For Readers of Parachute

How Helpful is Career Counseling Online

Author: Dick Bolles




You're reading the book (Parachute, of course),  and you're thinking that maybe in addition to the book,  you could profit from a little personal help.  Your instinct is to turn to the Internet.  The question is, what do you hope to find there?  

Well,  you'd hope to be able to find four career counseling tools on the Internet:
  1. Some decent interactive tests to give you a quick idea about a possible new career direction you might take; plus
  2. some articles dealing with various career issues, to further brush the cobwebs away from your thinking; plus
  3. longer career manuals for you to read when you have more time; plus
  4. FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) dealing with common problems in the job-hunt. And each answer would be written by someone who really knows what they're talking about.
Ok, so what do you find?  Well,  Bingo! With career counseling online you enter an arena where the Internet comes close to giving you what you'd hope for. True, the Internet still cannot replace the value of a live career counselor – even if the Internet does have e-mail and chat rooms. But, in so far as generic career counseling without a human body is concerned, you can indeed find much of what you'd hope to find on the Internet – as outlined in the hopes above – except for "detailed answers to common job-hunting problems."

In that department, I must admit that I'm stupefied at some of the superficial (and 'dead wrong') advice that I sometimes read online about job-hunting, resumes and the like. Of course, this defect would be cured real fast if these so-called "experts" had to go out and find a job themselves tomorrow. But, that teeny-tiny objection aside, all the rest you'd hope for is here: Tests, articles, manuals FAQs The whole works.

HOW EFFECTIVE: Well, there's only so much that impersonal online career counseling can do. Hence, my estimate of the effectiveness of career counseling sites on the Internet in getting you a job: 10 percent. That is, out of every 100 readers of Parachute who seek out career counseling on the Internet, 10 of them will find a job thereby, with the aid of the coaching that they pick up there. I think 90 will need more help or can do it without any help.

The key to successful job-hunting lies not in how much you know about the job-market, but how much you know about yourself,  your gifts,  your priorities, the things you most love to do.

WORDS TO REMEMBER  (With apologies to Alexander Pope) : "Know then thyself; try not the Web to scan, until you know what you love to do, and have evolved a plan."



Holland Code in One Glance

Author: Jerry Hanisko and Lorraine Massaro

                                                    YOUR HOLLAND CODE

 This chart is "Holland" in one glance.  That is to say, "John L. Holland" and his "Holland Code."    Here are the six letters of his code, with a description of definitions,  clues, typical activities, competencies, and occupations, for each.  It is an expansion of the exercise found on page 129 in the current (2015) edition of What Color Is Your Parachute?     This wheel is entitled "Different Spokes for Different Folks", © 1976 by Jerry Hanisko and Lorraine Massaro.   They handed it to me at an Iowa conference in 1977.

If you want to enlarge this wheel, above,  so as to read the print more easily,  there is a cute trick on a Macintosh keyboard for doing that:  just press "Command" and the "+" key (upper right hand keyboard next to the delete key) at the same time.  You can do this as many times as you need to.  To reverse, just press "Command" and the minus key (right next to the "+" key) at the same time,  as often as you want.   So much for Macs. I'm sure other keyboards have a similar trick.

If you want a print copy of the enlarged wheel, that can be found on pages 426ff in my work, The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them © 1981;  out of print but still available at Amazon.com for around four bucks.

Your Holland Code As A Series of Goals

Author: Dick Bolles


If we are familiar with the Holland Code, with its six corners, we know that it is three things, all at the same time:  a series of skills, preferred people environments and/or values. Hence (going clockwise, from the 11 o'clock position)  R  I  A  S  E  C,   But we can also state the six as goals. So, in the following diagram,  R becomes "Do It!"    I becomes "Explore It!"   A becomes "Invent It!"   S becomes "Share It!"    E becomes "Start It!"  and C becomes "Keep It Going!"  So, one way of deciding what direction you want your next career move to go in,  is to ask yourself:  Which of these six goals grabs me the most? 

                      The Holland Code As a Star


  

"Jobs with Friends" is Shutting Down

Monday, February 16, 2015:


I have for some time been telling people about an exciting website, that helps you use the contacts you already have—on LinkedIn and Facebook—to find vacancies at their places of work;  whereupon, if you see a vacancy that interests you,  they can then introduce you, since they are already there. 

It's called "Jobs with Friends."   Over 2000 people signed up to use it.  But now, sob, sob,  it is shutting down, as you can see here.

I am SO sorry to see it go.  There was really nothing like it.  

The Place of Religion in Job-Hunting

Author: Dick Bolles




A reader asks:

I've noticed some reader feedback on amazon.com, claiming your book is too religious. Why do you feel it's necessary to include so much religion in your famous book? Why not stick to the topic of job-hunting and save the preaching for another book?

In answering this question I've found it's always best to start off by being frankly defensive. (Whimpering would be even better, but if you're six foot four, as I am, that makes a truly pathetic sight.)

But defensiveness is good. Seeing it, people know they're talking to a flawed human being, trying to find his own way out of the thicket called Life.

So, my immediate defensive response usually runs as follows: "In the current 2015 What Color Is Your Parachute? God or faith is mentioned in only five sentences in the entire body of the book (353 pages long).

"To be sure, at the end of the book there is an Appendix (19 pages long) discussing my views about how faith relates to the job-hunt and life/work planning. 

Why?  A vast majority of the American people (89% currently, according to a recent Gallup poll) have some kind of belief in God – so many of my ten million Parachute readers want some guidance, here, about the relationship between their faith and their work  Hence,  I've gotten more appreciative mail about this Appendix than any thing else I've written in my life. But out of consideration for the other 11% who don't believe in God, this passage is buried at the end of the book so no reader will feel compelled to read it unless they want to.

"That Appendix aside, five sentences about religion in a 353 page book can't really be called 'too much religion', unless one is holding out for 'no mention at all'."

On most days, this is about as defensive and whiny as I tend to get. Then I limp off in search of a more sunny maturity, looking for broad principles to answer the obvious follow-up question: "Okay then, why did you put an Appendix about faith, in your book on job-hunting and life work planning?"

I can answer that best, through two similes or metaphors.


1. Job-hunting and Life/work planning are like the rings of a tree.

The innermost ring, in our lives, is plain old job-hunting.
The next ring outward is career-change.
The next ring is career-planning.
The next ring is life/work planning.
And the final ring is finding one's mission in life.

We all tend to start with the innermost ring, job-hunting, but as we get older, we move outward, from ring to ring.

And now to our second metaphor:


2. Religion is like a playpen or sandbox.

Every decent marriage counselor knows that there are two arenas in a committed relationship that function essentially as 'playpens' or 'sandboxes' in which the two partners act out in microcosm, who they most truly are in macrocosm. Those two playpens are "sex" and "finances."

In the playpen called "sex" there is a wide range of behavior, as people use their sexuality to act out who they are in relationship to others. And so we find sex used for dominance or submission, gentleness or roughness, anger or appreciation, love or hatred. Wide and various is this thing called "sex."

In the second playpen called "finances" there is likewise a wide range of behavior, as people use their money to act out who they are value-wise. And so we find money used for hoarding or giving, a love of power or a love of helping others, a love of things physical or a love of things spiritual. Wide and various is this thing called "finances."

Ah, but there is a third playpen in human life, and this is the arena called "religion" or "spirituality" or "faith." Here too there is a wide range of behaviors, as people use their spirituality to act out who they are in the life of their soul. And so we find:

  • Spirituality that is centered around God vs. spirituality that is centered around the self.
  • Spirituality that holds religion to be "a tale told by an idiot" vs. spirituality that holds religion to be God's constant grace in our lives.
  • Spirituality that is mesmerized by sin, vs. spirituality that is mesmerized by forgiveness.
  • Spirituality that sees oneself as "us vs. them", compared with a spirituality that sees oneself and the rest of mankind as "we."
  • Spirituality that is a desire to manipulate others, vs. spirituality that is simply a desire to share with others.

Wide and various is this thing called religion.

Hence, religion that is viewed as "preaching" by one person is viewed as the secret of life by another.

I hold the latter view.

I think religion and spirituality – the good kind – is not only the secret of life, but also the key to dealing with those rings.