ShareThisJob seekers, don't despair. Richard Bolles is on your side. At 81, his life's work has been about how to find a job. And not just any job, but the career of your dreams. Even in a recession.
Bolles, the renowned career-hunt specialist, speaker and author of the best-selling book "What Color Is Your Parachute? (Job-Hunting in Hard Times)," isn't slowing down.
With 10 million "Parachute" books in 20 languages across 26 countries, he's now busily scouring the Web for new ways and new technologies to make hunting for work more fruitful. He's also pumping out another book, "The Job-Hunters Survival Guide."
Just as more bleak jobless numbers were rolling out, we caught up with Bolles to get some of his thoughts:
How bad is this job environment?
Terrible. It's the worst I've seen in nearly 40 years of writing about job hunting. And there's much worse coming up. Companies have exhausted all the other alternatives -- cutting hours and furloughs -- that would keep unemployment from soaring.
Any optimism out there?
You find hope by having alternatives. There was a study that found if you were only using one method of job hunting (i.e., sending out resumes), 51 out of 100 people gave up by the second month. If you used two or more methods, only 31 gave up.
These days, can people afford to look for a job they love, as opposed to just taking what's out there?
Even in this economy, it's not foolish to sit down and say, 'What's my ideal job?' Even if you don't end up with that ideal job, you can still ensure that some of the top things you're looking for will be in the job you get. People think it's a ridiculous time to be thinking about this, but it's not. It makes you more focused and refined on what you want to look for.
You've warned against relying too heavily on Internet job hunting. Where does it help or hurt?
There've been surveys that say only 4 to 10 percent of those who search for jobs exclusively on the Internet ever find one. In job hunting, there are five things the Internet can do for you: skills testing; researching a particular company; making connections with people (through social networking); posting your resume; looking for employers' vacancies. When job hunters think of the Internet, they think almost exclusively of the last two, but that's not where the most impressive success occurs.
Is there a difference between the advice you'd give a young college graduate seeking a first job vs. a seasoned professional who's been laid off or downsized out of work?
No. The basic exercises to make your job hunt successful are age-independent, as long as you can wield a pen, pencil or keyboard.
You say you've been researching new job-searching tools and looking at Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. What are you finding?
I like Indeed.com. And there's Checkster.com, which is a fascinating site. You choose six people who know you, write them a letter asking them to name your best skills. Checkster amalgamates the answers, strips the (writers') names off and publishes a report. You get a complete view of how six people see you and only you can decide whether you show it to a prospective employer or bury it in your wastebasket. And it's free.
You've made a career out of showing people how to find a job. Did you ever lose a job?
Twice. I was working for a yacht club in Gloucester, Mass., and was in charge of cooking huge vats of soup for Saturday lunches ... with the lawyers and bigwigs from Boston. One Saturday, I burned the cream-of-something soup. They called me in the next day and fired me. The second time I was the Episcopal canon pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and they had a budget crunch. They told me I could help them a lot by leaving (chuckling).
I knew nothing about job hunting. Zero. First time, I shrugged my shoulders ... The second time, I was married, had four children, I didn't see it coming. It was devastating.
E-mail Claudia Buck at cbuck(at)sacbee.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
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