If a glass is holding 92.6 percent water, is it mostly empty or mostly full?

To most people, the answer is obvious.

Author Richard Bolles wants people who are jobless to remember this. Even with last month's jobless rate at 5.7 percent nationwide, most people are working. And most companies are hiring.

"People die, people move, people get sick," Bolles said from his office in the San Francisco Bay area. "Jobs are always being created."

It's a comforting perspective that Bolles has earned through 75 years of life, four major recessions and three decades of studying the subject.

It might also be why his seminal book What Color is Your Parachute? is enjoying a rebirth of sorts 30 years after it was published.

The "job hunter's bible" is back on The New York Times best-sellers list for advice paperbacks after dropping off 13 years ago.

Despite annual revisions and a complete rewrite last year, the book's messages are the same as they were in 1972: You can find work that you love, and you probably won't find it by just sending out resumes and answering ads.

Bolles clung to this belief even in the 1990s when young and inexperienced people could e-mail a resume in the morning and get a response by afternoon. Today, that approach likely gets no results. "It takes an entirely different job-hunting method when the economy is in the doldrums," Bolles said.

Looking for work takes time, effort and a willingness to change tactics when you're not getting results, he says.

The method, or rather methods, that Bolles suggests are based on the notion that people should find out what they love to do, then get a job that allows them to do it.

Instead of looking for work according to narrow classifications, the "life-changing job search," as he calls it, cracks the job market wide open. The emphasis here is on skills, many of which apply to all sorts of industries.

"I would guess [job hunters] would have to take two full weekends to do homework on themselves," Bolles said. "They'd have to ask 'What are my skills?' Then go deeper, 'What skills make up this skill?'"

"If they say, 'I'm a machinist,' that's a big mistake. They ought to say, 'I'm a person who is good at ... .' Then they start to see a pattern: 'I was always able to bring a project in ahead of time.' Or, 'I have a keen eye for detail.'"

Convincing employers to hire you without direct experience is another matter. That is why Bolles suggests avoiding recruiters and human resources' folks. This is nearly impossible with a large company.

But smaller employers too busy to even post their latest job opening (about 70 percent of all jobs are not advertised) might be more inclined to consider someone without direct experience, particularly if the person shows enthusiasm and initiative and can save them the hassle of a long hiring process.

How to hunt

After 30 years of studying job-search methods, What Color is Your Parachute? author Richard Bolles offers a list of his top and bottom five. Five best ways to look for work:

Doing a life-changing job hunt:Find a career that suits your passion. It takes time and effort, but it has an 86 percent success rate.

Combing the Yellow Pages:In a group with other job seekers, target fields that interest you, then call those employers and ask if they're hiring. Success rate: 84 percent.

Same as above, but by yourself:For some reason, doing this alone has a 69 percent success rate. Bolles isn't sure why but suspects that friends offer ideas and options.

Knocking on doors:Finding a company that interests you, even if it hasn't posted a vacancy, and asking about a job has a 47 percent success rate.

Referrals:Getting job leads from family, friends and professional contacts has a 33 percent success rate. Five worst ways to look for work:

Using the Internet:Bolles pegs the success rate at a meager 4 percent.

Mailing resumes at random:Only seven in 100 job seekers find work by sending unsolicited resumes to employers.

Answering ads in trade journals:Also has a 7 percent success rate.

Answering local newspaper ads:Success varies depending on skill level. For high-paying jobs, it's about 5 percent; for others, it's as high as 24 percent.

Using employment agencies, search firms: These also have a 5 percent success rate for senior-level jobs, but the figure rises to 28 percent for other positions.

Knight Ridder/Tribune