Title:How to Create A Picture of Your Ideal Job or Next Career: The Quick Job-Hunting (and Career-Changing) Map Author: Richard N. Bolles Year: edited yearly Publisher: 10 Speed Press Price: $4.95 US Review by: Janet Daly Tripod Rating (out of four):

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When you're looking for a new job, you usually want to find the right one, with the right compensation package, right away. And most of the "grail" books ("find a perfect job/perfect body/perfect man/million dollars") have titles that appeal to the quick-fixer in all of us. It's only after you crack the cover that the ugly truth is revealed -- something like, "You'll have to change your diet/expectations/line of work," or, even worse, "You'll need to take time to really think what you want from whatever it is you're after." Yikes!

Richard Bolles, author of "What Color Is Your Parachute?," one of the more honest "get your life together" guides, has produced a series of books that sometimes build upon and other times repackage the basic ideas in "Parachute." This workbook, "The Quick Job-Hunting (and Career-Changing) Map," is one of the latter, but is worth a look, even for "Parachute" fans.

The book takes the critical exercises from "Parachute" and delivers them in a workbook designed to give you something closer to a "picture" of the job you want. Each set of exercises lead you to fill in "petals," or attributes, of the "flower" that is your Ideal Job. Bolles chooses a flower as a model "because like a Flower, you will flourish in some (work) environments, and not in others. Where you flourish, you will do your best, most effective and happiest work."

Virtually all of us hope for some reward from our work. We want enough salary to put bread on the table, clothes on our back, a roof over our head, and enough left over to do some of the things we want to do with our life.

Beyond that reward, however, we want others. The level at which we work is one of them. For example, in your ideal job would you want to work:

• by yourself and for yourself;
• by yourself but for another person or organization
• in tandem with one other person
• as a member of a team of equals
• as a member of a hierarchy where you carry out directions
• as a member of a hierarchy where you are the boss or supervisor or owner
• or what?

Jot down, on the petal, as may ideas or hunches as occur to you at that moment. You can always change them later, (as indeed, you can change any petal) after you have conducted your own research or informational interviewing about your flower picture. p. 15

In spite of the title, it's not exactly quick. That said, it is shorter than the full "Parachute," and the exercises are anything but dry. The exercises help you to grow a dream job, getting to the core of your true interests in or out of the office. For those who were put off by the Christianity references in "Parachute," they're replaced in the "Quick Map" with references to your "Ideal Spiritual and Emotional Setting."

One of the smartest things about it is its reusable workbook form, complete with reminders to photocopy the worksheets rather than permanently mark up the book. (To be honest, even to run through the exercises once, it requires a trip to the photocopier.) According to Bolles, you'll likely make at least three major career shifts in your lifetime. You may need the book again sooner than you think.

Have you read this book? How many wrenches would you give it? (The more wrenches, the better a "tool for thought" it is.)

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Tripod members give this book 2.0 wrenches so far.

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