5 Takeaways from What Color is Your Parachute?

Back in the 1970s, after losing his job as a pastor, Richard Bolles became very interested in jobs and careers.

He and his friends were all feeling the weight of budget crunches, and Bolles saw that for many of them, finding other work would soon be necessary. With young families to support, going back to school for more training often wasn’t an option. A different way forward was needed.

Bolles started doing research on his friends’ behalf, approaching workforce experts and asking two specific questions:

1. How do you change careers without going back to school?

2. How do you look for work when the traditional methods of resumes and classifieds aren’t working?

Bolles wrote up his findings and presented them to a group of leaders in his church. The information was so helpful, the church gave him a grant to continue studying and sharing what he learned.

And that is how the book What Color Is Your Parachute? came to be.

Since it was first published decades ago, this book has sold over 10,000,000 copies. It is highly regarded, and revised every year so it can offer helpful, up-to-date advice on all things job hunting.

From a recent reading, here are five key takeaways from the book:

1. Who Precedes What

Many of the friends who inspired Bolles’ research were scared. Their jobs were going away, and they had families to support.

In a situation like that, it was natural for them to feel a bit desperate about their work. They wanted jobs — any jobs, so long as they provided security.

As someone who experienced job loss himself, Bolles understood this fear. But he also knew that decisions motivated by it could lead to ill-fitting work, poor job performance, and more cycles of unemployment.

Something more than need was needed to find a good job. Bolles says it has to do with understanding who we are before deciding what work we do.

Think of the expression ‘form follows function.’ This saying means that when we’re building something, the purpose that object is meant to fulfill (its function) determines how it’s built (its form).

But when it comes to people, we already have a form — our design. We might not have much clarity on the purpose we’re meant to fulfill, but we can work backwards from how we’re made to get a glimpse. We could say that for us, function (what work we do) follows form (how we are made) — or at least it’s meant to!

And that’s where Bolles is saying to begin: with our form, and getting to know that. Opportunities to do this come our way whenever we get space and reason to look into our design. This could happen through a seminar in school, unexpected job change, or the event of our retirement.

For example, say we unexpectedly lose our job. Our natural reaction might be to start the very next day applying for the same type of work we had.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but this break could also become an opportunity to refine our self-understanding so we could go after work that suits us even better. We didn’t ask to be in this situation, but now that we are, we can benefit from it.

A person who puts ‘what’ before ‘who’ may discover one day that their whole career trajectory is for someone who is not them. They may find, after doing lots of work, that it just never resonated.

Putting ‘who’ before ‘what’ instead gives us the chance to find what work functions follow from our particular design. In this case we can discover work we enjoy at a deep level because the nature of the work matches our own nature.

2. Be Conversant in Your Skills

Imagine you’re visiting a big office building where several businesses rent space. While in the elevator, you bump into someone from a company you’d absolutely love to work for. This person shares the news that their company is looking to hire a number of people to support the current phase of growth.

What do you do?

Opportunities this golden may be rare, but the basic point is that when we are able to talk about our specific abilities in our listener’s language, our chances of finding great-fitting work go way up.

Doing this requires a level of initiative — asking questions and offering information — but even more than that it takes a level of self knowledge.

If someone asked us what our skills are, many of us might respond by saying what we do in our work. But our questioner might gently insist: ‘I want to know your skills, not what tasks you do.’

It’s important we understand that our skills are abilities that both come naturally and are enjoyable. We may spend all day at work doing X, and certainly with practice we develop capacity, but that doesn’t mean it’s a skill of ours.

So what are our skills?

A great way to identify those activities that we enjoy and find natural is to review the list of skills given in this linked book called LifeKeys. This activity helps put words to our areas of giftedness. We can write them down or talk about them with a friend.

The ability to know and talk about our skills gives us a magnetic ability to attract great-fitting work. In What Color Is Your Parachute?, Bolles notes that jobs often go not to the person who will do them best, but to the person who knows most about getting hired. By knowing our skills, we become much more likely to be that person getting hired!

3. You Are Not a Job Beggar

Until reading this book, I had never heard the phase ‘job beggar,’ but here’s what it is: a job beggar is someone who just wants a job, any job, no matter what it is.

Imagine going door-to-door, asking people if there’s any work they have — anything — that they would be willing to pay you to do. Mow the lawn, weed the flower bed, clean the gutters…anything. And you’ll accept whatever pay they’re willing to offer. That’s a job beggar.

There may be times when we feel like job beggars. Maybe we’re in a job search that has gone on and on, and we just want someone to offer us something.

Over time, we may even take on the mindset of a job beggar, believing we have nothing desirable to offer, that all the power is on the side of employers, and that we should gratefully jump into any work we’re offered.

Contrast this perspective with that of a person who thinks of themselves as a resource to help the potential employer solve a problem. There’s a world of difference in these two approaches!

We could picture being a plumber who gets a phone call about a burst pipe. Our expertise is desired, and we drive over as soon as we can.

The customer shows us the pipe, and then waits to hear what we think about fixing it and how much it will cost. We offer the service to meet a need and we set the price to be agreed on.

Aren’t these two instances a world apart? They show the difference between being a job beggar and a resource.

We are all resources, but don’t always act that way. Sometimes we doubt ourselves and give up power we should rightfully hold.

One way to take it back it simply to recognize what’s going on. We see that we have given up what’s ours, and learn to do things differently.

Another way is to increase our confidence in what we have to offer. Maybe we review our skills, learn to highlight successful work we’ve done, or get more training to bolster our presentation.

A job beggar will initially experience relief and joy if they are offered a job, but over time this will sour if it’s a job that pays poorly and is below their capacity.

A person who is a resource will be relaxed in interviews because they have nothing to prove, and are mainly interested in seeing if they can help. If they can, they will point that out and see what their support is worth to that employer.

4. Study What You’ve Loved

Many of us have had such long and difficult experiences with work that we lose sight of the possibility of work being enjoyable.

We might develop a cynical attitude, and be suspicious of anyone who says they love their job.

But nonetheless, renewal is possible. It can happen by reconnecting with what we love.

All of us, at some time in our life, were involved in something we really did enjoy.

It doesn’t have to be work-related. It could any project or venture or idea you followed through on, whether at home, as a hobby, or in a volunteer role.

What’s one thing you did that you loved? Here are possible examples to get the ideas coming:

Put together a shed in your backyard

Planned a trip

Cooked a meal for a friend

Wrote a newsletter

Played in a band

Saved up for a special purchase

…

Whatever those things are that you loved, think for a moment about them.

What was it exactly that was so rewarding about it? How did it all turn out, and how did your actions impact the outcome?

By revisiting activities we’ve done and loved we can start to drill down to the core of why we loved something. Once we know that, we may be able to see opportunities to do it again. And even more, we see it’s possible to love work that we do.

5. Approach By Steps

Every so often, there are these wonderful moments in life when the curtains are pulled back and we see something captivating.

When it comes to our work, moments like this may involve seeing a job we’d love to have, or a person living in a way we admire and want for ourselves.

Once I was riding a train home from the airport and wound up sitting next to a person like that. I forget his name, but this man was relaxed, happy, and enthusiastic as he talked about his consulting work for a health organization. Not only did he possess valuable skills and knowledge, but he was also someone who was able and glad to share his abilities with others.

The particular job he had didn’t seem as important as the qualities he displayed in our conversation. There must be some connection, but my main thought was: that’s the kind of person I’d love to be in my work!

Once we see a picture of something we want, the next step is to consider how to get there.

In the case of this consultant, he had spent years building up experience and know-how. He worked with all kinds of people and situations. He was confident in what he offered and his ability to communicate it effectively.

If I started applying tomorrow for the sort of work he did, it wouldn’t work. It took time to build up everything he brought to the table. He didn’t get there in one step; it took lots of them.

Maybe you’re in a similar spot. You’ve seen something you want, but it’s not work you can start doing tomorrow. It will take time and growth to get there.

It’s no problem if we can’t jump right into our dream job. The fact that we can’t may even be a good sign — it means this job will require us to develop beyond the person we currently are.

What we can do is approach it by steps. We put ourselves in positions to gain the skill and experience we’ll need. We take a job that isn’t our dream, but will help us in that direction. We build something over time.

These five takeaways are a very, very small sliver of all that’s in Richard Bolles’ book. If you haven’t looked it over, pulling a recent version (it’s updated every year) off the library shelf is not a bad idea.

Which of these takeaways is most helpful to you? Have you read What Color is Your Parachute? and found something else that stood out?

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