Capella Education Company partners with Dick Bolles to present “What Color Is Your Parachute?: The Online Course”

MINNEAPOLIS -- (Business Wire)

Capella Education Company, a provider of online post-secondary education primarily through its wholly owned subsidiary Capella University, today announced an agreement with Dick Bolles, author of the world’s most popular job-hunting guide, What Color Is Your Parachute?, to offer an online, interactive course based on the bestselling book. What Color Is Your Parachute?: The Online Course brings the book that has sold more than 10 million copies into an online course format for the first time, offering job-hunters and career-changers an interactive and fun way to uncover their interests and passions and then translate them into marketable job skills in a career they will love.

The interactive course brings all of the best content and exercises from the book and Bolles’ live workshops, including the famous Flower Exercise, as well as exclusive online-only features to help people build a valuable network of connections and identify opportunities to find and get their dream job. These exclusive features include:

• Dick Bolles himself, delivering insights for identifying one’s passions and dreams, as well as advanced job hunting strategies and techniques.
• eParachute, an online community where job seekers can connect and network, providing an opportunity to generate ideas, contacts, job leads and interviews.
• A special section devoted to survival job-hunting strategies, tools and extras to help one stand out from the competition in today’s challenging job market.
• Opportunities to share results: at the end of the online course, people can quickly and easily share their results, including their individual Flower Report, with personal and professional networks via eParachute, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
• An online format that allows for more interactivity, multimedia features and other ways to make the information and exercises easy and fun!

“This is an exciting opportunity for Capella. We are delighted to work with Dick Bolles to bring Parachute online to help people worldwide find not only jobs, but career fulfillment,” said Tyler Norenberg, director of strategy and business development for Capella Education Company. “With the challenges of the current economic environment, job seekers are facing more competition and must be smarter and more effective in their job searches than ever before. This online course offers a fun, easy and flexible way for people to learn more about their own career goals, and then how to leverage that information into finding their dream job.”

“Capella’s goal of helping people advance their careers and meet their personal and professional goals in a way that fits their busy lives aligns perfectly with the work Dick Bolles has been doing for 40 years,” said Kevin Gilligan, chairman and CEO of Capella Education Company. “We are pleased to partner with him in offering this innovative course to help people identify the elements of their ideal career, and then succeed in securing them.”

“This course, like my book, is about self-knowledge and passion. Those are the keys to designing the life and work you want,” said Dick Bolles. “Your self-awareness and enthusiasm help guide and fuel your job hunt while making you an even more attractive prospect to potential employers. Our aim is to help seekers find their dream job, and I am happy to work with Capella to offer this online course that will help people understand what they’re really looking for, and then help them plan a strategy to find it.”

The online course helps participants identify key elements of their dream job by examining their favorite skills, values, working conditions, environments, geography, and the level of responsibility and salary they want. Upon completion, each student receives their personal Flower Exercise, a comprehensive report that details their results in those categories and outlines next steps and strategies in their job search. The course also covers the most, and least, effective job-hunting strategies, how to become skillful at interviewing and key job-hunting survival skills.

What Color Is Your Parachute? The Online Course is available for $99 at parachute.capella.edu.

About Dick Bolles
Richard N. Bolles has been helping job-hunters for 40 years with his classic job-search guide, What Color is Your Parachute? The book has sold 10 million copies and is revised every year. It is the best-selling job-hunting book of all time, and has been selected by the Library of Congress as one of 25 books down through history that have shaped people's lives. It was also selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best non-fiction books to appear in the last 88 years.

About Capella Education Company
Founded in 1991, Capella Education Company (NASDAQ:CPLA) is a national leader in online education and parent company of Capella University, a regionally accredited* online university. Capella University offers online graduate degree programs in business, counseling, education, health administration, homeland security, human resource management, human services, information technology, nonprofit management and leadership, nursing, psychology, public administration, public health, public safety, and social work, and bachelor's degree programs in business, information technology, nursing, psychology, and public safety. These academic programs are designed to meet the needs of working adults, combining high quality, competency-based curricula with the convenience and flexibility of an online learning format. Currently, Capella University offers 43 graduate and undergraduate degree programs with 140 specializations. More than 35,000 students were enrolled as of Sept. 30, 2011. For more information about Capella Education Company, please visit http://www.capellaeducation.com. For more information about Capella University, please visit http://www.capella.edu or call 1-888-CAPELLA (227-3552).

*Capella University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), http://www.ncahlc.org. Capella University, Capella Tower, 225 South Sixth Street, Ninth Floor, Minneapolis, MN 55402, 1-888-CAPELLA (227-3552), http://www.capella.edu.

Learn more about earning an online degree:
online education (http://www.capella.edu/online_education.aspx)
online degree (http://www.capella.edu)
accredited online university (http://www.capella.edu/about_capella/accreditation.aspx)
online college (http://www.capella.edu/online_college_degree_programs.aspx)

Contacts:

Capella University
Michael Walsh, 612-977-5661
michael.walsh@capella.edu

Source: Capella University