Does your Parachute have HOLES?

So I get a call recently from an employment counselor who says “TURN TO PAGE 74 OF WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE!” He was pretty excited as this is the page that tells you how to keep track of your network, or job search or something like that. I have not read the book although I should… but I did e-mail the folks behind the book who basically wrote back and said “we know everything – don’t talk to us about JibberJobber until you have read our book and can at least communicate intelligently about our wisdom.” Okaaaaaaay. That’s still on my list of things to do.

Apparently on page 74 of this year’s version it talks about using some paper-based system to organize. This is one of the most frustrating things that I faced when I was putting my job search together! A paper-based system?

I met with the director of career services at a local university this spring. As I walked through the halls and saw EVERY student with a laptop and wireless internet connection it became obvious that 3×5 cards or a spiral notebook just wasn’t going to cut it! Funny thing was, in our meeting, he said two things that really surprised me. First, he hadn’t thought about the organization part of a job search or networking (I think he was too focused on other important things, like figuring out how to provide yet another job board to the alumni and students). Second, he would recommend 4×6 cards because they are bigger. Draw your own conclusions. Oh yeah, he didn’t like the name JibberJobber because it was too playful. I asked him what he thought about names like Google, Yahoo, DogPile… the list goes on 🙂

Well, at least Notre Dame has it figured out a little better. On their career center website you can find two spreadsheets that they have developed just for you to keep track of your job search and your networking. The Job Tracking spreadsheet has 6 columns. Trust me, my spreadsheet (pre-JibberJobber) was way more sophisticated and I outgrew it once I had applied to 100 jobs! The Networking spreadsheet has 6 columns also but is organized very poorly. I think it would be ok to list all my network contacts but to actually use it would quickly turn into a mess. At least Excel is better than 3×5 cards! BTW, I’ve e-mailed them twice and got no reply. Anyone have a contact there?

Why is this? Why are the foremost leaders in this field not able to pick up on new technology? Why are they adverse to talking to companies like JibberJobber, or at least fairly assessing what is out there? That is one reason why TechCrunch is so popular – because they are out there poking around, checking out stuff that is pushing the envelope. Here are some fun replies that I got when I was doing some marketing of JibberJobber:

Princeton University: “We absolutely love this. Can my fiance use it? But we won’t tell our students about it because they don’t listen to us anyways.”

The State of New York Labor Dept: “We absolutely love this. Can my daughter use it? We can’t recommend it because you are a private company.” I found this to be a popular answer from government agencies… which is amazing.

Here’s the deal – I don’t necessarily want another job board that I have to check. But I will if I feel it will give me more job leads that won’t be on Monster or CareerBuilder or any of the other 40,000 job boards. In my job search I was regularly monitoring 7 job boards – and that doesn’t count all the company boards (like Franklin Covey, eBay, etc.).

I know that I’m supposed to floss, brush my hair and wear dark socks to an interview. But please don’t make me read a bunch of articles on this – I’ve already read a bunch.

I don’t want to see how cool your library is, with hundreds of books and articles. I’m not getting my PhD – I want to get my next job! What are the books, or parts of books, that you HIGHLY recommend? What do you think that I need to read?

Why is nobody helping me understand the true nature of a recruiter relationship, and how to work with recruiters? And any chance you can introduce me to your 3 favorite recruiters that can help me now and forever?

How come we aren’t talking about career management skills, rather job search skills? I need to have a paradigm shift to understand that I’ll be here every 3 – 5 years, but no one seems to be communicating this stuff to me.

Ok – just so you know, I’m not in a bad mood today 🙂 🙂 I actually had a great call this morning with a regional outplacement company that I’m really impressed with, and I’ve had a great week. But I’m continually disappointed when I see professionals that aren’t offering current, relevant information to the job seeker.

Rants over – tomorrow I’ll be nicer 🙂