What Color Is Your Parachute 2018 by Richard N. Bolles copy

Of course, if you’re calling a local counselor, you won’t need
the area code (unless you live in one of the metropolitan areas in
the U.S. that requires ten-digit dialing).
1. Sometimes the written contract—there is always a written contract,
when you are dealing with the bad guys, and they will probably ask
your partner to sign it, too—will claim to provide for an almost
complete refund, at any time, until you reach a cutoff date in the
program, which the contract specifies. Unfortunately, fraudulent firms
bend over backward to be extra nice, extra available, and extra helpful
to you, from the time you first walk in, until that cutoff point is
reached. Therefore, when the cutoff point for getting a refund has
passed, you let it pass because you are very satisfied with their past
services, and believe there will be many more weeks of the same. Only,
there aren’t. At fraudulent firms, once the cutoff point is passed, the
career counselor suddenly becomes virtually impossible for you to get
ahold of. Call after call will not be returned. You will say to yourself,
“What happened?” Well, what happened, my friend, is that you paid up
in full, they have all the money they’re ever going to get out of you,
and now, they want to move on.
2. Yearly readers of this book will notice that we do remove people from
this Sampler, without warning. First of all, there are accidents: we drop
places we didn’t mean to, but a typographical error was made,
somehow (it happens). Oops! Counselor or coach: call this to our
attention; we’ll put you back in next year.
But accidents aside, we do deliberately remove the following: places
that have moved, and don’t bother to send us their new address.
Coaches and counselors: If you are listed here, we expect you to be a
professional at communication. When you move, your first priority
should be to let us know, immediately. As one exemplary counselor
wrote: “You are the first person I am contacting on my updated
letterhead…hot off the press just today!” So it should always be, if you
want to continue to be listed here. A number of places get removed
every year, precisely because of their sloppiness in keeping us up-todate
with their phone and other contact information.
Other causes for removal: Places that have disconnected their
telephone, or otherwise suggest that they have gone out of business.
Places that our readers lodge complaints against with us, as being
unhelpful or even obnoxious. The complaints may be falsified, but we
can’t take that chance. Places that change their personnel, and the new
person has never even heard of Parachute, or “creative job-search
techniques.” College services that we discover (belatedly) serve only
“Their Own.” Counseling firms that employ salespeople as the initial
“intake” person that a job-hunter meets. If you discover that any of the