What Color is
Your Parachute?
Richard Bolle’s tips
for a successful job hunt
Credit:
 What Color Is Your Parachute: A
Practical Manual for Job-Hunters
and Career-Changers
by Richard Nelson Bolles
 For more information:
www.jobhuntersbible.com
The Best-Selling
Job Hunting Book in the World
 This book was first published in 1970 and
has since sold eight million copies in twelve
languages. An average of 20,000 people
buy this book every month.
Five Worst Ways to
Find a Job
1. Using the Internet
 If you are seeking a technical or computer
related job, I estimate the success rate to be
10 percent. For the other 10,000 job titles,
probably one percent. That means for every
100 job hunters who use job-postings and
resume postings on the Internet, one of
them will find a job; 99 will not.
Richard Bolles
2. Mailing out resumes to
employers at random.
 This search method has a 7 percent success
rate. That is, out of every 100 job hunters
who use this method, 7 will find a job
thereby; 93 job-hunters will not.
3. Answering ads in trade or
professional journals in your field.
 This method also has a 7 percent success
rate. Only 7 of 100 job-hunters will find a
job by answering ads in professional and
trade journals in their field.
4. Answering local newspaper ads
 This method has a 5-24 percent success
rate. The fluctuation is due to the level of
salary being sought; the higher the salary
being sought, the fewer job-hungers who
are able to find a job using this search
method.
5. Going to employment agencies
or search firms.
 This method also has a 5-24 percent success
rate; again it depends on the level of salary
being sought.
The Five Best Ways
to Try To Find a Job
1. Ask for job-leads from: family
members, friends, professors or
anyone you know.
 Ask one question: Do you know of any
jobs at the place where you work or
elsewhere?
 This method has a 33 percent success rate.
2. Knocking on the door of any
employer, publisher or company that
interests you, whether they are
known to have a vacancy or not.
 This search method has a 47 percent search
rate.
3. By yourself, using the Yellow
Page’s to identify subjects or
companies that interest you in the
city where you wish to work.
 This method has a 69 percent success rate.
4. With a group of friends, using the
Yellow Page’s to identify subjects or
companies that interest you and then
calling up and asking if they are
hiring for the type of position you
want.
 This method has an 84 percent success rate.
5. The Creative Approach to Job
Hunting or Career-Change.
 This method has an 86 percent success rate.
 You must decide just exactly what you have
to offer the world.
 You must decide where you want to use
your skills.
 You must go after the organizations that
interest you most, whether or not they are
known to have a vacancy.
Why The Best Jobs
are Not Advertised
 Employers don’t want to be inundated with
resumes or calls from unqualified applications.
 Advertising costs money and consume more staff
time to process applications
 Advertised search processes are legally riskier
 Employers like to rely on word-of-mouth
recommendations from within.
 Applicants who call or apply without an ad are
more likely highly motivated and qualified
Why Knocking on Doors and
Making Telephone Calls Works
 You find out about non-advertised, recently
created or recently vacated jobs
 You make a personal impression on
someone, even if it’s a secretary
 It shows you are an ambitious self-starter
 It shows you really want to work there.
 Because so few people do it, you stand out
from the crowd.
Bolle’s 23 tips
for a successful job hunt
No. 1 – Work hard
 No one owes you a job. If you want a job,
you are going to have to go out and hunt for
it—hard. One third of all job hunters give
up during the first months of their job-hunt.
They give up because they thought it was
going to be simple, quick and easy.
No. 2 – Keep at it
 Job hunting success yields to job-hunting
effort. The more you try and the more hours
you put into your job hunt, the more likely
you will find the job you are looking for. If,
that is, your effort is intelligently directed.
No. 3 –Change tactics
 Successful job-hunting requires a
willingness to change your tactics. If you
try something and it doesn’t work, move on
to another strategy. Don’t be afraid to take
risks and try something new.
No. 4 – Get advice
 Go talk to the successful job hunters among
your family, friends and acquaintances—
people who were out of work and since then
found a job they really love—and learn
what they did. Then go imitate it. If you do
that, you probably won’t have to buy this
book.
No. 5 – You have a job
 To speed up your search, you must think of
yourself as already having found a job.
Your job, in this case, is that of hunting for
work. You must think of yourself as having
a full-time job (without pay) from 9 to 5
every weekday. “Punch in” at 9:00 and
“punch out” at 5:00, just as a worker does.
No. 6 – Patience is still a virtue
 You must be mentally and financially
prepared for your job hunt to last a lot
longer than you think it will. The shortest
job hunt lasts between two and eighteen
weeks, even if you work full-time at it.
Experienced job-placement people claim
that your search for a job will probably take
one month of full-time searching for every
$10,000 of salary you are seeking.
No. 7 – Never give up
 Keep going until you find a job. Persistence
is the name of the game. Persistence means
sending an e-mailed resume then sending a
formatted resume by mail then following it
up one week later with a phone call. One
thing a job-hunter needs above everything
else is hope, and hope is born of
persistence.
No. 8 – Be prepared to change
 Do not expect you will necessarily be able
to find exactly the same kind of work that
you used to do. Define some other lines of
work that you could do, can do and would
enjoy doing. But don’t just take a job for the
sake of a paycheck. unless you absolutely
have to.
No. 9 – Go for it
 Forget “what’s available out there.” Go
after the job you really want the most. Don’t
assess the job market and then decide what
you want based on what’s available. Decide
what you want and go for it.
No. 10 – Solicit help
 Once you know what kind of work you are
looking for, tell everyone what it is; have as
many other eyes and ears out there looking
on your behalf as possible. Enlist your
friends and families.
No. 11 – Be creative
 You might even consider putting the kind of
work you are looking for on your answering
machine: “Hi, this is Sandra. I’m busy right
now looking for an magazine editing job.
Leave me a message and if you happen to
have any leads or contacts for me, be sure to
mention that too, along with your phone
number.”
No. 12 – Strength in Numbers
 To speed up your search, find some kind of
support group so that you don’t have to face
the job-hunt all by yourself. You’d be
amazed how much the support of others can
keep you going when you would otherwise
get discouraged. Organize a group if you
don’t know of any.
No. 13 – Eggs in many baskets
 Go after many different organizations that
interest you instead of just one or two.
Don’t wait for a favorite job to “pan out”
while they make a decision. Keep on
searching every day. You lose valuable time
when a job that looked like a sure thing falls
through. Nothing is ever sure until it’s sure.
No. 14 – It takes chutzpah!
 Determine to go after any employers that
interest you. Pay no attention to whether or
not there is a known vacancy at that place.
Underline this rule, copy it, paste it on your
bathroom mirror, memorize it and repeat it
every day: Pay no attention to whether or
not there is a known vacancy.
No. 15 – Small is better
 To speed up your search for one of the jobs
that are out there, concentrate on
organizations with 20 or less employees.
There are always companies that are hiring,
but they are usually small companies. Talk
to people and find out which local
companies are growing and hiring people.
No. 16 – Go face to face
 Go face-to-face with at least 4 employers a
day; or if you’re contacting them by
telephone, 40 a day minimum. One study
found that if a job hunter went face-to-face
with two employers a week, the job search
took a year. If the job hunter meets 20
employers a week, the job search drops to
less than three months.
No. 17 – Use the telephone
 To speed up your search, use the telephone.
Make 40 to 60 calls per day.
 Call every company in the Yellow Pages
that looks interesting to you.
 Write out what you plan to say on paper
 Describe your best skill in one sentence,
your experience in one sentence, and ask if
there’s a job opening for someone with
your qualifications.
No. 18 – Knock on doors
 To speed up your search, knock on doors,
particularly if you hate to use the telephone.
 Travel to cities where you would like to
work. Find companies you would like to
work for, go in and ask if they might be
looking for someone with your skills. Try to
talk to a manager or decision-maker.
 47.7% of job-hunters who use this approach
get a hiring interview and then a job
according to one study.
No. 19 – Be flexible
 To speed up your search for one of the jobs
that are out there, be willing to look at
different kinds of jobs: full-time jobs, parttime jobs, short-term jobs, temporary jobs,
working for others, etc. If it’s a company
you really want to work for, get your foot in
the door with any job you can live with.
No. 20 – You don’t have a handicap
 To get a good job, just remember that you
have no handicaps: you are not too young,
too inexperienced, too fat, too shy, too
assertive, too unsuccessful, or not from the
right kind of background. Companies today
are interested in what you can do for
them—not in where you came from.
No. 21 – The typical job hunt
looks like this:
 NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, YES. We’d
like to have you come to work for us.
No. 22 – Write “thank you” notes
 Every evening after an interview sit down
and write a thank-you note to each person
you saw that day. This means not only
employers, but secretaries, receptionists or
anyone else who helped you or were nice to
you. Mention something specific about the
way that person treated you.
No. 23 – Courtesy at all times
 Treat every employer with courtesy, even if
it seems certain they can’t offer you a job.
Someone there may be able to refer you to
someone else next week if you made a good
impression.
P.S. What if nothing works?
 Following the strategies in this chapter,
which were learned from successful job
hunters, you should dramatically improve
your chance of finding a job. You do not
need to read the rest of the book. But if you
faithfully try everything in this chapter and
if none of it works for you, flee to Chapters
6-11 of What Color is Your Parachute?
- Richard Bolles