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 The 2014
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 It’s a Whole New World for Job-Hunters 1

Chapter 2 Google Is Your New Resume 21

Chapter 3 There Are Seven Million Vacancies This Month 43

Chapter 4 Sixteen Tips About Interviewing for a Job 51

Chapter 5 The Six Secrets of Salary Negotiation 81

Chapter 6 What to Do When Your Job-Hunt Just Isn’t Working 97

Chapter 7 You Need to Understand More Fully Who You Are 111

Chapter 8 You Need to Do Some Informational Interviewing 191

Chapter 9 How to Deal with Any Handicaps You Have 211

Chapter 10 Five Ways to Change Careers 231

Chapter 11 How to Start Your Own Business 247

The Pink Pages

Appendix A Finding Your Mission in Life 266

Appendix B A Guide to Dealing with Your Feelings

While Out of Work 289

Appendix C A Guide to Choosing a Career Coach or Counselor 298

Appendix D Sampler List of Coaches 315

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 The Final Word: Notes from the Author for This Edition 337
About the Author 342
Index 343
Update 2015 352
Recent Foreign Editions of What Color Is Your Parachute? 352
Additional Helpful Resources from the Author 354

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 Chapter 3

There Are Seven Million

Vacancies This Month

The Good News: The Job-Hunt Hasn’t

Really Changed At All Since 2008
Yes, I know this contradicts what I said in the first chapter. But there
you have it. Both things are true: the job-hunt has changed dramati-
cally since 2008, yet the job-hunt hasn’t really changed at all since 2008.
How can they both be true? The answer lies in the distinction
between inner essence and surface behavior.
The surface behavior of the job-hunt is always changing, often dra-
matically, as we saw in the first and second chapters. This, because
job-hunt behavior at any given time is determined by technology. And
when a new technology arises—think computers, think Internet, think
smartphone, think digital resumes—job-hunting alters. On the surface.
But beneath all surface change, the essence of the job-hunt never
really changes. Job-hunting is all about human nature, and in its
essence is most like another human activity that we call dating. Both
shake down to: “Do you like me?” and “Do I like you?” If the answer
to both is “Yes,” then it’s “Do you want to try goin’ steady?” In dating.
In job-hunting. So, if you focus on essence rather than form, the job-hunt
remains constant year after year.
First question: “Do you like me?” In the job-interview that means
“Hey employer, you are looking for someone who can do this thing
that you want done, and can get along with you and the other people
here. So, given that, do you like me?”

43

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 44 Chapter 3

Second question: “Do I like you?” In the job-interview that means

“Are you going to give me a work environment that will enable me to
be at my most productive and most effective level, where I feel useful
and appreciated, and can make a difference?”
Both questions are equally important, and permissible to ask. But
that second question needs to be emphasized, underlined, and writ-
ten in large letters because when we are job-hunting we are so prone
to think all power belongs to employers. They have every right to ask
their question. We have no right to ask ours—or so street-wisdom
claims.
But wait a minute. Meditate on why we have the word quit in our
vocabulary, as in “I quit,” and you will realize that the job-hunt and
job are always a matter of the job-hunter or worker asking themselves
“Do I like you?” And if you conclude, “No I don’t really like you,” or “I
really hate it here,” then eventually you quit.
Your big decision is, do I wait three years to find out the answer to
my question, or do I try to find it out now, during the job-hunt in gen-
eral, during the job-interview in particular?
The job-hunt is a conversation—a two-way conversation—wherein
your opinion matters as much as the employer’s. That always has been
true. Always will be.

You Are Not As Powerless

as You Think
If you’re currently out of work, and looking for a job, you have every
reason in the world to think you are up against overwhelming forces
and the situation you face is rather hopeless. You may have struck out,
again and again. The media is always filled with bad news, about the
unemployed, since 2008. But the situation you face is not hopeless. In
the world today, you have more power than you think, even with all
the bad news and these great forces that you are up against since 2008.
It may not be a lot of power, but . . . well, let me tell you a story.
Some years ago, when I was doing a lot of counseling, not just about
careers, a friend of mine asked me if I would be willing to see someone

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 There Are Seven Million Vacancies This Month 45

he knew. Her name was Mary. She had been diagnosed with multiple
sclerosis, or MS. She had been to a wide range of medical specialists:
neurologist, psychologist, internist, you name it. They all had declared
there was nothing they could do to help her with the disease. My friend
said, “Would you see her?” “Sure,” I said, “but I’m not sure there’s any-
thing I can do.”
The next day my friend brought her over. She walked very stiffly
up the front sidewalk, came in, sat down, and after exchanging a few
pleasantries, I got down to business. “Mary,” I said, “what is multiple
sclerosis?”
Mary’s and my discussion was a philosophical one. We both knew
how the disease is generally described: a disease that attacks the cen-
tral nervous system. My question to her was deeper, and I knew she
understood what I was getting at: What causes MS? How much control
do we have over its progression? What hastens or slows its rise and fall
in the individual? Etc.
“I don’t know,” she said, in a dull, emotionless voice. “Well then,” I
said, “that makes us even; because I don’t know, either. But here’s what
I propose. I’m sure that a huge proportion of whatever MS is, is out of
your control. There’s nothing you can do about it. But that proportion
can’t be 100%. There’s got to be some proportion—let’s say it’s even just
2%, or 5%—that is within your control. We could work on that. Do you
want to begin that journey?” She said yes. Over the next few weeks she
improved, and finally was free of all symptoms (typical of the disease
for a spell, but this lasted for a very long time), and now—free of all
stiffness—she became a model on 57th Street in New York City.
So it is, that in any situation you find yourself, no matter how over-
whelmed you may feel, no matter how much you may feel you’re at
the mercy of huge forces that are beyond your control, some part of
it is within your control: maybe 2%, 5%, who knows? There is always
something you can work on. Something that is within your power. And
often, changing that little bit results in changing a whole lot. Maybe
not as dramatic a change as with Mary; but change nonetheless.
You are not powerless during the job-hunt. Maybe the employer
has an overwhelming amount of power in the whole job-hunt. But the
employer does not hold all the cards.
That is what never changes.

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 46 Chapter 3

Of course, you will object, “Well, that may be true during normal
times, but these ain’t normal times. I cannot afford to be picky. There
are very few vacancies out there.”
Where did we get that idea? From the media, that’s where. Two
reports come out each month in the U.S., about the state of the job-
market. One of those reports is usually hopeful. One of them is usually
depressing. Both of them are put out by the federal government. The
media choose to emphasize one of those reports, but not the other.
The first report comes out on the first Friday of each month, with rare
exception. It is typically called “news about the unemployment rate,”
though it is more accurate to think of it as “the monthly measure of the
net change in the size of the working workforce in the U.S.” Its technical
name is the Current Population Survey.1 It said that in the month of Feb-
ruary, 2013, only 236,000 jobs were added to the economy. With twelve
million looking for work that month, that was not good news.
But, there was that other report. It comes out about two months
later. It’s called JOLT, which stands for Job Openings and Labor Turnover.2
It said that during that month of February 2013, 4,418,000 people found
work, and even so, 3,925,000 vacancies remained unfilled by the end of
that month. You do the math. That’s a total of 8,343,000 jobs available in
the U.S. during the month of February. And this is typical, in the U.S.,
month in and month out.
What’s going on, here? Well, let me give you a parallel situation.
Suppose I own a dress shop. You come in to visit me, and for fun
you count the number of dresses I have in the shop. It turns out I have
100. You leave that day, and you don’t return for a month. You count,
again for fun, how many dresses I have in the shop one month later.
I have 95. So you say to me, “Oh, I see you only sold 5 dresses this
month. Poor you.”
“No,” I reply, “I added to the inventory during the month.” “How
many,” you ask. “50,” I say.
You stop, and calculate: “Oh, so you actually sold 55 dresses this
past month.” I say, “Right.”

1. www.bls.gov/cps
2. www.bls.gov/jlt

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 There Are Seven Million Vacancies This Month 47

5 vs. 55. You get the one figure, as the net change in the size of the
inventory in my shop, with visits a month apart; you get the other figure
as the actual change in the number of dresses sold, during the month.
It’s the same with the two government reports. Not 5 vs. 55, but
236,000 vs. 8,343,000.
Of course, the question for us when we’re out of work is, “If there
are typically seven or eight million jobs available each month, why
didn’t I get one of them?”
More importantly, this wipes out the impression that things are so
bad, it doesn’t matter what you want. Nonsense!
The job-hunt is always a two-way conversation. That never changes.
What the employer wants, matters. But also what you want, matters.
Certain other facts about the job-hunt in this country never change.
Here are ten of them, that have remained the same since the first edi-
tion of this book was published, and throughout the forty-two yearly
editions since.

1. You must take charge of your own job-hunt, and determine not
to conduct a traditional job-hunt (“this is the way it has always
been done and must be done”), but rather, a creative one.
2. To do a creative job-hunt, there are three questions you must
find out the answer to: they are What, Where and How. WHAT
are your skills that you most love to use? WHERE would you
most love to use these skills? (In terms of field, purpose of the
company or organization, location, style of working, kinds of
people you work with, etc.) And finally, HOW do you go about
finding such places?
3. You must devote as much time to your job-hunt as you possibly
can. If you want to devote as little time to your job-hunt as pos-
sible, then fine; try it. But if that doesn’t lead to a job, then you
are going to have to devote more time to it.
4. If your job-hunt isn’t working, then you must take the time to
find out as much up-to-date information as you possibly can
about the job-hunt itself, and not just about the job-market.
Effective job-hunting techniques keep evolving.

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 48 Chapter 3

5. If your job-hunt isn’t working, then you must take the time to do
a thorough survey of yourself before you do a survey of the job-
market (like, finding out what are “the hot jobs”).
6. You must approach organizations, companies, or institutions
that interest you, whether or not they have a known vacancy. Go
after smaller, newer companies in particular. Sometimes vacan-
cies develop in a day and a night, and do not immediately get
advertised or published.
7. Job-hunting is not a science; it is an art. Some job-hunters know
instinctively how to do it; in some cases, they were born know-
ing how to do it. Others of us sometimes have a harder time
with it, but fortunately for us in the U.S. and elsewhere in the
world, there is help, coaching, counseling, and advice—online
and off.
8. Job-hunting is always mysterious. Sometimes mind-bogglingly
mysterious. You may never understand why things sometimes
work, and sometimes do not.
9. There is no “always wrong” way to hunt for a job or to change
careers. Anything may work under certain circumstances, or at
certain times, or with certain employers. There are only degrees
of likelihood of certain job-hunting techniques working or not
working. But it is crucial to know that likelihood (see chapter 6).
10. There is no “always right” way to hunt for a job or to change
careers. Anything may fail to work under certain circumstances,
or at certain times, or with certain employers. There are only
degrees of likelihood of certain job-hunting techniques working
or not working. But it is crucial to know that likelihood, as we
just saw. Job-hunting always depends on some amount of luck.
Luck, pure luck. Having advanced job-hunting skills doesn’t
mean absolutely, positively, you will always be able to find a job.
It does mean that you can get good at reducing the amount that
depends on luck, to as small a proportion as possible.

As I said, some things about the job-hunt have not changed since
2008. In fact, they have not changed since 1970.

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 TAKES
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 This is an annual. That is to say, it is revised each year, often substantially, with the new
edition appearing in the early fall. Counselors and others wishing to submit additions,
corrections, or suggestions for the 2015 edition must submit them prior to February 1, 2014
using the form provided in the back of this book, or by e-mail ([email protected]).
Forms reaching us after that date will, unfortunately, have to wait for the 2016 edition.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard
to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not
engaged in rendering professional career services. If expert assistance is required, the
service of the appropriate professional should be sought.

Copyright © 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001,
2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1989, 1988, 1987, 1986,
1985, 1984, 1983, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1978, 1977, 1976, 1975, 1972, 1970
by Richard Nelson Bolles.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the

Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

Jacket illustration copyright © iStockphoto.com/alexm73.

The drawings on pages 141, 143, and 211 are by Steven M. Johnson, author of
What the World Needs Now.
Illustration on page 20 by Beverly Anderson.

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60774-362-0

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60774-363-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60774-364-4
ISSN: 8755-4658

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Katy Brown

Back cover design by Colleen Cain
Interior design by Colleen Cain

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Revised Edition

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