I’ve been anticipating this new upgrade for a quite some time, and I know there are others that have been anticipating it more than I have! I’m really excited about this new functionality.
The newest release news, released last night at about 3am is all about an interface for your COACH. Whether you have a formal paid coach, a mentor, or a career counselor, it is a great help to have another set of eyeballs checking out what you are doing.
This update gives YOU, the Job Seeker, the ability to set up and manage your Coach(es). Here’s a scenario (names may be real – does that spice it up a little? 🙂 )
John is a seasoned executive who is aggressively looking for a job right now. John has immersed himself in best-practices in a job search and has been quite effective. He is also increasing his professional network by leaps and bounds as he spends a significant amount of time in targeted networking.
John arranged to have a professional career counselor, Ron, as his Coach. Ron has weekly accountability calls with John to go over the last week (did you meet your goals, have the meetings been effective, etc.) and talk about the next week (do you need to adjust the goals, what specifically are you going to do to ensure that you can meet the goals?) Having a Coach gives John a persective that really hold him accountable – without the negative emotions that can weigh us job seekers down.
With this new feature John can say “add Ron as my Coach“. Ron will then have a dashboard-like view and see WHAT John has been up to. There are various reports that Ron can pull with regard to companies and network contacts. He can see the log entries that John puts in in real-time. And of course he’ll be able to see general stuff like profile info as well as search on all of this data.
Note that Ron is a Coach for other people, and he will also be able to view their data (if they let him!) – so Ron will have one screen to help him see what’s going on with all of his people. He can narrow down the view to just one person. He can set up a weekly report for John’s search but perhaps he is coaching someone that he wants to review closer – so he can set up a daily report for them.
The implications of this are very cool and powerful. I know that Ron isn’t going to micromanage John’s job search, but just having the ability to see this data whenever he wants is so powerful. He can send an “attaboy” anytime he wants based on the data that he reviews (even if it is on a day when he isn’t scheduled to communicate with John. This is powerful because the job search can be hard and depressing, and getting an e-mail from Ron saying “hey, I just say that you …. Great Job!” can be just the boost that John needs.
In addition, Ron can go and pull the reports right before the meeting with John – so John doesn’t have to spend time preparing the reports, and Ron can go into the acountability session more prepared!
Note that you can be a job seeker with a Coach AND coach someone at the same time! This is a realistic scenerio where you need someone else’s help at the same time that you help others. You know accountants have their own accountants, right?
If you want to get a coach (you have to know who that person is) just go to TOOLS, and you’ll see the coach link in the drop-down. If you want to be a coach just go to My Account, and in the Coach tab you’ll see the checkbox to make yourself a coach. Your landing page will then be in that TOOLS drop-down. If you don’t know have any idea on how to get a coach, consider a professional – I’ll have some listed on my website, or you can go to the Library and look in the articles or links for coaches.
This is just the beginning of the coach interface – I’m sure that I’ll get some great feedback over the next few weeks and design enhancements to this interface.
If you are in a serious job search, find someone that can be your coach and then set them up in JibberJobber as your coach. The ability to share this information is powerful and helpful in your job search.
Aside from this update there are, as usual, some polishing touches that went in in the last two weeks. Just more stuff to make your experience richer…
The next update is going to be big also, I promise – you’ll love it. It might be a couple of weeks out but it will be worth the wait 😉