What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers Review

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What Color Is Your Parachute 2012: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers Review"What Color is Your Parachute?" has become an American institution. This edition marks the 40th anniversary of the book's first publication, and the book has now sold more than 10 million copies. While I don't usually review books like "What Color is Your Parachute?" I find that it's such a unique and useful book on finding a job that it's worth encouraging people to read it.
My other copy of "What Color is Your Parachute?" is a much earlier one, and I can see by comparing it with this new edition that substantial changes have been made over the years. Unlike many other books that don't seem to keep up with the changing times, this new edition of "What Color is Your Parachute?" seems tailor-made for today's job market. In fact, "What Color is Your Parachute?" has been revised annually every single year since 1972 with the exception of 1975.
I like the way that "What Color is Your Parachute?" has always been more than just a standard guide to how to find a job but has always helped its readers think outside the box. For example, Chapter 1 of the latest edition is titled "How to Find Hope," and hope is something American workers need in an economy that is uncertain at best and shrinking at worst. Embedded in the idea of hope is a strategy of hope and a principle to live by, which is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, you should always have an alternative: two ways to describe yourself, two ways to find a job, etc. And so the rest of Chapter 1 lists 18 ways to find a new job.
Chapters 3-14 go on to describe in detail the heart of "What Color is Your Parachute?" which are the 5 survival skills you most need today. These are the following:
Attitudes Necessary for Survival (Chapters 3-4)
Advanced Job-Finding Techniques (Chapter 5-9)
Advanced Job-Creation Techniques (Chapters 10-12)
Inventory of What You Have to Offer the World (Chapter 13)
Each One Teach One (Chapter 14 on teaching others survival job-hunting)
The book concludes with 4 appendixes on Finding Your Mission in Life, A Guide to Dealing with Unemployment Depression, A Guide to Choosing a Career Coach or Counselor, and a Sampler List of Coaches.
As you can see, "What Color is Your Parachut?" contains much more than just basic job-hunting skills that you can find anywhere else or that you probably already know about. It also gives you a philosophy of job-hunting and of thinking about yourself, as well as advanced techniques for finding a job. For example, Chapter 3 gives advice on how to positively use and think of the time you have when you're looking for a job, and Chapter 7 is all about how to network in this world of social media. It's refreshing to think of the positive uses of the social media, and this chapter demonstrates yet again that "What Color is Your Parachute?" always strives to represent the best current practices for finding a job and thinking about job-hunting.
I especially like the whole idea of Chapters 10-13, on job-creation techniques and inventory of what you have to offer the world. Rather than seeing oneself as a passive and pathetic looker for a job, why not think of oneself as a creator of a job? In our modern economy it's very possible to do this: it just requires you to think differently about who you are and how jobs are described and offered. Even before I had read this updated version of "What Color is Your Parachute?" my wife has done this very thing at least twice. By thinking about her whole set of skills and experiences and using her ability to network, she's talked herself into at least 2 (maybe 3) jobs over the past years, even creating and setting the terms for her jobs.
In summary, "What Color is Your Parachute?" is an excellent choice for anyone who finds himself in the unenviable position of having to find a new job. While that's never a pleasant situation, "What Color is Your Parachute?" will give you greater confidence and hope that you can find a good job, even in a downward economy.
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Impressive First Impressions: A Guide to the Most Important 30 Seconds (And 30 Years) of Your Career Review

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Impressive First Impressions: A Guide to the Most Important 30 Seconds (And 30 Years) of Your Career ReviewIf you liked Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, you'll love this book.
I initially thought that this book would cover superficial things like fashion "dos and don'ts," but when I picked it up and read it, I was very pleasantly surprised. The book had a "soul" and a philosophical perspective on simple things. The book covered all of the tiny actions that we take which in turn create the "impression" of us upon others and how it then affects them. It was an eye-opening read that got me thinking about changes I would want to undertake. And no, not just superficial ones, but deeper attitudinal changes in work and in life.
I really liked the fact that they cover more than just simple tips for individuals. I liked the ACE chapters the most (Audience, Culture, Environment). I liked the "Environment" discussion, because it showed how someone can use their environment to make a great first impression. It was a creative take on first impressions and how by controlling your meeting environment, you can shape that powerful first impression. For example, simply meeting someone in a bar vs. an office could make such a big difference, even if it IS a work-related function.
The sections on the how to use color were insightful and showed how the use of color can cultivate the impression you create upon people. The book was filled was fun facts, trivia and interesting sources. It even cited the Food Network! I had the impression that the authors gathered fun, seemingly random data, miscellaneous sources, odd trivia, culled the best out and wove it all in a book to support some great lessons.
This book was a fun, entertaining and it really made me think. Excellent read.Impressive First Impressions: A Guide to the Most Important 30 Seconds (And 30 Years) of Your Career Overview

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48 Days To The Work You Love Review

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48 Days To The Work You Love ReviewDid you know heart attacks increase by 33% on Monday mornings, more people die at 9am Monday than any other time of the week, and male suicides are highest on Sunday nights, just before the weekly grind? Dan Miller does, and impending death is just one of the reasons he wants you to find better work.
Dan Miller's 48 Days to the Work You Love provides a combination of the things you already know but need to hear again, and need to know but don't. This book will do more than help you strengthen old resolutions; it will teach you how to make meaningful changes in your career--and in the way you view work altogether.
First, Quit your Job
48 Days persuades the reader to leave the job that isn't working (no pun intended), and find something better. "Job Security" is no longer an excuse to stay where you are over-worked and underpaid. While in the early 80s the employment philosophy was work for a good company and they'll take care of you for life, today loyal workers are often (not fired but) "laid off", "downsized", "right-sized", "reorganized", reengineered", "put into the mobility pool", freed up to "pursue other opportunities", "uninstalled", and are often on the receiving end of "a cost containment exercise" (email other creative terms to Miller at work@48days.com). Why the change? Fifty years ago it took a lifetime for technology to make your job obsolete. Today it takes 4 or 5 years. Therefore, as Miller explains, "everyone lives on the edge of job obsolescence and the threshold of career opportunity"
Miller is so for you quitting your job that he writes, "You must develop a sense of what you can contribute that goes beyond 1 company or organization. A career path today will likely involve moving from organization to organization, creating a picture of rising circles, rather than a vertical ladder. In fact, a vertical rise within one organization will very likely move you away from your strongest areas of competence." And it will limit your earning potential, as Miller suggests "in changing companies you may be able to increase your income by 40 to 50 percent though that is unlikely to happen while moving up in one company."
48?
I have to address this, as you surely are wondering, why does finding the work you love take exactly "48 Days"? Miller explains that 40 days is a sacred time-span, and to this he adds eight "free days in the process to create your own plan". I can't decide whether this is blasphemous or just really hokey--to Christianize your book with an overused `sacred' numeric, and then casually change it. Still, it's certainly better than other possible titles: Every Worker's Battle, The Work Factor, Loving your Work too Much, and Work is Not that into You Either.
Despite the title, the book reads and flows well. It takes the lecture, vignette, lecture, vignette, lecture, vignette approach--which works--and most of the stories are really quite good. A few are perfectly cliché, of course. For those who haven't heard, if you help a struggling butterfly out of its cocoon, it will die. It needs to do that on its own. The same applies to hatching birds.
There are 4 Things you Need to Know
Often books are published that would make a good book chapter--the 4 points the author drones on about can be summarized in a couple hundred words. One of the best things about 48 Days is as soon as you think you know everything Miller is going to write, he introduces something else. For example, all this came from the second-half of the book:
*Fewer than 1% of job seekers find work by responding to an internet ad
*During an interview, your answer to any question should be no longer than 60 seconds
*The best times to have an interview are Tues-Thurs between 8-10am
*2,322 of 2,756 managers rank enthusiasm as #1 in what they want in applicants
*Today people are paid for their productivity, not their time, not their seniority
*IQ contributes only about 20% to the factors that predict success
*69% of businesses today cost less than $10,000 to start; and 24% cost $0
*The most successful people got there not by being in the most lucrative industry, but by doing work they loved
A Brick in the Wall
Finally, Miller reminds the reader that work is a part of life, it's not life itself. Don't sacrifice your family, community, church, recreation, or personal development for a job. He writes good advice I should take myself: "if you are working more than 45 to 50 hours a week in your job, you are limiting success in some other areas of your life. Don't expect all your fulfillment, value, and meaning to com from the work you do."
He also writes we should work out 4-5 times a week. This being said, I'm late for the gym...
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The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search: The Proven Program Used by the World's Leading Career Services Company Review

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The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search: The Proven Program Used by the World's Leading Career Services Company ReviewYou may be lucky enough, if you have the bad luck to be a downsized executive, that your last employer will see fit to plunk down $10,000 so that the author of this book will coach you to get a new job. If not, your best bet is to plunk down $21.95 and buy this book. You won't get the hand-holding or on-call career consulting, but you'll get just about everything else an insider with the world's biggest executive outplacement firm has learned about the brutal facts of landing the next job. Orville Pierson tells it like it is. He treats the reader like he would a member of his family who comes to him for advice. It's a guide that covers all the basics, sure, but what really sets the book apart is the no-nonsense advice required to score a new job. The Pierson Method, as he terms the collection of his dos and donts, is a proven roadmap for unemployed people. Yes, it can be a lonely and scary journey. What I like the most is that Pierson acknowledges that the biggest obstacles aren't out there in the woods. They are inside us. In our minds. The important thing is not to act like a victim. The case histories he provides give us the confidence to move forward in trying times, and that's all anyone of us can aim for.
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