What Color Is Your Parachute?

Two of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of What Color Is Your Parachute? pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.

1. Start with self-knowledge, not job boards. Before you search, do the Flower Exercise to map your skills, interests, values, ideal people, work conditions, location, salary, and purpose, then look for work that matches the whole flower.
2. Use the Parachute Approach instead of mass applications. Decide what you want, identify roles that fit, and pursue them through targeted research and networking. Posting-and-praying online succeeds roughly 4-10% of the time; the focused approach works far more often.

The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 10 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

1. Why the Old Way of Job Hunting Fails
2. The Flower Exercise: Know Yourself First
3. Transferable Skills: Mine Your Best Stories
4. The Hidden Job Market and Bridge-People
5. The PIE Method: Practice Your Way Past Fear
6. Informational Interviewing: Research Before You Apply
7. Resumes, Online Presence, and Getting Found
8. Acing the Interview as a Two-Way Conversation
9. Salary Negotiation Without Losing Leverage
10. Reinvention, Self-Employment, and Keeping a Constant