[joe_the_user]

Edit: Oh shit, I'm wrong below....

...

Peter Drucker, author of What Color Is Your Parachute?

I have to say that while that book is likely "good for what it is", I utterly and completely despised it for what it was promoted as. Essentially, What Color Is Your Parachute was the standard thing that career councilors promoted for how to find a job - however it gives the ordinary seeker of an ordinary job nothing whatsoever but rather just tells everyone "become unique and find your unique niche". Whether that's good or bad advice, it's not the advice said ordinary seeker asked for and it was shitty trick that ordinary career counselors handed job seekers this book by default.

[drjasonharrison]

The concept of an "ordinary job seeker" sounds like a cog in a machine where employers are desperate to hire any warm-bodied adult.

One of the reasons "What color is your parachute" is promoted is that it discusses determining your skills and what you enjoy doing. It also promotes the idea that talking to people (information interviewing) is an effective way to find out deeply about jobs outside of the classifieds, the job boards, etc., when there are more job seekers than openings.

[Jtsummers]

No, Drucker didn't write What Color Is Your Parachute?, that was written by Richard Nelson Bolles (had to look it up, I'd never heard of it before now).

[treme]

Be careful next time you criticize someone's work haphazardly and expose yourself as someone that criticizes management book author who doesn't know Drucker.

[abeyer]

Maybe we just have vastly different understandings of "ordinary" job seekers, "ordinary" career counselors, and why they'd interact... but I'm not sure I get the point?

Isn't the book the basis of exactly what one would want a career counselor for? I'd expect a counselor to bring more personal and customized advice along, too, but telling someone to start with understanding the book doesn't seem like a bad approach. Now it's true that if what you're trying to do is get a job tomorrow, then yes, the book isn't going to help much with that... but that's not why I'd visit a career counselor either.

[an_aparallel]

i think what that book does is create an opportunity to decide you're going to do some introspection. If that's too much hard work...so be it. It took me a solid 1.5 weeks of full time effort after work doing the exercises in this book. I honestly loved it. Its fruits are a living document, and there are so many ideas, tests and so on which i think are incredibly useful.

Right after reading it - i took the advise of calling companies out of the blue much more seriously, and the difference in conversations was encouraging.