JibberJobber is a Career Management Tool. One feature that really breaks it out of the short-term “job search tool” and makes it more valuable in your long-term career management is the Job Journal.
Don from Pittsburgh suggested that we give free users the ability to add Job Journal entries without upgrading. After chatting about it with my team we agreed, as this is such a significant part of managing your career.
The Job Journal allows you to record your past accomplishments:
- Were you Employee of the Month?
- Did you save the company $50,000, or earn the company a $3M contract?
- Did you do something that really helps others understand your character, skills, integrity, and what you bring to the table?
Let me suggest that when you most need this information (like when you are creating your resume, or when you are in an interview) is the time you are least likely to recall it.
I wrote Depression Clouds Everything, the most commented post on this blog, with this in mind.
You know you are awesome, and you have a terrific history of bringing value to your employer – but when you start your job search (or as it drags on) it’s easy to forget your accomplishments – and these accomplishments are part of your story. These accomplishments are what you can use to help an interviewer understand just how valuable you are.
When I was putting together my own interview question responses, and my resume, I easily overlooked more than 50% of my accomplishments – they were long-forgotten.
This is where the Job Journal comes in – login to your JibberJobber account, mouse over Tools (in the main menu) and click on Job Journal. You can enter 25 accomplishments in the free level… sure it’s not unlimited but it’s a great place to start. I’d be quite impressed if you could list 25 accomplishments right now 🙂
As you put your accomplishments in the Job Journal, flesh out the story – you should be able to state the Problem, your Actions, and the Results (PAR).
Career Management is a long-term thing, for sure. Please do not lose track of your professional accomplishments – you won’t remember all of them when you really need them – and that’s where JibberJobber and the Job Journal help.
Past posts about the Job Journal are here:
The Job Journal – Sept 2007
Liz Handlin writes Keep a Job Diary – Jan 2007
Not Just A Job Search Tracker – Why Professionals Need JibberJobber – Oct 2008
If you use it regularly, the job journal is very useful when it’s time for your employee review. I had a nice big list for my own review last month — and it included achievements I would had forgotten about if I had not logged them right when they happened.
In other news: I see JJ now offers a Facebook app! Very cool!
Totally agreed with the Job Journal and glad you had your stuff logged!
LOL – there are 5 new things released today, I just blogged about one of them assuming people would miss the others – stay tuned Sophie — as usual, you are quite on top of things!
Just delivered a workshop two weeks ago on the importance of organizing your job search. Introudced JJ to the participants but did not know about the Job Journal feature, even more effective over the long haul. Nice addition to the free version!
Thanks Jason to you and the team. This is a great addition to the Basic subscription. I am interested in the other NEW features. Here an idea so that these do not get lost within the BLOG….On the JJ home page (after logging in) and in the Advanced View….perhaps you could add a Window (and make it an optional window like you do for Mapping) that would be a place for you and the team to provide – JJ Cool Stuff Notices. OR add it to the Window you call Getting Help as a link. Here is where you can list what things the team has added, fixed, tweeked or simply want to remind users about. If included in hte Getting Help window as a link, that would require you to create another page where you would add those comments.
Just a thought. To all you JJ users out there……….would you find this valuable?