Week 3- What Color is Your Parachute Chapter 1

Job-hunting, also known as the most dangerous game for most first time job-seekers or those who have not had to job hunt for some time. To many finding a job seems like the never ending struggle between not having the right skills or doing something wrong. In reality, it's not so much about what skills you do not have, but rather the way you present the skills that you do have.  

In the book What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles, Bolles describes the many ways that the modern job hunt has changed from years past. In the first chapter, Bolles discusses the actual difference between us everyday job hunter and those who will choose our fate, the employers. As Bolles puts it, “The ways you hunt for each other are not just different; they are exactly opposite” (Bolles, 13). So how does one avoid this inevitable fight between one ideology and the other, change your approach.

Many of us new job seekers (yes, I am talking to you college students) approach an interview in the same fashion. Typically the same or similar business attire, a good smile, a nicely printed resume and the cookie-cutter introduction that you’ve rehearsed either to your best friend or bathroom mirror a thousand times. Within this lies the problem, how is one supposed to take that next step to the “big” job if one continually pitches themselves the exact same way to different people looking for different things? Luckily, the solution is just as simple.

Present yourself differently, every time. Have different resumes for different job, have different introductions and answers, and approach each interview as a new opportunity to present yourself in a way nobody has seen. This will help you avoid the cookie-cutter routine that most employers get from the people in our age group and you will gain confidence with each interview you do as you are not pressured by wondering if the company will like your “elevator pitch”.

Focus the interview on the skills you do have and make them shine. They are interviewing you so it is in your best interest to show them your best. Most of all, do not be nervous, you are just pitching yourself and that is it. So go out, apply for jobs, be yourself and get a job!