Product Description

Still the best-selling job-hunting book in the world, WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? is the most complete guide for first-time job seekers as well as second and encore careers changers. For more than three decades, it remains 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 it has been translated into 20 languages. The 2009 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."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32545 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-01
• Released on: 2008-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

From the Publisher
The #1 best-selling career book of all time, revised and updated to keep pace with today's ever-changing job market. * Updates and revisions throughout.

From the Back Cover
More Than 10 Million Copies Sold

New York Times and Business Week Best Seller

Chosen by the Library of Congress as one of 25 Books That Have Shaped Readers' Lives

One of the Seven Essential Popular Business Books (Today's Librarian)

Best Overall Career Guide (Career World)

"Parachute still soars with practical advice. This book is a steady seller, always making the USA Today annual list of top-selling books. No wonder: Parachute is practical and trustworthy."
--Jacqueline Blais, USA Today

"Parachute remains the most complete career guide around. . . . It covers all the ground less ambitious books do, as well as some the others don't, mostly in the realm of the psyche."
--Barbara Presley Noble, New York Times

"What Color Is Your Parachute? has been the job-hunting classic for decades. . . . Bolles always goes beyond the routine, including things like useful Internet sites and how to select a career counselor. It's virtually always the best-selling career book, and with good reason."
--David Murphy, San Francisco Chronicle

"Ideally, everyone should read What Color Is Your Parachute? in the tenth grade and again every year thereafter."
--Anne Fisher, Fortune

About the Author
RICHARD NELSON BOLLES has been a leader in the career development field for more than 35 years. He has been the keynote speaker at hundreds of conferences. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Customer Reviews

It's White With A Large Gash In It And I'm Plummeting To Earth...
I'm talking about my parachute. I'm a mid-forties Wall Street refugee, wondering what I want to be when I grow up...(Hint no jobs on Wall Street right now). So I turned to this old standard for help.

First note that this book is updated every single year, so buy the latest copy. Yes an older one will be cheaper but...don't. I first picked up the 2001 version off the bookshelf. As I read the section on the internet, I guffawed. Not the author's fault, things change drastically on the internet, especially in 8 years. So I credit the author for updating the book constantly. He also substantially rewrites it, not just changing the cover or whatever.

Second, this is not a spectator sport, you must do the exercises to make the book work. I have not yet done them, officially, on paper, but have given a lot of thought to what he asks us to do. I remember reading this book years ago (1988?) and being very annoyed. Annoyed? Yes, because I thought the author had a lot of nerve to tell me I could do anything I want to do. I could go to Hollywood? Yes. I could be an astronaut? Yes. I could be an interpreter? Yes. Pimp? Yes. Investment Banker? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. You may have to go to school, or work hard, but yes you can follow your dreams.

What if you have no dreams, like me? Well, do the exercises, and the book will help you find something to do with yourself that won't make you want to shoot yourself in the head when the alarm clock goes off. I can't wait to find out what it is for me!

Ignore the naysayers, buy the latest copy of the book, read it, do the exercises. And Good Luck.

P.S. I also recommend the workbook.

The very best job hunting book, but a poor career design guide
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.

Mostly a waste of time
I'm at a loss to explain the appeal of this book. I found exactly one useful insight, and it's contained in one clumsily-worded sentence on page 37: "Most employers hunt for employees in the exact opposite way from how job-hunters hunt for them." What he means is that in terms of landing for a job, sending out resumes on the Internet is the least effective method, applying directly to targeted companies is better, and networking and temping are best. Bolles even has a tally of the supposed success rates for each method. Nice to know.

The rest of the book, however, reads like fluff. The majority of content is devoted to discussing the obvious in embarrassingly deep detail, i.e. posing questions like "what skills do you most enjoy using?" or "where do you want to live?" while asking the reader to perform childish exercises like writing down one's interests, values, and salary on a flower pedal diagram. Truly useful information is scarce, and GOOD GOD does this guy take his sweet time to make a point. Chapter 6 starts with a page-long anecdote about an earthquake in Asia, then goes on for another page chronicling the history of advances in transportation technology, all just to make a point that the invention of the Internet enables the instant transfer of information to anywhere in the world. NO SH**, SHERLOCK!

Also, the "updates" made to this book over the years mostly seem to consist of bulleted lists of random websites (which only weaken an already dull narrative flow) and a few updated cultural references, i.e. Hurricane Katrina.

8 billion copies sold? Seriously?