Topic: jibberjobber news

Every other week we do a one hour tutorial on JibberJobber - you can see the schedule and register here (the next webinar is this Wednesday).

I finally got around to recording a new version of this webinar, so you don’t have to wait to jump on the live webinar (where you can ask questions and sometimes we go off on more advanced tangents)… here are the first two parts of the one hour webinar.

You can see all of these, and more, on the JibberJobber Vimeo channel.

Part 1

Part 2

Updated 7/1 with Part 3!

Part 3

If you click where the red arrow is pointing on either of the videos you’ll pop the video out so it’s full screen.

Not sure how I missed this one, I knew it was coming… but I didn’t write about it in my last “JibberJobber News” post…

For years we’ve been asked to put a Save button at the top of the screen of the add contact, since you have to scroll down about three pages to find it (which is no fun if you only have a name and email address to enter).

We finally put the button here:

When you hit Quick Save it will save the record and take you directly to the List Panel page.

If you don’t want to go there, then go to the bottom of the Add/Edit Contact page and choose where you want to go…

Also, this is one reason why my List Panel is ordered by who I put in the system last - I always see my most current entries at the top of the List Panel.

Yeah, we know - JibberJobber users are celebrating this around the world (last I checked we had signups from over 100 countries).

Finally, finally, we got around to something that has been much requested: putting tags on Jobs and Companies.

Tags are awesome.  We’ve had them on Contacts for a long time, and now you can organize your data with tags on Companies and Jobs.

We also put “Images” on Companies… so if you can grab the logo of a Company you can see it on the Detail Page as well as the search results, the List Panel, and the Maps.  In pictures:

To add an image on a company, the field is directly below the Company Name… see the Tags field two below that?

This is a view of the Detail Page, you can see the Tags there (top arrow), and the image in the Notes section (just like on the Detail Page of a Contact):

On the List Panel, you can do a search based on tags, like this (this applies to all fields… just put in the field name, colon, and the search phrase (no spaces, like in the image)).  Notice there is only one record showing because we just released this like 8 minutes ago, and this is the first company I’ve tagged.  Also, note the second arrow pointing at the image of the company.

On the Job entry/edit page you’ll see the Tags box right here:

One quick thing to point out - notice on the Job Tags there is a drop down that says “Choose a Tag,” but on the Company Tags there isn’t that drop down.  Here’s how this works:

• When you don’t have any existing tags, there is no drop down.  It only appears and populates when you have existing tags.
• When you click on a tag from the drop down it will automatically populate it into the Tags box.
• Company Tags are different than Job Tags which are different than Contact Tags.

Pretty cool, huh?  It’s a simple thing we should have done early on - thanks to the user requests we finally got it in!

(FYI, Tag Maintenance is not in the system yet but is coming soon - another oversight!  This will allow you to manage Tags the same way you manage Categories (add, edit, delete from a maintenance page)).

As usual, send us any suggestions (best is to use the Contact Us form).  We have a list a mile long and are continually working on it.

I’m beyond frustrated with Comcast email issues… I’m writing this post for two reasons:

1. To inform users and people who sign up for JibberJobber that they WILL NOT get email from us anytime soon - so those birthday reminders, action item reminders, signup verification, password reminders… none of that will get to you until we can get this resolved.
2. To tell people, whether you use Comcast as your ISP or email provider, that there is a much, much better way to handle your email.

First, for the issue of the JibberJobber mail server not able to send to Comcast addresses.  I was an email admin a while back and know that we will never win the war on spam.  Never.  It’s a huge issue, of course, as no one likes spam.  But sometimes the rules put into place cause more problems than they fix.

For example, when I was an email admin we set a “threshold” so that certain emails would go through (the good ones) and others would get stuck in a spam bucket (the bad ones).  Guess what? There were a number of “false positives,” that is, emails that were GOOD but got marked as spam.

Executives (who are typically the most whiney in situations like this) at first complained they got too much spam.  So we change the threshold so they get no (or little) spam, and then they whined they weren’t getting the important emails (the false positives, usually from their kids).

The problem here is that Comcast has blacklisted our server, which means NOTHING will go from our server to a Comcast email address.  We have tried to go through their process of getting off the blacklist, but have heard NOTHING back from them.  Very unprofessional.  Maybe @comcastcares on Twitter, but this is living hell for me, as I have a bunch of users saying “I never got _____ email.” And indeed, they are writing from a Comcast email address.

I’ll try again today, based on this blog post about getting off of Comcasts blacklist, but I’m not hopeful.

Enough about me and JibberJobber - now for the regular person.  I strongly encourage you to get a Gmail email account, for a few reasons:

• Gmail has an awesome interface on the internet, and other interfaces (with Outlook, etc.).
• Gmail interfaces with other cool tools, like the Google Calendar.
• Gmail has awesome spam management.  Rarely have I seen problems in their logic, which amazes me.
• Your Gmail address WON’T EVERY CHANGE.  Let me present a scenerio… today you are on Comcast (or Quest or whatever)… and then you move and get a different ISP or phone service.  Guess what - you will likely get a different email address… and have to tell all of your contacts.  Do this a few times and it’s frustrating to YOU and your contacts.  Get one gmail address now and keep it forever… regardless of who your ISP is.
• Gmail makes you look more sophistacated (or up to speed, or whatever) than other providers like AOL (old), Juno (older), Yahoo, etc.

There ya go.  I gotta stop writing and go try and get off of Comcast’s blacklist.  Grrrrrrrrrr…….

Oh yeah, in case you are having blacklist problems with your email server going to Comcast, here are some good reads:

• How to stay off the (Comcast blacklist) list - I’m not hopeful, but maybe it will help.  Could change anytime.
• Up to 8000 Comcast E-mail Accounts Compromised - guess they aren’t perfect either.  This was only a few months ago - March 2009.
• RBL - Blacklisted by Comcast - let’s hope I’m as lucky as this email admin.
• Comcast reports 35 percent decline in spam - ya think?  I wonder what increase they say in false positives.
• Comcast takes hard line against spam - no kidding.  So much for getting legit emails, too.

I finally set up the JibberJobber user webinars so that you can access them with the new GoToWebinar VOIP option - which means you don’t have to call into a number - simply listen on your computer speakers.   Hopefully this reduces any confusion about the audio portion.

I also set up a recurring webinar training, starting on Wednesday (June 3rd) and going every other week through the rest of the year (you can see part of that schedule here).  When I first starting using GoToWebinar they didn’t have this feature, so people would say “why is the webinar in December of 2009?”  This should be resolved now, also… hopefully.

To get on this next webinar (June 3rd), or any webinar after that, simply register at this link below.  When you register you will get an email back with info on how to get on the webinar.

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/549339059

THE BIGGEST CONFUSION I’ve seen is the TIME of the webinar. These webinars are at 9am MST, which is 8am PST, 10am CST and 11am EST.  I don’t know how to do the higher level math and calculations that Arizona people can do, so I can’t say what time it is there, but I’m guessing they can figure it out based on 9am MST

Here are some other ways to get help with JibberJobber:

Written documentation in the WIKI.  This is a project we started a while ago - if you have any suggestions on what to add, just let us know.

JibberJobber Two Minute Tutorial Videos.  Some are more than two minutes, some are less than two minutes, but you get the point.  Many are years old, … we’re updating these in a different place, check this out for the most updated user tutorials.

As always you can use the Contact Us form to submit questions, suggestions, rants, raves, etc.

Note that all of these links are found from the HELP page, which is at the bottom of every page in JibberJobber, including this blog.

I’m very pleased with the LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD… the comments I’m getting about it in my email and from the Amazon reviews have been awesome!  If you haven’t gotten yours yet, you can get it from here… if you are a coach, outplacement firm, operate a college career center, etc. email me about bulk rates and site licenses.

Wednesday I blogged about the history of the development team, and mentioned we have a list a mile long.  Let me share an example of what we do… just a few days ago my developer released a new feature allowing you to add someone from Twitter, just using their Twitter handle.  Note: you do NOT have to be on Twitter, or even be logged into Twitter, to make this work.

Here’s how it works:

Login to JibberJobber, go to the Add a Contact page, and click on the Quick Add from Twitter link.

I put in ShirleyFrazier, since she tweeted to me.  Plus she is a basketologist - how could you not want a basketologist in your network?  Never know when that might come in handy!

The contact information is added, and you can see what information we get to pull over from Twitter (all the stuff the arrows are pointing to are automatically brought over from her Twitter Profile).

This is a FREE feature… in a future post I’ll show you how to use Twitter in a job search, which will perfectly dovetail into this feature.

Like I mentioned, we are constantly working on improving the product - whether it’s the user experience, or stuff under-the-hood, this is a full-time job for us, to make your job search and network relationship management just a little bit easier!

In March of 2006 I had the idea for this revolutionary job search organizer, which would soon be called JibberJobber.com.  I had already thought of two other online businesses and was putting together business plans and operational plans to move forward on them.  I was looking for programming resources to help move these projects forward. Even though I have a background in web development, I knew my time was better spent doing other stuff.

I looked for offshore outsourcing shops (that’s the budget I had) and was really disappointed with what I found.  The communication I got from those shops were overly sophisticated, not what i wanted nor what I was used to. I figured they were accustomed to working with huge companies, like GE and Ford and Microsoft… I needed something different.

One morning, a programmer who used to work at my old company (the one I got laid off from) popped online.  He left our old company about a year before I did, and we hadn’t communicated for a LONG time.  He had a stellar record at our old company and I had come to know him as a very talented developer.  I asked him what he was up to, and he responded, “I’m going to (a city a few hours away) for an interview.”

I responded, “why don’t you just work for me?  You can work out of your home, work your own hours, etc.”

During the conversation I told him that this would be a six month project.  Little did we realize what we were about to start - he’s been with me for over three years!

From March 2006 - May 2006 he worked on taking my 20 design screenshots and implementing them. I knew getting the site up in two months was pushing it, but we did it.

Early on I did some html programming, but one day he said “Jason, you are indenting two spaces, and you need to indent only one space.“  It was then that I realized (a) he was more obsessive about code than I was (and I was more obsessive than others), and (b) he was absolutely the person I wanted on this project - he cared about stuff that no one would see, but that would have an impact on other parts of the company, and (c) by helping with the programming I was probably slowing things down - that is the last time I helped in that area (which was a really good thing).

Around May, 2006 I got a message from the quality assurance (QA) expert from our old company - she said that since I left, the company went in a different direction and she was very unhappy and that she was leaving.  She wasn’t asking for a job, just letting me know (as friends) that she was moving on.  I didn’t know how to pay her but I really, really wanted her to come work for us … I really hated doing QA, and once again, I knew I needed to spend my time on other things.  I figured out how to increase the funding I got and brought her on to do QA - she’s been a lifesaver many times.

So what have these two done since May 15, 2006?  JibberJobber was not done in May 15, 2006, it was just good enough to go live… since then we’ve grown a wish list that is pages long, and it seems as soon as we get one thing off the list we add three more.  Most of our wish list items come from our own use and from our users… we love user input!

As an employer, I’m proud to say that my original team is still with me, three years later.  And I hope they are with me for many years to come - we have a chemistry that just works, and I’ve felt extremely blessed that I’ve come across them.

(as a side note, over the years I’ve engaged other professionals, including graphics designers, another key web programmer who has done quite a bit on JibberJobber but he isn’t full-time with us, a user interface designer, a server admin, etc.  For those who want to do their own website with this level of functionality, it takes more than one superman

Last week I meant to write four more blog posts, but the week got away from me.  Being Mr. Dad and Mr. Mom and Mr. JibberJobber was more than I expected.  Not to mention a two-day trip to Irvine for a speaking engagement.  So here’s a quick update on three things:

First, the LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD:

• The DVD plays in a Mac, PC and in a regular DVD player.  I think the coolest way to watch/learn is to put it in the DVD player (on your TV), and then sit with your laptop or PC and go along with it.
• This is not a 1+ hour webinar… instead, it’s a bunch of segments… how to beef up your LinkedIn Profile, how to do LinkedIn Recommendations, how to ________.  There are a bunch of chapters or segments that you can browse to. It’s self-paced - watch the entire thing at once, or watch just one segment a day.
• You can learn more about it from the LinkedIn for Job Seekers website, which lists all chapters… also, check out this video my video editor did:

You can get the DVD from the LinkedIn for Job Seekers page, or see below on the special offer.

Second, the JibberJobber three year celebration and specials:

Last week I wanted to do some special posts on JibberJobber, for the week-long celebration.  I didn’t get to it, so I’m extending the special through this week.

I’ve already had a bunch of upgrades and sent out a bunch of DVDs… during this week if you upgrade you get:

1. Two years of JibberJobber for the price of one! That would be an upgrade of $4.13 for each of 24 months.  That’s a sweet deal - over 50% off!
2. The LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD. Whether you are in a job search or not, this DVD is a great training resource for you (for a site license (university, outplacement, etc.), contact me).
3. Your choice of the Blog Marketing 201 - 501 or the Write Your Book! webinars.
4. Other stuff from my partners that I’m putting together.

Simply login to your account, then click on the Upgrade link at the bottom of any page, and then click on the highlighted Upgrade Now link.  Make sure to choose the one year option.

Third, my baby boy, Daniel:

Daniel was born almost two weeks ago.  Mom and baby are doing great… they sleep alot, and Daniel does all the right stuff (poop, cry, look confused, eat, etc.).  I had a fun time injecting social networking into the birthday of my boy - you can read about it here (for the record, @DeepEddy guessed the closest, and did so more than 12 hours before Daniel was born!)).  Here’s a picture of Daniel:

(I can almost hear the oohs and aahs :p)

You can read about that night in this post from last year, titled Two Years Ago Today, A Website Was Born.

As is the custom, we are offering specials for those who upgrade any time this week… here’s how it works:

Upgrade for one year ($99) this week and you get:

1. an additional 12 months of premium.  In other words, buy-one-year, get-one-year free, AND
2. the LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD mailed to you, AND
3. your choice of Write Your Book or Blog Marketing 201 - 501 (downloadable recorded webinars)
4. _____________________ (if I get other gifts to offer, I’ll give them to anyone who upgrades this entire week)

If you already have an upgrade that isn’t lifetime, we just add the additional 24 months of premium onto your account… this is a sweet deal with just the extra premium… throw in the DVD and other stuff and it’s an AWESOME special you don’t want to miss out on!

To take advantage of this special, login to your JibberJobber account, click on the Upgrade link from the bottom of your page (in the footer), and do a one year upgrade.

Can you do me a favor?

Blog about this, tweet about it, tell your buddies about it, share this with your job ministry and networking groups… hitting three years is a big deal for any company, and we’re proud to be here!

The week of May 11th - May 15th (probably including both weekends) we’ll be celebrating the third anniversary of JibberJobber.com.  I’ll never forget the night we went live, and the months leading up to it.  Seems so long ago!

Each year we have special offers and fun stuff that we do (ok, this year we’re going to introduce fun stuff!), and I have some ideas for this third anniversary… but I thought I’d throw it out to you: what do you think we could do for this third anniversary?

Note that we’ll grandfather the specials… for example, anyone who pays for an upgrade today will get the accompanying prizes that we offer then… I don’t want you to think you have to wait until next month to upgrade :p

So what are your ideas?  What special offers should we give?  Anything fun to do (as a community?)?

Today is the last day of the LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD sale price - I just asked my main web guy to change the price to $59.95 plus shipping and handling tomorrow.  Tomorrow I expect the box of DVDs to arrive at my office, and I’ll ship a bunch in the afternoon.

If you want to save $10 and have me eat the shipping and handling, you need to order today .  Additionally, I’ll throw in some kind of THANK YOU for ordering early thing - not sure if it will be free premium of JibberJobber, or one of my other webinars (Blog Marketing 201 - 501 or Write Your Book), but it will be something cool (any ideas?).

LinkedIn for Job Seekers has the following chapters/session:

1. Profile Review Part I - Above the Fold - I critique the top part of five LinkedIn Profiles, and make suggestions on how they can make them stronger, and increase the chances of being found in search results.
2. Profile Review Part II - Below the Fold - I critique the rest of the five LinkedIn Profiles, specifically the stuff that you see when you scroll down (education, work history, etc.)
3. Applications - To wrap up the “LinkedIn Profile” stuff, I had to talk about the new “LinkedIn Applications,” and what I suggest you do as a professional.
4. Account and Settings - It’s a big menu page, but what do you need to worry about? We’ll go over some of the things I recommend you pay attention to.
5. Getting and Giving Recommendations - How to get and give LinkedIn Recommendations.
6. Answers - Asking Questions - Ask questions in LinkedIn as a part of your networking and personal branding strategy.  Here’s how.
7. Answers - Answering Questions - Not ready to commit to asking questions regularly?  Answering questions is also very powerful, and doesn’t come with any regular commitment.
8. Searching - If you aren’t using advanced search, you are missing a big part of LinkedIn.  There are a few simple tricks that can take you a long ways in LinkedIn.
9. Browsing Connections - Your first degree connections might have some golden contacts for you - here’s one way of finding people you need to network your way into.
10. Exporting Connections - Exporting your contacts is one of the four things I talk about in my seminar.  Here’s why and how.
11. Growing Your Network - I had 5 first degree contacts when I first got started, and that was a huge mistake.  Instead of saying “get thousands,” we say “get the right connections, and here’s what that means!”
12. Groups - Groups for the job search?  Absolutely, and strategically!  We talk about how to find Groups and what to do once you are a member.
13. Staying Current - I’m on LinkedIn — Now What Blog - Some info on how to keep up with current LinkedIn information, as well as communicate with others regarding issues we blog about.
14. Company Pages - The Company feature in LinkedIn is amazing… AMAZING.  I think it’s the second best thing they’ve done, next to Answers, for a user like me.  Eventually it could eclipse the value of Answers… !
15. Jobs - Looking for a job in LinkedIn’s job search area?  Here are some things to know.
16. Introductions and Communication - how to, when to, why to communicate with people in LinkedIn’s communication tools.
17. Conclusion - Some final thoughts on LinkedIn, LinkedIn in your job search, etc.

Instead of a “here is every link in LinkedIn, and if you click on it here’s what happens” training, this focuses on what I think you should focus on with LinkedIn.  So there you go - if you want it you can get it whenever, but if you want to save some money and get some other goodies then order it TODAY.

I’ll decide on what bonuses to give with these preorders before I ship - you can leave suggestions in the comments (or by email).

First, the announcement: I have one more Personal Branding Award to give out, and then I’m going to retire it.  I’ve been doing it for about two years, and I think there’s enough information in what I’ve written that you should get terrific ideas on writing your own blog for your personal brand.  It’s a great resource.

I’m sure I’ll come across some other blogs that are awesome, and I’ll showcase them, but I won’t necessarily do it on a monthly basis (I’ll just do it when I feel like it).  Cool?

You can see past winners of the JibberJobber You Get It Personal Branding award here.  Next week I’ll announce the last winner - it is someone who’s blog I’ve seen over the last year, and think it is one of THE BEST blogs on the internet…

Announcement 2 is that I already know what I’m replacing this award with… I’ve been thinking about it for the last 6 months and am really jazzed to switch gears to this other thing (you’ll see what it is soon).

Today I want to share the blog that Christine Sharer started for the Make A Wish Foundation of Utah.  Christine says she’s new to all this social stuff, including blogging, but one look at her blog and I know SHE GETS IT.  There are only a few posts, but they are so compelling… these are heart-tugging posts.

Make-A-Wish is an organization that needs donatations.  On her blog she is not asking for donations… rather, she is telling you stories about what happened to the recipients of your donations. Each of her posts start off with “Where are they now?” and then the name of the person.

These stories are awesome, and I think just telling these stories is going to do more for her organization than putting “donate here” badges on the blog.

Kudos Christine, may this be an example of excellent blogging for non-profits and for-profits alike!

And if you want to read some super-inspirational stories, go check out the Utah Make-A-Wish Foundation blog!

A few years ago my friends at emurse were recognized by Rafe Needleman fro CNet’s Webware.  Rafe is a big voice in the web 2.0, online space (webware is software for the web… get it?), and having a mention in an article he did was a big part of emurse getting some good traction in the market.

Shortly after I saw the article I contacted Rafe with something like “hey, check us out - we’re cool too!”

I’m guessing Rafe gets pitched hundreds of times a day and has to sift through a lot of meaningless (or ill-prepared) pitches.  I was flattered when he finally did a writeup about JibberJobber on webware in November of 2006 (wow, that was a LONG time ago!).

Then, I heard about the Webware 100, which is a list of 100 of the best web apps (that is, applications, not just brochureware websites). Oh how I longed to be on that list… I don’t think I came close to making the cut, however, and when I saw the list of Webware 100 winners I knew I didn’t have a snowballs chance in ______.

Until 2009, that is.  A buddy of mine submitted JibberJobber as a Webware 100 finalist and forwarded me what he submitted.  I was flattered that my buddy (I won’t name him here - he’s in New Jersey and knows who he is!) submitted JibberJobber, and really happy with what he wrote about JibberJobber in his nomination (he’s been watching JibberJobber since the very early days).

Of course I didn’t think I’d make any cuts… but Rafe emailed me about a week ago and notified me that JibberJobber is a finalist!  Oh man… what a terrific honor!

Considering how big the winners of past are, like Amazon, BlogTalkRadio, Google, Craigslist, ebay, PayPal, Skype, Opera, Yahoo, Woot, iPhone, YouTube, etc. I don’t think I have a chance at all… they have traffic and reach that is extraordinarily larger than my reach… but let me just sit here super flattered, and elated, that we even made it in the cut - from around 6,000 nominations down to the final 300.

What a freaking cool honor.

Now, just because I don’t believe we won’t win doesn’t mean I won’t ask for your vote… if you have a minute to spare, please head over and vote for your favorite job search organizer… er, I mean, career management toolset, er, I mean, personal relationship manager, er… you know what I mean

Thank you to J.R. in New Jersey for nominating me, and thank you for Rafe and team for letting me enjoy being a Webware 2009 finalist … what a terrific honor!

(I’m writing this on Saturday morning… not sure when I’ll update the blog)

Tomorrow (Sunday) I head to the airport at 6am so I can fly to NYC.  Here’s my schedule:

Sunday, March 8

I leave home at 6am to arrive at 3pm in JFK and pick up the box of my books that Delta had lost from my trip two weeks ago.

Dinner with Tom York, a senior executive who I met through the ETP network.

Monday, March 9

Long Island from noon - 2pm: Social Media Business Tools and Technologies for Entrepreneurs, Small Business and Career Transitions 2009 and Beyond (This is a Bill Sobel event) This is focused more on Entrepreneurs and businesses.

Head back to JFK to go get on my Turkish Airlines (if you are my wife, or close loved one, don’t read this) … heading across the pond for the first time in my LIFE!  Wow!

From Monday night through Thursday night I’ll be in Istanbul, Turkey.  I’m doing a one-day event called Social Networking for Marketers, which will be simultaneously translated as I speak - I’m very excited to learn how Turkish business and marketing professionals are using social networking in their marketing, and to see how my message is received.  This is also the first trip that I’m not overbooking myself so I can do some sight-seeing and buy stuff for my family (more than the customary postcard, which my kids put on their wall)….!

Thursday, March 12

Arrive at JFK around 5pm.  I’m told all flights into JFK are late, so I have no idea when I’ll really get there, or get through customs… and I’m also told my body and brain will be messed up from jet lag for at least 2 weeks.

Great, another thing to mess up my brain

I’m intentionally not scheduling anything on Thursday night although it pains me to have a whole in my calendar.

Friday, March 13

Hm, just read that this is Friday the 13th.  Hope things go well!

NYC, 7:30am - 10pm: Another Social Media Business Tools and Technologies for Entrepreneurs, Small Business and Career Transitions 2009 and Beyond (Bill Sobel event), but this one focused on career transitions.

NYC, noonish: Columbia J School (not sure where it is, but here’s a blog you can reference - hopefully Sree sees this and can leave a comment with details).  This is an open presentation where I’ll talk about “Next Generation Job Hunting,” sharing my own experience from the last three years and talking about how JibberJobber can be used by college students to prepare them for their job searches.  I’m sure I’ll talk about other cool stuff, too :p

NYC, 7pm (I think): Dinner with the ETP folks… I can’t find a link to this, so someone from ETP please leave a comment with a link, and let us know if there is more room to come.

Saturday, March 14

Morning: somewhere I hope to do an event but we’re still working on the details (looking for a free venue).  This is in coordination with some a meetup (more info later, I hope).

Afternoon: meet with with Dave Perry and Kevin Donlin… excited to meet with them!

7pm, fly back to SLC, arriving before midnight.

And after this I’ll be home for about a month… !  Yippee!

Last night we had the biggest upgrade to our system yet.  In the last 2.5 years we’ve had a bunch of upgrades, but this one required us to actually take JibberJobber offline for a while so we could make some database changes… huge thanks to my team for their efforts in this release, and for working in the wee hours of the night to do the upgrade!  Here’s a partial list of what’s new:

Action Items and Log Entries: this is the biggest change, and I’ll blog about it more next week… but we had huge, significant changes to this (that’s why we took the site down).

One thing that we will all dance around and hug about is the ability to associate a job with a company with a person, and a person with a company and a job, and a company with a job and a person, etc.  Before you couldn’t make all of these associations, but now you can, and this is HUGE.

“Approve All” option on Contacts shared: now you can approve all the contacts shared in bulk, instead of having to approve them one-by-one.  This is a really cool feature allowing you to get more value out of JibberJobber and networking if have buddies who are also using JibberJobber.

Tree view of contacts under just one contact: I LOVE LOVE LOVE this feature.  The Tree View is cool, showing me my network graphically.  This new addition allows me to see the tree below one contact.  The icon is on the detail page (as well as the List Panel) of a contact:

When I click it I see the graphical tree view of who that person has “referred” to me… instead of sifting through my hundreds or thousands of contacts, I now see just the network that this person introduced me to, like this:

Jobs got new stuff: there are a bunch of new fields added to the Track Jobs page, including the option of a status of each job:

View your account type, upgrade level, and change levels: This is one of those Doh!  We should have had this from the beginning!  But now we do, so we’re good :)  Under My Account, General, you can click on this blue circle to see what your level is, how to upgrade or downgrade, etc.

Referred By is now faster… much, much faster: I have over 5,000 people in my network, so when I go to the add a new contact page it loaded kind of slow (too slow for me).  This was because the Referred by was a drop down… but now it’s not, and it loads way faster.  Simply type in the name of a contact and we’ll show you any names that might be the one you are typing… and you choose from that list, like this:

Here are other miscellaneous additions:

• On various List Panels there are now additional columns you can choose to show.  I don’t remember which ones, but if you wanted to see additional data before on the List Panel, click on Manage Columns to add more columns.
• Various little bug fixes and inconsistencies throughout the system were resolved.  Find more?  Report them using the Contact Us form, found through the link at the bottom of every JibberJobber page.
• Under My Account, the Preferences page was quite disorganized as we add a few preferences here and there… we finally went in and reorganized it and grouped things, making it easier for you to manage your preferences without getting lost in our disorganization.
• Sometimes people use the “Delete my account” option for bad reasons, including “I landed my job!”  (great, what about all the awesome information you’ve collected in this job search - you can use it again in 3 years in your next job search!) or “I thought this was free!” (it is free for life, with options to upgrade/downgrade as you need… and no, we don’t charge your credit card if you’ve never upgraded… we don’t even have your credit card info).  We recently added the FAQ’s to check out BEFORE you delete your account.
• On the Detail page of your contact, there is a new icon to invite them to use JibberJobber.  Having your contacts use JibberJobber will become increasingly valuable this year (hint, hint).
• We added a few new fields for your My Account page, so we can be in a better position to understand (and help) you more.  More fields are coming.
• We updated the slideshow for upgrading, telling you why you might want to upgrade, etc.  It’s now using Slideshare technology, which is pretty cool.

I’ll blog more about the other updates, but this stuff is awesome, and we got a bunch of things on our “we need these in JibberJobber now!” list crossed off!

If you have other ideas, you know where to send them

Here’s my itinerary for next week - the first part of the trip will be in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area, then on Thursday and Friday I’ll be in San Diego.  Some of these are private events, one is a paid event, and I have some free time.  Drop me a line if you want to meet.  In two weeks (the week of Feb 23) I’ll be in Atlanta, and if you are there I’d love to meet (I’ll post that schedule soon).

Monday, Feb 16

Arrive at Oakland Airport (9am)

Lunch with LinkedIn Northern California (place TBD), 11:30ish

Private Dinner with job club leaders from various job clubs (5pm-9pm)

Tuesday, Feb 17

Experience Unlimited, Lafayette, 9:30am - 11:30

Right Mgt, San Francisco, 1:30 - 3:00

FREE/AVAILABLE

Private Dinner

Wednesday, Feb 18

Private meeting, 8:30 - 10:00

Lunch with Justine Lam, noonish

Right Management, Silicon Valley, 1:30 - 3:00

Meeting with Susan Ireland, 3:00 - 5:00

Silicon Valley Meetup, 5:30 - 8:30

Thursday, Feb 19

College Recruiter Webinar - 10:00 - 11:00 PST (all times are PST, but I note this for those outside of this timezone so they can adjust as appropriate :))

Private Law Firm, San Fransisco, noon - 1:30

Fly to San Diego

Dinner in San Diego (or network meeting), 6:30 - 9:30

Friday, Feb 20

Right Management, San Diego, 8:30 - 10:30

Private Law Firm, San Diego, noon - 1:30

Fly home, 4:30 - 8:30

Then, a weekend at home and off to Atlanta for another week of presentations!

Today, three years ago, was the last day at the company that laid me off.  It was Friday the 13th, 2006.

I found out on Monday that I was going to be terminated.  I got a severance, nothing near what many get but the company thought it was pretty generous.

I was asked to stay on during the week to transition the new guy in, who I had actually replaced just 18 months earlier.  It’s an awkward experience to transition somebody in, especially if they already know pretty much everything about the products, clients, finances, etc.  The guy was a 40% owner, and had been very actively involved even after he left the company 18 months earlier.

Mostly I spent the first two or three days looking for my last resume, which was about six years old.  It was nowhere to be found, so I went online and downloaded a few templates to use.  Finally I decided to use my dad’s resume which he had paid to have done.  It was fancy with a lot of impressive words on it (this proved to be a mistake in an interview I had later).

I also called to find out about unemployment, which I learned I should apply for right away, but it wouldn’t pay out until my severance ran out.  I was sure I’d have another job by then.  I half-heartedly applied for unemployment.  Yeah, it was a humiliating thing to do.  I had spent too much time and money building my resume to have to go to the government for piddly help.

I spent time calling my university to find out the exact dates I graduated (I have an undergrad and a graduate degree from the same school), and what the exact names of the degrees where.  I didn’t want to get in trouble for resume fraud, which was a hot topic in the news at the time.

I was anxious to get my resume polished so I could do the most effective thing possible: post it on job boards.  I was sure once it went on job boards the calls would come in.  This would be my (failed) silver-bullet strategy.

I was scared, relieved, excited, embarrassed, hopeful and anxious.  Probably a few more emotions, too.

Looking back now, I should have been grateful for getting laid-off.  Even now, three years later, I’m not quite ready to go back and thank the people who kicked me in the teeth, er, laid me off.

Maybe next year.

A while back I met Paloma, who was here in Utah for a while and had gotten involved as a volunteer at a church-sponsored employment “agency.”  Paloma heard about JibberJobber and wanted to meet me, so my family had dinner with her and her husband and a friendship began.

Paloma and her husband came to Utah on a lucrative contract that fell apart shortly after they arrived. They found themselves as clients at the employment agency, and then volunteers helping others.  Paloma has a big heart, and a big desire to help others, and is a very smart person.

Eventually, her husband’s job search took them to Maryland.  Paloma has evangelized JibberJobber and reached out to Joshua Persky (his LinkedIn profile), of NYC sandwich board fame, to see what we could do to help.

In Joshua Persky’s blog post he acknowledges Paloma’s help:

It’s been a fantastic first 2 days at Weiser LLP. Thank you again to my family, Paloma Bowland of www.jibberjobber.com, Richelle Konian of www.careersonthemove.com, and Elliot Ogulnick, Director of Business Valuation / Corporate Finance at Weiser LLP who hired me.

Pretty cool!  Of course, it would be cooler if he said “JibberJobber was so indispensible in my job search, I don’t know what I would have done without it!” or “the only reason I landed this dream job was because I a sandwich board on my chest and JibberJobber on my computer!” or “I owe JibberJobber everything, as it was the real key to going from unemployed to dream job!”

Oh well :)  It’s supercool that Paloma had a lot to do with helping Joshua land! Here are some online stories about Joshua Persky:

Joshua Persky gets hired: What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to get a job?

Joshua Persky: desperate and alone (Wallstrip)

Joshua Persky (on Mahalo)

BETTER SIGN OF TIMES - FROM SANDWICH BOARD TO DREAM JOB

I hear this stuff works… notice in the picture… A SMILE!

Congrats Joshua!

It’s been TOO long since I’ve posted about updates to JibberJobber… we have had a number of releases since the last “what’s new” post, but they seemed to be kind of minor… but now that I’m going over this list I think it’s pretty cool stuff!

You can now associate Documents to Contacts and Companies. Previously you could just associate documents to job postings… doesn’t this make much more sense?

Degrees of Separation. When you add a new contact you can say who the person is “referred by.”  Aside from constructing the Tree View (where you can see your network graphically), you can now see the Degree of Separation on the contact’s detail page.

You can upload your own image on My Account. Down the road we have some very cool stuff coming out where YOU can share more stuff with other JibberJobber users… and to let them know more about you are are slowly making your account more into a profile.

Regular users have over a meg available for Documents… whatever we had before just wasn’t enough, even for the free folks.

We redesigned the main JibberJobber.com page. Enough about us, and how great we are, and more “let’s get down to business.”  Hope you don’t miss all the stuff we used to have there.

Users can  delete their own accounts. Letting your account sit idle for years is, in my opinion, much better than deleting your account… especially if you have entered any data.  Don’t ask me why, but it happens, and now it’s self-serve

On the List Panel, if you see the country column, you’ll see a flag of the country instead of the country name.  Simply cool.

“Regular expressions” in the search box. I thought I blogged about this before but check this out: you can do a search like this in the List Panel search box: “company:trugreen” … I’ll have another post about how this works, and what the keywords are.  Pretty powerful.

New multi-action on the Network List Panel. If you want to get the email addresses, formated to copy-and-paste into an email message, you can do that from the List Panel.

In the main search, if there is just one record, we automatically take you to that record saving you a click. Doesn’t sound like a big deal but it sure is cool to have it automatically go to the only record that matches.

Email reminders of birthdays coming up include the email address of the birthday boy (or girl). You used to get a message that said “Jason’s birthday is coming up!” … now it says Jason’s birthday is coming up (mm/dd/yyyy)…” so you don’t even have to login to JibberJobber to get necessary information to send an email to them.

Various minor bug fixes… we’d list them here but it doesn’t matter, just know we are constantly working on fixing this tool up for you!

We’re always interested in feedback - while we have a dev list a mile long, we want to know what you think, and what you want!

Keep your pipeline FULL!

This is a long story, so I’m not going to write anything more than THIS IS NOT MY STORY. I kind of had this happen to me, but this particular story is from a JibberJobber user, and reader of this blog. If you area job seeker this story will make you sad and mad at the same time.

Jason, I’ve just had an experience which you may want to share with your readers in a blog post. Perhaps others can learn from it.

As you know, it’s been tough to find my next position as my work spans over multiple departments. Last year I went through an interview process for a position that had a job description that seemed perfectly suited to me. I had several interviews over a few months. In addition, someone who worked at the organization worked with me previously at my current organization and had supposedly put in a good word for me. At the end, I came in #2 to another candidate.

This summer, I saw the person who I used to work with in the park near my office, only to find out that the person they hired hadn’t worked out and they would be soon looking for a replacement. He added ‘they should have hired you.’ I followed up with an email to the organization executive director to keep my connection open but not mentioning my conversation.

A few months later, I was contacted by the organization and the interview process started again. I met three times with practically the entire executive staff, which seemed very promising. I also joined the organization’s email lists and made sure that I prepared well for every conversation, tracking my interactions in JibberJobber.

Suddenly about a month ago the process stopped. I followed up with an email to the executive director, and received a response that he would call me the next day. The next day came and went - no response. Three weeks later, I followed up with another email and received a response that he wanted to call me but ‘didn’t have my phone number.’ This seemed a bit strange, but I sent back my full contact information and we arranged to chat the next day.

After an exchange of voice mails, I finally spoke to him yesterday. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting a positive experience, but the conversation was very discouraging. He started off by saying that the recent financial crisis had made them ‘re-evaluate’ whether or not to fill this position. While I could understand the concern, the role of this spot in maintaining all of the organization’s online communications seemed a bit too important to discontinue in the face of the recent stock market fluctuations.

He then continued to say that even if they decide to go forward, they probably would not continue with my candidacy, even though I had been given more interviews than most others who had applied for the position. This still seemed a bit hard to understand, so I asked whether there was some part of my qualifications that didn’t match the position. I was told that they were now looking for a ‘different’ set of skill sets, but that he hoped I had benefited from the experience.

Needless to say, the conversation left me angry and frustrated about having devoted so much resources to an organization that clearly doesn’t have its act together. On the positive side, I was grateful that I didn’t end up working there for someone who didn’t even have the decency to probably wouldn’t have given me any type of update had I not followed up several times.

The lesson? While it’s useful to focus on opportunities that seem to be especially the right fit, it’s dangerous to spend too much time concentrating on one possibility. I received several signs that this would at least result in an offer, and twice I was burned. Now having had my job hunt go on for two years, I’m wondering what it takes to move to the final stage. One thing I’m planning to do is to do some mock interviews with my career coach to hopefully find out if there’s anything I can do to improve my presentation.

Please keep my name anonymous but please emphasize to your audience the importance of having multiple possibilities going at all times and to be aware of any warning signs during the interview process that an organization may be dysfunctional and is NOT a good place to work, even if the job sounds perfect.

I’ll just repeat one line:

“While it’s useful to focus on opportunities that seem to be especially the right fit, it’s dangerous to spend too much time concentrating on one possibility.”  Keep that pipeline full!

Tomorrow morning at 10MST (noon EST) I’ll host my first 45 minute BlogTalkRadio show.  You can listen live (through your speakers), call in with questions, or download and listen to the podcast later.  All the information you need should be on the BlogTalkRadio JibberJobber page (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JibberJobber).

To listen live with your speakers, just go to this page at the right time (10am MST): http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JibberJobber

To callin and chat, the number is: (718) 766-4825

Susan coauthored Job Search Bloopers, which I’ve read and loved.

We’ll see how I do as an interviewer, and not an interviewee!

Last week JibberJobber was the first thing mentioned on Fox News (My Fox Gulf Coast / Fox 10).  Here’s the description:

On Monday’s Daily Dot Com, Charissa Cowart shows you a website to help you organize your job search materials. She also tells you that you can find video memories of Yankee Stadium on the Yankees website. Check out the websites here.

Here’s a link to the clip (click on the image below):

Want to know how it happened?  I met Charissa Cowart on Twitter, we exchanged a few tweets, she checked out JibberJobber, and the rest is history. 

What, you say, Twitter is lame?  It worked pretty good this time  Thanks a bazillion Charissa!

About a year ago we introduced the import your Gmail contacts feature.  It was buggy, and Gmail seemed to change their API (the protocol that allows a third party (like us) to tap into their system).  We just sat and waited, and moved on to other things.  It’s hard chasing around moving APIs and keeping up to date.

One of my developers told me they had really updated their API, it was more stable, and ready to look at again.  So we fixed the import on our end, and it seems to work!  However, I did an import and saw stuff that I didn’t want in my database, and a user did an import and had some other issues.  The import works, but you may get a bunch of garbage in your JibberJobber database… so a few thoughts:

This is a premium feature (only $9.95/month).  Mouse over Network or Tools, and then click on Import/Export.  You’ll see the Gmail tab in there.

The import pulls all of your Gmail contacts in.  If they don’t have names (first name, last name), they that will be BLANK… but it will pull that e-mail address in.  Kind of useful, but it means you have to go and clean it up

On our lastest implementation, there were some duplicates created, and tags and categories got duplicated.  This should be fixed now, but if it’s not, let us know!

If there are fields in your Gmail contacts that are not coming over, please let us know… we’ll see if we can grab those also.

If you do an import and you get a bunch of junk, you can delete in bulk (I’ve done this a number of times).  Here’s how:

1. Go to the Network List Panel,
2. Click on Manage Columns (next to the search box above your contacts)
3. In the middle column, show up to 255 contacts (right now we are capping it at 255)
4. Click save, which takes you back to the list panel
5. Click on the checkbox on the top right, which selects ALL of the 255 contacts on the page,
6. Scroll to the bottom, and click the delete, which will delete those 255.

This would be repeated for all of the contacts you want to delete (in batches of 255).  You can order by Date Created, so you don’t mix in other contacts with the contacts from that import.  WHen I did an import, it pulled in about 2k or 3k new contacts…

One other option to consider, just export from Gmail into a csv file, clean up the csv file, then import that…!

Very cool to take those relationships to the next level, but yes, I am overwhelmed at the number of people I’ve communicated with over the last two years in Gmail!

Since the beginning of JibberJobber there was a cool little feature you may have seen when you added a target company.  At the top of the screen you would see this checkbox:

Last week, in the upgrade where we introduced the new Silver level (1,000 contacts and 1,000 target companies for $5/month), we also introduced Phase II of Global Companies.  This is a very exciting enhancement for you.  Here’s where the idea came from:

When I got laid off, I was fairly new to Salt Lake City.  I had only lived here about 18 months, and I spent most of my time either commuting or working… but no networking.  The only companies I knew about in the Salt Lake area where those I could see when I drove down the road.  In my job search I found out about more companies, specifically, those which posted openings on Monster or in the newspaper.

I knew there were hundreds, maybe thousands of other companies I should know about, some of them with my next job!  But I had no idea how to find them.  How in the world do you turn over eery rock to find these companies….???

The idea for Global Companies was born, and that’s where you come in.  When you check the checkbox, you are sharing certain company information with all JibberJobber users.  You won’t share your private information, like how you rank them, notes, log entries, etc.  You won’t even share that YOU are the one who added the company to the list of Global companies.  You’ll share something like this:

Simply general information.  How cool is that, that I can share this with other JibberJobber users?  Better yet, I can see with others share, based on where I am targeting (based on the address I have on my own profile):

If I am searching for companies in a different location, say, Seattle, I would simply change the data in the drop down.  Or, if I’m going to relocate and know that I’m moving to Seattle, I’ll change my home address under My Account so it always comes up with the Seattle area.

From the image, you can see I can comment on the company, which can help others learn about the company (any information you want to share).  The comments will show as anonymous, but if we find trolls or abuses, we’ll have to clean up the junk and figure out what to do with those who are trolls).

I can also rank the company, and have my ranking contribute to an overall ranking for that company.  Between the comments and the rankings, this can be an excellent way to share more information about potential target companies with JibberJobber users.

Notice the add icon () next to the name of the company.  When I click on that icon, I add it to MY PERSONAL list of target companies.  So if I find a company that someone else has entered into JibberJobber, and I want to store private information about it, I just click that link and it shows up in my list of Target Companies.  That’s where I’ll do things like create notes, action items, log entries, tie people to the company, etc.

If I want to get more comprehensive information about the company, I simply click on the name of the company and it takes me to a page with the shared information, comments, ranking, and even a Google Map with directions to MY HOUSE to the company, miles between us and estimated driving time!!  How cool is that?

We encourage you to share your companies as a Global Company.  You can either do this when you first set up the company, or when you edit the company, by clicking on that checkbox at the top.

Or, on the Company Detail Page, you’ll see a new icon:

When you click on this icon, it will make that company a Global Company.

Remember, no other JibberJobber user will know that you added the company as a Global Company, or how you ranked them, or what your comments were.

Cool?  Powerful?  We think so!  Simply login to JibberJobber, mouse over the Companies Menu Item, and click on Global Companies at the bottom!

I’m excited to announce a new upgrade level on JibberJobber.com.  This comes after a number of people have told me that $9.95 is too much (I would not have paid it, as I didn’t have any money, but I think someone in my family would have paid it for me), but the free level just wasn’t doing enough. In fact, most of the feedback about the free vs. premium levels is that they really just need more contacts, and more target companies.

The Silver Level is a step up from the free level, with up to 1,000 contacts and 1,000 target companies.  You can still get ALL premium features, and unlimited contacts and companies for just $9.95. Here’s a summary of each level (you can see a side-by-side comparison here):

Regular (Free): We designed this to be more powerful than a job search spreadsheet.  You can track an unlimited number of job postings, whether you find them on Monster, through networking, etc.  You can track up to 250 network contacts and 75 target companies, and post up to 10 log entries on each of those records.  You get a lot of tools, some reports, and more.  Note: when you first login you get 14 days of premium services for free.

Silver ($5/month): You get all of the Regular features PLUS an additional 750 network contacts and an additional 925 target companies.  This is an intermediate level designed to give those who are more budget-challenged an opportunity to use JibberJobber more effectively in their immediate job search.

Premium ($9.95/month): The floodgates open and you get all kinds of cool stuff.  My favorite premium feature is the action items e-mailed to me, so I don’t have to login to JibberJobber to see what I have coming up.  No wait, my favorite premium feature is the ability to import/export my data, so I can keep all my LinkedIn contacts, Cardscan contacts (buying one soon), Outlook contacts on JibberJobber.  No wait, my favorite premium feature is that I can use the Get Contact List to export my contacts based on a number of things, like tags or categories.  No wait, my favorite premium feature is that there are no limits on number of records I put in, or number of log entries I have… you get the point, right?  This level is optimal for those who are either serious about their job search, or not in a job search at all but very relationship-oriented (or career management oriented).

You want to know what may become the best premium feature yet?  The Outlook plugin, which hopefully will be in beta in the next few weeks.

We are trying to fit your budget - for $0 you get value.  For $5/month you get more value.  For $9.95 a month you get a bunch more value. Cool?

It was two years ago yesterday that I wrote my first blog post.  I thought I was a darn good blogger until about 6 months into it one of my respected peers said “hey, it sounds like you are finally finding your blogging voice!  Congrats!”  I know it was a compliment but I was offended because I didn’t know I had sounded so lost before that :p

Anyway, this week I’ll share some special stuff with you, like I did for last year’s anniversary.  Stay tuned for that.

Today I wanted to share information on something called Sourcing, which is something that recruiters rely on.

If you are a job seeker, check out the description below - you should know what techniques and tactics recruiters are taught so that you can optimize your chance of being found.

If you are a recruiter, fork over the $149.97 to attend this session by the master of sourcing, Shally no-last-name-required.  Shally (okay, it’s Shally Steckerl) is one of the most respected people in the recruiting space, and probably has some kind of super-human abilities.  He is an expert at searching… that is, finding talent.  Whether it’s through LinkedIn or Google, or however he does it, Shally finds hidden talent.  This is a must-not-miss opportunity.

If you are a career professional who works with job seekers (job search coach, resume writer, career counselor, etc.), consider taking the course so you can learn how to better position your clients.

There you go - a two-fer blog post… first, happy birthday to us (yeah!) and second a recruiting event you shan’t miss!

Peter Clayton has been good to me. Really good. He introduced me to the HR world when JibberJobber was just ONE month old, and that led to many great relationships which I carry on today.

I was honored that he would ask me for another interview (the third), to celebrate my two year anniversary. You can find the interview HERE. It’s only 22 minutes.

He has amazing interviews on his site… take some time to scroll through past interviews and listen to what  industry leaders think about careers, employment, the job search, job boards, social networking… all the stuff you are interested in. If you have time, you can hear my FIRST interview with him, in June of 2006!

Thanks Peter Clayton!!

For a while I’ve wanted to do a simple presentation to share what JibberJobber is, who I am, where we came from, etc.

I took some time to try and come up with something creative, captivating, interesting, and helpful… and came up with this:

| View | Upload your own

If you want to put this on your own blog, or website, I’d love that. Simply click on embed on the bottom left of the slideshare screen and you’ll see a bunch of code to copy over to your site/blog - and huge thanks in advance!

I’d love to know what you think!

Just a quick post for any of you who didn’t know about the buy-one-get-one-free offer to celebrate our second year at JibberJobber - we had to extend it through TONIGHT.

Pay $99 and each month turns out to be $4.13 … ! That’s a pretty sweet deal. Why would you do this? Here’s a few of my favorite reasons:

1. JibberJobber is a LIFETIME career management tool! You might be in a job search now, but when you land your job you’ll be in-between job searches! The government says we’ll be in transition every three to five years (yes, that sucks), but my partners who work with executives say that, depending on your role (CxO), you might be in transition every 12 - 18 months. WOW! What are YOU doing about it?
2. The premium version e-mails you your action items. I don’t expect you to login to JibberJobber to see what you have going on today… but I do suspect you live out of your e-mail (I do). I’ve missed too many appointments, and in my job search I missed a call-back because my calendaring system was messy. As a premium subscriber you can choose when you get the e-mail - two days before it’s due? Cool. Five days? No problem. Twenty days… on the day… whenever? It’s up to you!
3. The premium version has NO limits on number of records stored. Currently, anyone who subscribes as a premium user can have as many target companies, network contacts and documents (resumes, reference letters, etc.) in the system.
4. The premium version allows you to import and export. Have your contact lists elsewhere? Target companies in a spreadsheet? You can simply import them into JibberJobber. And if you are concerned about backups (more than what we do, which is a nightly tape backup), you can export your data as often as you please.
5. The premium version has a “Get Contact List” option. This allows you to get your contacts in a variety of formats, including .csv, .html, vcard, etc. Want to send an e-mail to just a segment of your list? No problem, the Get Contact List was made for that…

As a bonus, anyone who is a premium user, with a one-year-or-more subscription, can get any of the CEO Training webinars for 50% off… anytime!

Trying to figure out LinkedIn or Facebook? You can get the webinars at just $24.95, instead of $49.95.

Want to get a book out and enhance your personal brand, develop yourself as a subject matter expert and thought leader? Write Your Book has gotten great reviews, and you will be able to get it for just $24.95.

Have a great blog that no one reads? This two hour special recording of Blog Marketing 201 - 501 will be just $24.95 if you take advantage of this special.

So go login now, upgrade for $99.95, get two years of premium features, and then head over to the CEO Training site and get some webinars!

Who should take advantage of this? YOU!

As I wrap up this week’s anniversary posts, I figured I’d talk about how I see the next year unfolding. Some of this might be news to you, so consider it an announcement :p

I should mention, Monday is the last day to get the Buy-1-get-1-year special. This makes the monthly price for JibberJobber less than $5 … just login and click on the upgrade link at the top of the screen!

In a comment on Monday Darlene from Interview Chatter said “Have a great 3rd year!” It may sound dumb to you but I was so wrapped up in the first two years that I didn’t quite think about us being in our 3rd year. That means so many things to me.

We’re not a startup anymore (are we?). As the CEO, we *should* be at certain places with our metrics (revenue, profit, subscribers, conversions, visitors, blog posts, etc.)… I’m mentally thinking about where we *should* be and where we are, and what we need to do to get there.

In my original business plan I had goals to realize in the first 2 - 5 years… and now we are at the first part of that! Man, that went fast. Mark from Hirevue commented “I remembered when you first launched, it seems like only yesterday.” Yes indeed, I feel like that too… it’s really been two years?

Here are some things I see happening in the next year:

Increase in rate of JibberJobber signup and user growth.

I would like to pretend that all signups are “users,” like I’ve seen other websites report (”we have xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx users!”), but really, it would be a disservice to those of us who really watch the metrics to mix the two. Not everyone who signs up for a web service uses the service.

Over the next year I see the rate of signups and users increasing significantly. We’ve been on a good rate of increase, but I’m talking about a big increase, for various reasons. Contributing factors include the formalization of JibberJobberUSA, as well as a few strategic partnerships not yet announceable.

I should note that this is one of two key focuses for me this year - growing the signups and user base of JibberJobber. The other things below are fun, exciting and good, but this is the core of my business and my focus.

Make more valuable information available to my “audience.”

I have to put audience in quotes because my audience does not consist entirely of JibberJobber users. It includes blog readers, newsletter subscribers, and those who participate with me in social environments (Twitter, Yahoo! Groups, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning networks, etc.).

The valuable information I’m talking about is found at the CEO Training series. I’m not sure if my favorite training is “Blog Marketing 201 - 501,” which turned out to be a two hour webinar full of what I’ve learned (and what I do to increase blog readership, etc.), or “Write Your Book,” which is a seventy minute webinar sharing ideas and knowledge to help you get your book going (we talk about publishing options, marketing, etc.).

These are things I had no clue about two years ago, but have played huge roles for my personal/corporate brand as well as my networking. You can get on any training live, or buy the recording.

I have partners who are developing their material to contribute to the CEO Training, which I’m excited about. One of my partners correctly requested that I focus on the technology and leave the career advice to them, since my advice was, um, not adequate :p So really, do you want to get job search advice from me, the guy who couldn’t get a job, or from my career expert partners, who know this game/industry from the inside-out??

Promote career, networking and job search services more.

I have 30ish official partners. These are career experts who are paying for an annual license. I’ve been asked by other firms if there is a simple (free) affiliate program, but I think there’s a lot to be said for a service provider who forks over money for the license fee…

I am regularly asked who I would recommend for resume writing, or job coaching, or something like that. I’m going to formalize this part of JibberJobber this year, so that people don’t feel like they need to ask me (rather, they see it clearly when they come to JibberJobber). One thing we did was put up a Career Experts page that has much more information about each of my partners (this is not done yet, but you get the idea here).

Increase strategic partnerships.

There are various entities with whom I’d like to partner. I have been investigating the outplacement world for almost two years, and have been in talks with various groups. There are exciting possibilities here.

I’m also interested in partnering with the right websites, companies or organizations where they can see JibberJobber would provide value to them and their users/viewers. I’m in talks right now with about half a dozen groups, and it’s pretty exciting. Again, hopefully there will be a few announcements coming soon.

Allow for job postings.

When I started I specifically stated that I didn’t every want to enter the job board space. It’s a muddy, noisy space (as far as I could tell). Monster “owned” it (that’s what I thought), and there were over 40,000 boards out there. What a frustration, from a job seeker’s perspective!

And then of course there are all of the problems with job postings. Nothing was more frustrating than getting a call during dinner from an “employer” who found me on Monster, only to find it was so I could join a MLM, or become one of his insurance sales agents (commission only). Seriously, what a let-down.

But guess what… I’ve been getting inquiries over the last few months about posting jobs. And it just seems to make sense. JibberJobber subscribers and users are… dare I say, smarter than Monster users. That might be crass to say, and if Monster ever wants to acquire JibberJobber they will probably make me take that statement down, but think about it. Monster is the default place to go, which means everyone goes there.

JibberJobber users are more sophisticated… they have a better understanding of career management, networking, using a CRM-like tool, understand technology (the Internet, websites, etc.), and more. These are people who are more career conscience. So yeah, I think you are smarter than the average Monster user.

And recruiters and hiring managers are, and will, notice this. This is a good reason to put job posting dollars into JibberJobber… right?

Who knows, maybe job posts on JibberJobber will be a total bust… we’ll see. And if it takes away from the overall value of JibberJobber for individuals, I’ll take it down.

Speaking.

I entered the world of professional speaking, and it’s a blast! I enjoy speaking, and I think I have fun and interesting stuff to say. I would love to be on the road every single week, speaking about the stuff I speak about (social networking, social tools for revenue generation, personal branding, corporate branding online, and all-things-career). Aside from actually getting paid to do this (!!), it gives me an excellent opportunity to travel the globe, get face-to-face time with JibberJobber users, and present at job search and networking clubs, as well as meet with potential strategic partners.

Yep, weekly, is what I’d like to do. I doubt that’ll happen this year, but I’ll work towards it. I’ll speak at association conferences, company conferences, chamber of commerce meetings, etc. Hopefully I’ll come to a town near you, and we can meet in person!

So that’s kinds of a brain dump of JibberJobber in it’s third year! Shoot me any ideas or suggestions you have, if this seems off-base, or if there are opportunities I’m missing!

Today is our two year anniversary! We are offering a buy-one-get-one-free offer for a one year upgrade (through Monday night) to JibberJobber - click here for more info!

I’ll never forget it… anticipation had been building and everything was coming together.

That night, May 15, 2006, I closed shop and drove 20 minutes away with my five year old son for a “fathers & sons” campout. I was anxious because sometime while I was gone, JibberJobber would go live. I remember calling my wife about every half-hour asking “Is it live yet? Is it live yet?”

I doubt I slept well that night.

The next day we left early, instead of playing all the games. I rushed home to see the site… what would become my new career. My eight year old daughter surprised me with a birthday cake for JibberJobber… this was definitely a family affair!

I sent e-mails to friends and family and we had our first few hundred signups. I’m not sure if any of the first signups are still using JibberJobber, but it was cool that we had people signup :p (If I ever do this again I doubt I’ll announce it to friends and family asking them to signup!)

Let me share some of the “wins” that we have had in the last 730 days of JibberJobber:

• we were introduced to the recruiting blog space by CM Russell, author of Secrets of the Job Hunt, when he did a five-question interview asking what the heck JibberJobber was
• we announced our military special which led to a podcast interview with Peter Clayton
• from that podcast interview we established a relationship with various groups, including Spherion’s outplacement division (which has since been acquired), and then a relationship with the largest technology association in the world, IEEE
• I started blogging, almost daily (except weekends and holidays), which for more than a year was the most important thing I did for marketing, for the brand, and for my networking
• the blog led to a mention in the Wall Street Journal’s Career Journal (they moved their link, so I can’t link to it :()
• I joined three career associations attending their annual conferences and participating where I could on their eLists and in other ways
• because of my blog, and relationships I created, I was invited to speak at the largest career coach conference last April (I think I was the first speaker who wasn’t a career expert)
• I increased my blog networking strategy and came across some amazing people, some of my very close friends
• I signed a contract and eventually, finally wrote the book on LinkedIn: I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???
• I subsequently got interviews with all kinds of places that I had been trying to get ink in, including the NYT, Newsday, Wired magazine, CIO, etc.
• I ended up in PRINT, a full page, in US News & World Report
• I started speaking, and getting paid to speak, which has evolved my company and offering
• during all this time, my development team has faithfully plugged away, polishing and enhancing JibberJobber
• our rate of subscribers has continually increased each month, each year, as has the conversion rate (those who upgrade)
• we finally released JibberJobberUSA.com, which formalized the offer we created almost two years ago
• I started other blogs, including one for the LinkedIn book, the Facebook book, JibberJobberUSA, and one where I rant about personal issues
• … what am I missing? There are some pending partnerships in progress, but I can’t announce them yet.

So let me give some thanks, where thanks are due:

First, to my wife. If I can’t think of any other critical success factor in a business like mine, for a married guy, than the support of the spouse. Even though we both grew up with government-employed parents, she has a grand capacity for this crazy entrepreneurial venture. If anything could have shut down JibberJobber, it would have been her - but she has a vision of how JibberJobber helps people when they most need it, and is fully supportive of these last 2 years. Thank you!

Next, to my kids. My children have been very supportive as well. Their excitement when I share “wins” with them, when I come home from work, when I come home from a trip… it’s contagious and helpful. I especially appreciate hearing them include JibberJobber in the evening or meal prayers… it’s on their mind and they are my greatest champions.

Next, to my extended family. From investing in JibberJobber to passing business cards around to acting as sneezers and champions and tippers, I’ve felt immense support from you and I’m deeply greatful.

Next, to my very competent team. We feel extremely blessed to have our dev and QA professionals behind us… these are the people who make us look good! I’d like to talk more about them but I don’t want anyone to steal them away :p

Next, to my career partners. I am honored to have partnered with some of the biggest names in the career coaching and resume writing industry. It’s humbling, in fact, when I think about who ha