Motivating the Workforce in a Precarious Time : Focusing on Career Self-Help Advice in the U.S

• Published in: International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology(IJACT) Vol. 12; no. 2; pp. 104 - 109
• Main Author: Jeongsuk Joo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 국제문화기술진흥원 30.06.2024
• Subjects: 과학기술학; Labor Market Changes; Motivation; Career Self-Help Advice; White-Collar; Job Searching
• ISSN: 2288-7202; 2288-7318
• DOI: 10.17703/IJACT.2024.12.2.104

In this paper, we examine American career self-help advice in the context of white-collar labor market changes in the U.S., especially how it tries to motivate and empower white-collar job seekers and how fundamentally flawed this is. In this regard, we focus on What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles, as it is the foundational and representative literature in the field of career self-help advice. We first look at the white-collar labor market changes in the U.S. and the growth of career self-help advice along with its influence. We then show that What Color Is Your Parachute? seeks to motivate and inspire job seekers by defining job searching in individual terms and overlooking its structural nature. From this, we point out the most problematic aspect of career self-held advice, i.e., shifting job search responsibility as well as its outcome solely to individual job seekers, while also making it difficult to scrutinize and understand the broader context affecting job searching.