 million copies in print. In its lifetime, it has been on the New York Times Best-Seller List (paperback) a total of 288 weeks.

In 1995, the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book listed it as one of “25 Books That Have Shaped Readers’ Lives” (alongside such works as Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Saint Exupery’s “The Little Prince,” Henry Thoreau’s “Walden,” Cervantes’s “Don Quixote,” Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” and Mark Twain’s, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”).

The author coined the word “parachute” to mean career transitions, back in 1968 when people commonly said, “Well, I’m tired of this job – - I’m going to bail out?” Bolles’ playful rejoinder at that time: What color is your parachute? It later became the title of the book.

A writer for Life Magazine said that the phrase “golden parachutes” appeared for the first time a decade or more later, as a “play” on this book’s title. In fact, a number of common phrases in our culture: “golden parachutes,” “informational interviewing,” “transferable skills” etc., were all born out of this book.

It was first published December 1, 1970 — self-published, in fact, with the author using a local copy shop (CopyCopia) in downtown San Francisco. Its first commercial edition was published in November 1972, by Ten Speed Press in Berkeley, Calif. It began appearing on best-seller lists in 1974, has been revised and updated annually since 1975.

Recent reviews have called it “the jobhunter’s Bible,” “the Cadillac of job-search books,” “the most complete career guide around,” and “the gold standard of career guides.”

A Career In the Armed Forces?

The US Armed Forces provide careers that offer a passionate lifestyle and honor in serving our nation. The Armed Forces differentiate the ideals of service, forfeit, devotion and serving our countrymen into distinct ‘responsibilities.’  The basic responsibility of the Armed Forces is to defend the territorial reliability of a nation to threats of external violence.  In addition, the Armed Forces are required to assist civil organizations during internal safety turbulence, maintain preservation of law and order, and organizing relief actions during natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and tropical storms.  One of the main components of any job in the Armed Forces  is to serve and protect the nation’s inherent laws, beliefs and uphold democracy.

There are the two distinct branches of the Armed Services, Support Services and Fighting Forces. Support Services comprise of mechanical and electronic engineering, medical corps, ordinance corps education and intelligence.  The Fighting Forces include the unbreakable corps, heavy weaponry, engineering, signals, and infantry which are classified divisions in the Army, Navy and Air Force.

For more information about careers in the US Armed Forces:

US Army:  http://www.army.com/careers

US Marine Corps:  http://www.marines.com/careers

US Air Force: http://www.airforce.com/careers

US Navy: http://www.navy.com/careers

US National Guard: http://www.nationalguard.com/careers

Resume Writing Strategies – Hire a Professional Resume Writer

Resume Writing Strategies

1. Accent your strengths with “power” words.

Do more than describe yourself, sell yourself. Use adjectives (i.e. “successful”) and adverbs (i.e. “creatively”) to describe
your contributions & achievements.

2. Tell them not just what you DID, but also what you can OFFER.

Too many applicants fill their résumés with bulleted points merely listing their previous/current tasks & accomplishments. However, those who are more successful transform their tasks & accomplishments into points demonstrating what they’ve LEARNED.

3. Hire a professional résumé writer.

It is extremely difficult to write effectively about ourselves. Even talented wordsmiths can benefit from having an outside, professional source crafting a quality document for them; one that complies with all of the latest trends in career marketing.

Remember: Most employers like the idea of applicants going out of their way to delegate the task of résumé writing and invest in career assistance. 

Resume Tips

Make sure your résumé is FOCUSED -

The employer should not have to dig through your résumé in order to determine what it is you offer.  Avoid the all too common “catch all” approach of inundating the employer with volumes of unrelated experience. If the employer has to “guess” what you are targeting or offer, you’ve immediately lost their interest in what could be some dynamic qualifications.

Be CONCISE -

Keep the employer’s valuable time in mind when submitting a résumé.  Many people believe they need to provide excessive details, when in fact, what most busy employers want is a QUICK SNAPSHOT of what you offer them.  This is particularly true in challenging job markets in which the employer has plenty of résumés to choose from.

Information About Professional Resume

Tell me a little about your company:

• Professional Résumé is part of the world’s largest and oldest résumé writing service established in 1959.
• We are certified by the Professional Association of Résumé Writers (PARW) and Certified Professional Résumé     Writers (CPRW) associations, and each writer on our present team has a minimum of five years of experience. We are also members of the major trade associations including the Professional Résumé Writers Research Association (PRWRA).
•  We’ve been represented in the Kansas City and Bay Area marketplace for nearly 40 years.
•  Lifetime updating means that if you lose a copy of your résumé, we’ll still have it. We have a secure database of over 5,000 client résumés, cover letters, bios and client reference information.

Office Romance?? Stop.

Career Advice:  Don’t Fish Off The Company Dock. 

If a relationship goes bad with work colleagues, your job life will most likely be strained.  Job promotions/career aspirations may be in jeopardy.

Try to restrain yourself…

Character

Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.  Going the extra mile in your job search is one of them.

What Your Resume Is – And Is Not.

Your Resume is a very important tool in your search for a job.  With the current state of the economy, a powerful resume could be your key to finding employment.  It is essential you understand exactly what a resume is and is not.
Your Resume is:

•     A concise presentation of yourself targeted to the needs of a specific employer
•     A marketing tool that distinguishes you from the competition (highlights your major accomplishments)
•     A document that focuses on “the whole person” (your unique qualities, experience and strengths)
•     A results-oriented document, which highlights not just what you did but the IMPACT your efforts had on previous employers
•     A document that demonstrates career progression or an increasing level of complexity in your work experience

Your Resume is NOT:

•     A history of your life from high school to business school
•     An autobiography which describes your life to date
•     A laundry list of everything you have ever done
•     A long (2+ pages) document that is dense and difficult to read; 2 pages are fine if your work experience requires two pages
•     A detailed list of all your job responsibilities

Laid Off? Take A Break.

Keep close to Nature’s
heart, yourself;
and break clear away,
once in a while, and
climb a mountain or spend
a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean…
- John Muir

Be The Best You Can Be.

Don’t compare yourself to others.  Instead, focus on where you’ve been  versus where you are now  versus where you want to be.