The main self-assessment in *What Color Is Your Parachute?* is called the Flower Exercise, a structured inventory that maps out seven dimensions of your ideal work life onto a single-page diagram shaped like a flower. Each “petal” represents one category: your skills, the people you work best with, your personal traits, preferred working conditions, salary needs, ideal location, and core values. When you fill in all seven, you get a detailed picture of the job that would fit you best.
There is no single quiz you take online and get a score. The Flower Exercise is a hands-on process you work through over several hours, either using the book itself or the companion workbook. Here is how it works and where to find it.
How the Flower Exercise Works
The exercise asks you to reflect on seven areas of your work life, then rank your priorities within each one. You write your top answers onto a flower-shaped worksheet where each petal holds one category. The seven petals are:
- Knowledge and Skills: What you know how to do and what you enjoy doing, broken into two types. “Knowledges” are subject areas you’ve studied or picked up through experience (accounting, graphic design, child development). “Transferable skills” are abilities that apply across industries, like analyzing data, managing people, or writing clearly.
- People: The kinds of coworkers, clients, or collaborators you thrive around. This covers personality types, team size, and the level of interaction you want in a typical day.
- Traits: Your own personality characteristics and how you prefer to operate. Think of this as how others would describe you at your best.
- Working Conditions: The physical and cultural environment you need. Indoors or outdoors, quiet or buzzing, structured or flexible, remote or in-person.
- Salary and Level: The minimum income you need, the income you’d like, and the level of responsibility or authority you want in a role.
- Location: Where you want to live and work, including factors like city size, climate, proximity to family, or willingness to relocate.
- Values: The purpose or mission that matters to you. This petal captures what you want your work to accomplish beyond a paycheck.
For each petal, the book walks you through brainstorming exercises, then asks you to narrow your answers down to the top few priorities. The final flower becomes a one-page snapshot of your ideal job, which you can then compare against real career options.
The Transferable Skills Grid
The skills petal gets the most attention in the book because it is the hardest to fill in honestly. Most people undercount their own abilities or describe them in vague terms. To fix that, the workbook includes a Transferable Skills Grid. You start by writing down several stories from your life where you accomplished something you enjoyed. Then you comb through each story and check off which skills you actually used: persuading, organizing, building, researching, teaching, negotiating, and dozens more. Skills that show up across multiple stories rise to the top of your list. This gives you concrete language for your resume and interviews, not just self-knowledge.
The Party Exercise
Another tool in the book is the Party Exercise, designed to help you figure out the kinds of people you work best with. It is based on the same personality framework that the Holland Code system uses. You imagine walking into a party where guests are clustered into six groups: realistic (hands-on, mechanical), investigative (analytical, scientific), artistic (creative, expressive), social (helping, teaching), enterprising (leading, selling), and conventional (organizing, detail-oriented). You pick which three groups you’d gravitate toward first. Your top three codes point you toward work environments where you are most likely to feel comfortable.
Where to Take the Assessment
The full Flower Exercise lives in the book *What Color Is Your Parachute?* and its companion publication, the *Job-Hunter’s Workbook* (now in its seventh edition, updated for 2025). The workbook is specifically designed for people who want to skip the career-advice chapters and go straight to the hands-on exercises. Both are available wherever books are sold, typically for the price of a standard paperback.
Online, the site eParachute offers a digital version inspired by the book. It includes a 15-minute skills and interests self-inventory based on three of the seven flower petals, plus a longer career planning course hosted by Gary Bolles, the son of original author Richard N. Bolles. The site has offered promotional pricing at 50% off, though the standard price is not prominently listed. The digital inventory is faster than working through the full book, but it covers fewer dimensions. If you want the complete seven-petal picture, the book or workbook is the way to go.
How Long It Takes
Plan on several hours spread over a few sittings. The skills grid alone can take an hour or more because it asks you to recall and analyze multiple life stories in detail. The other petals are quicker, typically 15 to 30 minutes each, but they still require honest reflection rather than snap answers. Many career counselors and university career centers assign the exercise over the course of a week, giving people time to think between sections rather than rushing through everything at once.
What to Do With Your Finished Flower
Once your flower is complete, you use it as a filter. Look at job listings, career fields, or industries and check them against your seven petals. A role that matches five or six petals is worth pursuing seriously. A role that only matches one or two tells you why that kind of work has felt draining in the past.
The flower also gives you specific language for networking conversations and interviews. Instead of saying “I’m looking for something that’s a good fit,” you can say “I’m looking for a role that uses my project management and writing skills, in a small collaborative team, with a mission tied to education.” That level of clarity makes it far easier for other people to help you, because they can picture the kind of job you are describing.
You can also revisit and update your flower as your life changes. Priorities around salary, location, and values shift over time, and the exercise is designed to be repeated whenever you are at a career crossroads.