Dick Bolles on How to Land Your First Job
Few people have helped as many people find the right job as Dick Bolles. The best-selling author of What Color is Your Parachute? and co-founder of eParachute.com has been advising job seekers for over 40 years. I had a chance to speak with Bolles recently as part of the OpenIDEO Youth Employment Challenge. The online challenge, done in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative, hopes to engage a global community in tackling the issue of youth employment. Below are notes from our conversation, which I hope will help stimulate creativity for the challenge’s Ideas Phase.
Know Yourself
“Education, if it’s doing its job, needs to teach young people three things: they need to learn who they are, how to find the right work, and how to find an appropriate life partner. If colleges were ever to think about how they could help students learn about those three problems, education would be turned on its head.”
Bolles makes a compelling case for the value of self-knowledge. During our short conversation, he shared two stories of readers who told him how much easier their job searches became after they invested in self-exploration. Knowing your own gifts and interests well not only enables you to narrow your focus, it also helps you to understand how your skills might transfer to roles you might not have previously imagined.
Job Hunt in Groups
“I was talking to someone looking for a job and asked, ‘WHY are you doing your job hunt alone?’ I never understand why people don’t work together and help each other… Only by youth talking to other youth can we make a dent in this problem.”
For me, this insight was a real eye opener, but it makes perfect sense. At IDEO, we strongly believe that collaboration leads to great things, so why not apply this same logic to looking for a new job? Making job hunts more social makes them more enjoyable and educational. Job seekers are able to share leads, networks, and advice. They’re able to practice for interviews together and keep each other’s spirits up after setbacks. And once they start landing jobs, the value of their combined networks becomes all the more important. Animals hunt in packs, why shouldn’t we?
Stay Optimistic
“Every job hunt in the world depends on one factor above all else: hope. Instead of always hearing about how intractable the problem [of youth unemployment] is, what if there was a project that collected success stories of people that took charge of their own job hunt and their own life?”
By nature, designers are optimistic. We believe there are solutions to tough problems and that, with the right methodology and collaboration, we can find them. It’s easy to lose your optimism, though, when the odds feel stacked against you. That’s why Bolles’ point is so critical: maintaining hope is an essential ingredient to a successful job search. How might we protect young people’s most important asset—their hope?
I invite you to join the conversation by sharing your ideas and solutions on OpenIDEO's Youth Employment Challenge. I, personally, will be o ffering a design critique to a selected idea during the challenge's Refinement Phase and one lucky participant will be selected to attend the Clinton Global Initiative's 10th Annual Meeting in September 2014.What advice have you given to first-time job seekers?
Business Leader at lawfulfood.com
9 年I read Richard Bolles What Color Is Your Parachute 2010 and was challenged with his assertion that imprecise job titles used by candidates and employers on the Web "will be like two ships passing in the night." As a designer I went to work on the problem of matching candidates and employers. Today nearly five years later I have met that challenge with IntraMatch.com our recruiting 360 job matching SaaS development. Whether it is our first job as a baby sitter / news paper route, or a professional career move or any thing in between, it comes down to the only three interview questions: 1.) Can You Do The Job? 2.) Will You Like The Job? 3.) Will We Like You? IntraMatch quickly and accurately answers these questions using: O*Net taxonomy, machine learning, progressive assessment, measurements, personality snap shot, and motivational gamification. I would love to connect with IDEO and introduce our development. I am currently self employed and available for work if you'd like to contact me. IntraMatch fits IDEO’s business design expertise and capabilities specifically, and all selection of work category in general. We have a mutual interest in Dick Bolles work as it applies to design. Sourcing and measuring job candidates accurately and quickly is the linchpin of successful web recruiting job matching, and IntraMatch may well provide this needed innovation for candidates and business.
Marketing @ Salesforce
10 年I always tell my friends who just graduated from college to keep swimming and not to lose hope. Rejection is always difficult, however I feel everything happens for a reason. You will be somewhere you are meant to be! Keep swimming because there is ALWAYS better!
Process Analyst
10 年Fully agree about the group. I`m interested about the support for keeping hope. While searching the work and at the same time reading about the increasing unemployment, it`s hard to keep the hope. So, is it more a question about thinking the life, work,relationships etc. in a new light. Things will not go in a same way as they used to and that does not necessary mean you can not reach anymore. Interesting.
I tell stories.
10 年The group idea is a good one. People not only need support during a job search, but it reinforces the truth that by helping others you help yourself, whether through new leads or simply from the boost in your confidence. Good advice for job seekers of all ages, I think.