Reprinted with permission from What Color
Is Your Parachute? 2014 Edition: A Practical
Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
by Richard N. Bolles (Ten Speed Press, © 2013).
C H APTER 1
It's a
Whole
Newfor
World
Job-Hunters
by richard n. bolles
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This book is for you if you are out of work.
This book is for you if you've been out of work a long long time, and have been job-hunting in vain.
This book is for you if you're fed up with your job, have decided to "bail out," and wonder what color your parachute is.
This book is for you if you are trying to fgure out what you want to do next, with your life.
This book is for you if you're trying to fgure out a frst career or a new career.
This book is for you if you are trying to understand yourself better.
This book is for you if you are trying to understand how the world of work really works.
This is, as the title says, a practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers. Practical means wholly
realistic, and realistic means looking—without finching—at both the good news and the bad news out
there. Let's save the good news for the third chapter. We'll start here with the bad.
The Bad News: The Job-hunT has Changed
dramaTiCally sinCe 2008
If we are out of work, these days, that is bad enough. But
add to that a relentless barrage of bad news, day after day,
about the global economy, the U.S. job market, unemployment statistics, what the future holds, and—no wonder so
many of us are feeling depressed.
But let us begin with the bad news anyway, to rehearse
what it is we are up against when we go looking for work or
looking to choose or change careers.
For I do not want you to think of these things as anything
but a series of challenges, since much of the bad news consists of broad generalizations, and there are ways to deal with
them, as I'm going to show you.
8 Diversity Employers | DiversityEmployers.com | First Semester December 2013