Yesterday I announced that we simplified JibberJobber.
Yes, it is ironic that the blog post to announce it was one of the more complex posts I’ve written.
But something I want you, as a job seeker, to get out of yesterday’s message is SIMPLIFICATION.
You might have heard me use the word “concise,” when talking about your communication, written or verbal.
To me, concise means short and to the point.
In yesteday’s post I explained that we are simplifying some things in JibberJobber. My hope is that it’s easier to understand things.
Are your messages too complex?
Let me give you an example of a too-complex message. Yesterday I wrote an email to someone asking them if we could get on a phone call. My original message looked something like this:
Can we get on a phone call? And if not, you can jump on my user webinar anytime: www.JibberJobber.com/webinar.
Do you see a problem?
I gave the person an OUT.
I distracted them from my original message/question.
That second sentence can be short and to the point, but it can be distracting. It wiped out the first sentence.
When I talk about simplifying I’m not saying you have to have LESS (although you will have less). I’m saying to not distract your message by throwing stuff in that shouldn’t be there.
Before I sent the message I took out the second sentence so it simply read:
Can we get on a phone call?
Now you don’t have an OUT. You respond with yes or no, but you don’t think “maybe I’ll just get on a webinar… ”
Here’s a similar example:
Can we get on a phone call? Or you can just look at my LinkedIn Profile and tell me what you think.
WHAT??? Talk about giving an OUT!
I see this type of message TOO OFTEN.
Folks, read through your emails you send and look for those OUTs. There’s an awesome little key on your keyboard that takes care of OUTs:
Delete the distractions. Stay on topic, and keep the messages to a minimum (that means, don’t try and say ten things in an email where you really need to say just one thing).
Go back and read yesterday’s post. Hopefully you’ll see that’s exactly what we are doing. And you should, too.