Comments on: What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers

By: C. Clark

C. Clark — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 03:08:38 +0000

100 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

If you're ready for a change, Sher shows you how, January 26, 2002

C. Clark (Upstate NY USA) -

This review is from: I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It (Paperback)

Maybe you're just out of college wondering how you ended up with a business degree when you hate business. Or you've been spending way too much time on the job/in life daydreaming about some other job or life. Or maybe, like me, all seems right with your world, but you have a nagging feeling there's something else you should be doing. Barbara Sher's book will help you sort it all out. She'll help you figure out what's at the root of these feelings and how to understand and handle them. Through a series of exercises, explanations and examples she guides you to discover just what it is that you truly want to do. And then she shows you how to get to do what you want.

You have to be ready to do a little psychological work on yourself, think hard about your past and realistically about your future. You have to be ready to put aside the excuses and fears, and Sher knows them all, and commit yourself to working towards the life you want to live. If you're looking for something easier, like tests or checklists to tell you what you should be doing, this book might not sound like it's for you. But buy it anyway. I read all the books with the tests, the checklists, the affirmations and the goal making, etc... and they got me nowhere. This book finally got me somewhere.

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By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:23:18 +0000

163 of 164 people found the following review helpful:

Change your life - if you're ready for it, August 14, 2006

Jessica (Orlando, Florida, United States) -

This review is from: I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It (Paperback)

This book literally changed my life. I have been wondering - since about the age of 15, I'm now 31 - what I really wanted to do work-wise. I sort of bounced from one thing that I'm good at to the next variation on that theme, without ever feeling passionate or fulfilled. I painful breakup and growing discontent at work led me to try to sort this situation out once and for all and purely by luck I came across this book at the library.

I didn't start it until I felt ready, because I knew it wasn't going to be 'light on'. But one Saturday I picked it up and spent the next 8 hours pouring through it, doing the exercises and having one epiphany after another. At the end of it all I had applied to eight companies that did the sort of work I wanted to do and I ended up getting a job at my first choice, even without direct experience in that field. I'm 8 months into that job and I could not be happier.

The way I see it, the first three chapters of this book are about working out what you personally enjoy and are passionate about, while the remaining chapters are to help you overcome any barriers that prevent you from having that sort of work. This means that maybe only one of those latter chapters are for you, but it's all so practical that it's bound to have something that helps.

For me, the barriers weren't the big deal, it was knowing what on earth I wanted to do. And trust me - I had tried almost every other thing, including personality tests, seeing professional counsellors, everything. This book helped me unlock those activities that I have enjoyed since I was just a little child, and see the common thread amongst them. It was like learning more about yourself in a day than you learn in a decade.

I recommend that people buy this book but use it a) only when you really feel ready to explore yourself from a different point of view and b) with an open mind. Actually that makes it sound like it's full of really weird and challenging stuff, which it's not. That's what makes it different - the activities are quite straight forward and non-threatening, and the tone of the book makes it feel like the author is there with you, helping you all the way through.

I have emphatically recommended this book to everyone I know who is lost career-wise. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it changed my life in better ways that I ever imagined possible. Surely that's worth trying out?

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By: Kim Boykin

Kim Boykin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:22:56 +0000

338 of 345 people found the following review helpful:

Help for the vocationally clueless, May 26, 2001

Kim Boykin (New York, NY) -

This review is from: I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It (Paperback)

A lot of people had told Barbara Sher that her book "Wishcraft," about getting what you want, was of little use to them because they didn't know what they wanted. So she wrote this book for those of us who need help figuring out what we want. After three introductory chapters, the remaining eleven chapters discuss eleven different forms of resistance to knowing what you want. I suspect that most readers will, as I did, find a few of the chapters especially relevant and won't bother reading past the opening sentences of some other chapters.

I particularly related to the chapters about being afraid to commit to something prematurely, and about not being interested in anything at all. There's also a chapter for you if you're afraid to take risks; if you're afraid of succeeding and leaving your loved ones behind; if you want too many different things; if you're succeeding spectacularly at something you don't really want; if you feel that what you really want is trivial or unworthy; if you've just been through a big life change and don't know what to do next; if you had a dream but it's become unattainable; if you resist doing anything ordinary or mundane; and if you're trying hard to love something you don't really want.

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By: JustReading

JustReading — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 01:23:17 +0000

29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

Very helpful, but not the best to me, September 29, 2010

JustReading -

This review is from: What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers (Paperback)

I used this book several years ago to help me get direction in life once I got out of college and actually had to act on the age-old question of "what do you want to be when you grow up?"! In 2010 I am revisiting this classic. And I am giving it 4 stars because the newest edition is definitely still jammed full of useful advice about career choices and the job search process. HOWEVER, this book has the same flaws as the older versions: it is too long and too scattershot in its approach. The book has way too many charts/diagrams/grids - many of which you must complete, including the "Flower Diagram." I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want to spend hours on end working through a career book and drawing diagrams.... SO I greatly prefer Scott Smith's "FIND YOUR PERFECT JOB." It is MUCH more concise and easier to use while still being jammed full of useful advice. FYPJ's "Perfect Job Profile" accomplishes much more quickly what 300+ pages of Bolles' book tries to do. And if you are a young professional then FYPJ is specifically tailored for you (it includes very interesting info on business and law school programs, two areas that Parachute has no information on). Find Your Perfect Job: The Inside Guide for Young Professionals

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By: Scott Carter

Scott Carter — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 01:13:06 +0000

45 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

Great Strategies for Getting Interviews and Landing a Job, October 6, 2010

Scott Carter -

This review is from: What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers (Paperback)

This excellent book has been in multiple reprints since about 1970 and is extremely helpful in many ways.

Some of the areas I found most helpful included:

1. How Employers Hunt for Job-Hunters. In this chapter, Bolles clearly lays out the harsh realities of the differences between people looking for work and those seeking jobs. The power lies with the employer, and the sooner I realized that truth, the better off I was. This chapter also pointed out that different types of resumes work better for different types of employers, so it's important to tailor your resume to your audience. This was a great lesson for me.

2. Tips. What I loved about this chapter was the reinforcement that job hunting is hard work and takes effort, there is no getting around it. I also thought it was great advice to be open to changing my tactics if what I was doing wasn't working. Too often I get caught up in the thinking that just doing more of the same will change my result. I now realize that sometimes I am just doing the wrong things, so need to try something different.

3. Interviewing Tip For Smarties: Another great chapter that reset how I think about interviews. One of the best tips for me was sticking to the time I asked for from the interviewer. Too often in the past if I thought the interview was going well, I would keep talking. Now I realize that one of the best ways to impress a potential boss is to stick to the time (e.g., 20 minutes) that I originally asked for. The other very helpful tip was to let the interviewer do 50% of the talking. This balance of time lets the interviewer know that you know how to listen as well as speak. Too much talking by me tells them I might ignore the needs of the company: too little speaking by me might tell them I am trying to hide something. Good input!

Overall, I thought this book could be extremely helpful to a lot of job seekers, since it provides a wealth of insight into what the employers are looking for and how they are approaching the hiring process. After all, it involves two parties trying to see if there is a match, so it's very important to know what the hiring manager is thinking and how they are approaching this process.

Another book that I thought was extremely helpful in terms of applying to my job search was "GOAL! Your 30 Day Game Plan" Goal!: Your 30-Day Game Plan for Business and Career Successwhich helped organize my efforts and kept me motivated along the way towards my new job.

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By: Colin Macqueen "CCRGMac"

Colin Macqueen "CCRGMac" — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:51:57 +0000

73 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

Kindle edition almost unusable, September 10, 2010

Colin Macqueen "CCRGMac" (Fort Wayne, IN. United States) -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers (Kindle Edition)

While WCIYP may be a classic book of its genre, the formatting of this Kindle edition makes it useless to all intents and purposes:

- Highlights are picked out in the palest shade of gray, rendering key phrases almost illegible.
- Tables and diagrams are filled with tiny, fuzzy fonts that are unreadable, even when zoomed (I have a K2, these may be better on a DX but I suspect that they would just be larger and fuzzier).
- Hyperlinks are provided to online versions of the tables and diagrams, but they lead to PDF files that the Kindle cannot download
- It even opens with a piece that defends why it needs to be published in a paper edition

Kudos to Amazon for allowing a prompt and easy return and full refund (even though I'd had it more that the requisite seven days) but the publishers need to do a far better job.

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