A practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers -

Through my course LinkedIn for Job Hunters I am being asked frequently about how certain books and ideas apply to Job Hunters and LinkedIn. One book comes up more frequently than any other. That is What Color Is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles. And the question that gets asked most is - how does the book apply to LinkedIn? I love the book and I think its an amazing resource.

Here I would like to provide some insight in answering the question. The book claims "To Be The Best-Selling Job-Hunting Book in the World", I am not sure of that, but it certainly should be. I have taken some of the ideas I teach in my course and connect them to the chapters of What Color Is Your Parachute? (For people who have taken the course, I have connected the course items to the sections of the book)

This review just scratches the surface of the book and is intended just to highlight how to apply many of the ideas in LinkedIn.

Chapter 1 - A Hunting We Will Go

Many job hunters at the executive level say they want a "job that they can learn", "a job that is interesting", "a job paying 75,000+ a year" or some other vague description. This is a process for job hunt disaster, if you don't know what you want, you can never get it.  Bolles's main thesis in the book is helping the job hunter understand what they want and helping them get there.

This is its brilliance. If you are crystal clear about what you want, you are 50% of the way to getting it, all that is left is the how. Most people start doing the how and their efforts are shot gun. Meaning that get results all over the place, rather than the specific results they want. It seems they are making progress, but in fact are not. If you know what you want every step on the way to your goal, then you will know if you are making progress. Bolles helps you to determine what you really want from your career.

It is much different is the statements "I want an accounting job" compared to "I want a mid-level accounting job in North Toronto that pays me a minimum of $82,000 a year. The company needs to have between 15 and 50 accounts. I require the company to provide life insurance benefits that includes dental and therapy". In the first statement people won't be able to think of anybody to help you, in the second statement, they can identify the accounting firms that can help you. You as the job-hunter will be able to focus your efforts on identifying the potential companies.

Once you have identified them the implications for LinkedIn are fantastic:

• You can approach people who work in those companies through LinkedIn, or
• You can create a LinkedIn profile that will attract the kind of companies you are interested in.

Bolles spends pages and pages helping prepare the job-hunter emotionally and mentally for the job hunt. I agree this is the most important part of the job hunt. We differ in that Boles doesn't spend much time on using online marketing techniques. I take the approach that the job hunt as a marketing problem. The job hunt is about marketing yourself and the sale is getting the job. Your resume is an advertisement for you and therefore needs to be written that way. We both agree that the job hunt is about identifying the correct customer or employer as he calls it.

The book is a fabulous help to an executive serious about their job hunt. You are well advised to get a copy of it.

Chapter 2 - Rejection Shock

Bolles explains clearly why job hunting is a numbers game. He explains that to get the job you want, you need to receive 2-3 job offers. To receive the job offers you probably need to be interviewed by 6-9 companies with a known job vacancy. To get one job offers you will need to send out 100 - 500 resumes. Therefore to get your job, you will need 2 x 6 x 100 = 1200 resumes at a minimum or 3 x 9 x 500= 13,500 resumes. That is a lot of postage if you send out the resumes by letter.

The solution of course is the Internet. But, everybody else also knows that problem. Therefore to get a job is a lot of work. Monster and Workapolis have hundreds of thousands of resumes online. So when you add your resume their, you are competing against those hundreds of 100,000's of people.

This is why LinkedIn works so well. For example, a connection to me adds 2,412,172 people into your network. Now only a small number of those people have jobs openings for you. But it is a start to meeting your goal of having 13,500 who have jobs be connected to you. If you identify 135 cities in North America then you need only 10 recruiters each with 10 jobs the numbers work: 135 x 10 x 10 = 13,500. It is not an unreasonable goal to connect to the 13,500 recruiters you need.

Chapter 3 - You Can Do It

In this Chapter Bolles focuses on three points that are fundamental for job hunters to understand:

• As long as there is business and government, there are jobs available.
• Whether you find these jobs or not, depends on you.
• You need to learn how to market yourself to find the correct job.

Bolles provides several recommendations which apply to LinkedIn:

• Asking for help by approaching contacts. By connecting to me, you will have over 2,000,000 people to contact. But, you can't just ask for their help. He says this has a 33% success rate.
• Knocking on the door of companies to ask for a job of companies that you know are hiring. LinkedIn helps you find the people to speak with. But, don't just show up. That would be too weird. This has a 47% success rate.
• Bolles recommends using the Yellow Pages and cold calling. I recommend LinkedIn since it provides a City and industry search, which is effectively the same thing and you have the name of somebody to contact. This has a 69% success rate.
• Bolles recommends of forming a group with others and using the Yellow Pages and sharing job vacancies. I recommend LinkedIn to find other job hunters and work together to find a job. (Attending my LinkedIn For Job Hunters course are great way to meet others as well.)
• Lastly Bolles speaks of being creative in your job hunt and that method has an 86% Success rate. Being creative is all about knowing who you are, knowing what you want, and finding those companies that need you and what you offer.

Chapter 4 - What, Do You Have To Offer The World?

In Chapter 4. Bolles helps you identify what kind of job you want. This directly applies to LinkedIn as it creates the kind of LinkedIn profile you need. The steps and content can be used in different places in LinkedIn.. This Chapter powerfully makes the case for the use of transferable skills. The list of skills as verbs is useful for LinkedIn. Google and other searching relies on text for results. The better you can describe yourself and your skills the more effect your job hunt will be and the quicker you will find a job.

Chapter 5 - Where Do You Want To Do It?

In Chapter 5, Bolles immediately identifies 10 different career dreams and then spends the entire chapter helping you figure out which dream fits you the best. A powerful methodology and by far the largest chapter. He guides you on the process to analyze each of the choices that you can make during your job hunt. Choices require that you contact people. Connecting on LinkedIn makes it is to find the people and contact them. LinkedIn becomes the powerful tool to research each of your dreams.

In this chapter Bolles helps you create an inventory of where you have been. This inventory provides lots of content that can be applied to LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, the size of content if written correctly can be as big as you want it to be. On a resume, its important to be concise and to the point. Longer than two pages and the information is lost. On LinkedIn a resume can be ten pages long. Nobody cares because they can ignore the extra content. A covering letter has to be simple and focused. The LinkedIn equivalent can be written multiple times in many different places.

Chapter 6 How Do You Obtain Such A Job

In Chapter 6, the author identifies 12 ways to speed up your job hunt. Every one of them can use LinkedIn.

• Treat your job hunt as a 9:00-5:00 job. There are innumerable ways to use and create a presence on LinkedIn.
• Find some kind of support group. LinkedIn provides multiple ways to find people to help you.
• Enlist your contacts. LinkedIn is all about contacts.
• Expand your contacts. This is self-explanatory.
• Go after any place that interests you. With LinkedIn you can probably find the name of somebody to contact there.
• Go after organizations with twenty or less employees. A LinkedIn filter search.
• Don't send a resume to a place that interests, visit the place. With LinkedIn you have a name to take out for lunch.
• Visit at least 2 employers each weekday, face to face. Just don't show up at a LinkedIn contact, call and bring coffee.
• When all other approaches fail, canvass by telephone. LinkedIn provides you the contact information, 411 can provide you the telephone number.
• To speed up your job search, be willing to look at different jobs. LinkedIn can provide you lots of jobs, a large LinkedIn network will connect you to people in those companies.
• Zero in on several organizations, not just one. LinkedIn can provide you lots of companies you have never heard of.
• Even if all your attempts to speed up your job-search don't seem to be paying off. don't give up. Every day my network increases by 25,000 people. Therefore, so does yours. The job opportunities are there. You just need to find them,

In the remaining parts of the Chapter, Bolles helps you in the steps needed to approach employers and then about how to handle the job interview. All great material. What is important is that your LinkedIn presence be consistent with what you will do in the interview.

Epilogue - How To Find Your Mission In Life

This chapter is different than the rest. Its all about the higher purpose in life. The author is clear that its a Christian perspective.

As an Orthodox Jew, I don't necessarily agree with many of the details which reflect Christian doctrine. But, that doesn't take away from the power of the importance of the chapter.It reflects a world view that is consistent with most faiths I am familiar with.  If reading this kind of material offends you, I recommend that you skip it. It is excellent material for people looking for meaning in life.

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