Dear Readers,

Job-hunting expert Richard Bolles, author of the bestseller “What Color is Your Parachute?” has long considered doing a thorough self-assessment as a prelude to a successful job hunt.

Bolles has produced a cheaper, more concise guide designed specifically for job hunters facing today’s brutal job market: “The Job-Hunter’s Survival Guide: How to Find Hope and Rewarding Work, Even When ‘There are No Jobs’” (Ten Speed Press, 2009). Even when pared down, self-assessment continues to be a key element of his advice.

Having a thorough inventory of your skills can help prevent you from turning into a “job beggar,” Bolles says. It’s important to go into every interview knowing that, “I’m going to be a helpful resource,” and if not at this particular company, somewhere else. The point of an interview – which we are more likely to forget when we are worried about our next paycheck – is for both parties to determine whether there’s the possibility of a good fit.

Evaluating your fit with a perspective employer requires you to know the parameters of your own skills. Bolles offers useful exercises to help readers develop detailed descriptions of their past accomplishments. His list of 192 transferable skills will help you expand your ways of describing your duties. Among the choices: acting, founding, recommending, traveling, testing, expanding, enforcing, imagining, memorizing, and unifying.

My absolute favorite activity is Bolles’ list of seven possible goals to describe what you were trying to do at your last job:

Working with the human mind, trying to bring more knowledge, truth or clarity into the world.

Working on the human body, trying to deal with the need for shelter, food, and clothing, or health and fitness.

Working with the eyes and other senses, trying to bring more beauty into the world.

Working with the human heart, trying to bring more love and compassion into the world.

Working with the human will or conscience, trying to bring more morality, justice, righteousness, or honesty into the world.

Working with the human spirit, trying to bring more laughter, spirituality, faith, compassion, forgiveness, love for God, into the world.

Working on the Earth, trying to ensure more protection of the planet.

You may find that more than one of these descriptions fits your goals. “If ‘just keeping busy,’ is your answer, then think of what goal you would like to have been working toward,” Bolles writes.

Another bit of unusual advice offered by Bolles is to ask your interviewer a straightforward question at the end of the last round of interviews: “Given what we’ve discussed, can you offer me this job? It would help me a lot to know.”

Bolles believes this is the most efficient way to get some feedback about your chances. “What’s the worst thing they can say?” he asks. His reasoning: If the interviewer says no, then you have some closure on the process in a timely fashion. If you get a more positive response, then you’ll also have that feedback more quickly than you would if you had been less aggressive. “We don’t ask a lot of questions because we think we already know the answer,” says Bolles. That insight actually applies to many situations, beyond job hunting.

Bolles encourages readers to create a description of their own dream job. He doesn’t expect you’ll find it, but if you at least know what you’re looking for, there’s more of a chance you’ll find a position with some overlap.

Bolles divides job hunters into two categories. The first group is composed of people who are so driven by the vision of their dream job that “they are searching with every fiber of their being,” he says. The second group is composed of applicants who have “already cut out the dream and so are only half-enthusiastic” about their search. Who would you hire?

And what about the Internet as a job search tool? Bolles estimates that only 10 percent of job hunters land a position via Internet searches, and he suggests limiting them to 10 percent of your effort.

His estimate of the success rate of those who do a thorough self-assessment is much higher: 86 percent. You choose.