Sunday night a blog post from The Ladders was published, titled 6 Apps to use during your job search. We were pleasantly surprised when hundreds of Ladders readers jumped over to JibberJobber and signed up 🙂
We welcome you, and hope that JibberJobber (on the mobile and web) will help you organize and manage your job search.
Furthermore, when you land your job, if you believe in managing your career, and want to be prepared for the next transition, continue to use JibberJobber. It’s a lifelong tool that should add value to you whether you are in transition or not.
FAQs:
Um… I’m confused. How/where do I start?
Understand that JibberJobber is a tool to organize your job search and networking. We help with this: Where did you apply, which version of which resume did you use, who do you follow-up with, and when?
JibberJobber is not principally a job board (we have postings, but that’s not our primary value or promise)… what you are doing in JibberJobber is putting in names (of companies and contacts), tracking where you are at with a job you are interested in, and any important or semi-important communication.
The first thing I would do is look through the Getting Started videos…. just look at the titles. This should give you an idea of what people are doing in JibberJobber. The first two videos help you understand the concept of JibberJobber, the rest are nuts and bolts to help as you get started.
After you have browsed the titles, you should have a good idea of which clips to watch. We arranged these in an order that a newbie might go through, step-by-step… but feel free to jump around.
Why don’t I just use my Excel spreadsheet or notebook to organize my job search?
You certainly can. Go for it. If it becomes too disorganized, or you are missing follow-up opportunities, or you find it hard to find something (a name, phone number, conversation, etc.), you might consider a database-driven app (JibberJobber!).
I started my job search with an Excel spreadsheet. Not only was I spending too much time creating, updating, managing, and adding to my spreadsheet, I was creating a rat’s nest that was increasingly difficult to navigate. It became unusable. Another way to say that is it became useless.
I figured that once my job search was over, my spreadsheet (0r spiral notebook) would get lost. The next time I was in transition I would likely start from scratch, recreating a spreadsheet, trying to remember who was on it.
JibberJobber is a solution to all of those problems. We have various search tools to help you find stuff (contacts, companies, job titles, dates, phone numbers, emails, etc.). We allow you a good deal of flexibility on how you see and interact with the data, but you don’t have to create or recreate any design… it’s already done for you. And when you land your dream job, you can keep using the networking section of JibberJobber, or you can just pause and walk away while you are working. When you are in transition again, just login, and all of your data will be there, just as you had left it.
Can you imagine having a tool like JibberJobber over the last few job searches you’ve done? You would have so much awesome data/information about your networking efforts for the last few years… imagine starting from that, instead of zero, in your next job search!
How much does JibberJobber cost?
JibberJobber has a freemium model… that is, use it for free, forever. You can optionally upgrade. There are only 4 things right now in the upgrade level, which you can see here. The main reason people upgrade is to get access to the Email2Log feature, which is killer cool. You can learn about it in the Getting Started videos.
Note that if you upgrade, and then downgrade, you DO NOT lose any data, ever. Worrying about your data sticking around is NOT a reason to upgrade. Once it is in, it’s there, and accessible.
If you want to upgrade, you have four options:
One: Pay full price. No big deal, it’s just $9.95 a month.
Two: Pay half price. If you upgrade for a year, you pay $60 (which comes out to $5/month).
Three: Watch “Jason Alba” Pluralsight videos. All JibberJobber users get a 30 day pass to Pluralsight… each time you watch a Jason Alba video, you can get a one week upgrade on JibberJobber. Watch 50 courses (or one course 50 times)? Get 50 weeks of upgrade… This is AWESOME: details here.
Four: Ask your coach, or outplacement firm, for an account. Some coaches and outplacement firms have an agreement with JibberJobber to provide their candidates with JibberJobber premium.
What if you don’t want to pay? No problem! A couple of years ago we moved most of the premium features into the free side… so the free level of JibberJobber is really quite powerful. Here’s the link to what you get if you upgrade.
What is this Pluralsight stuff all about?
About three years ago I started working with Pluralsight. My first course with them was how to use (and optimize) LinkedIn. Last year I did 14 courses. I’m working on my 30th course right now.
As a Pluralsight author I can give you a 30 day pass to Pluralsight. There are over 5,000 courses designed for technology professionals (developers, designers, architects, project managers, etc.). My courses are all soft skills (or, professional development). While they are designed for the technical audience, my stuff is all principal-based, which means it is applicable to pretty much anyone.
Login to JibberJobber, get your 30 day pass, and start watching my videos. For each Jason Alba course you watch (just search “alba” in Pluralsight), you can claim another seven day upgrade. Again, here’s how you do it. It takes all of 60 seconds to get your account and start earning JibberJobber upgrades.
Disclaimer: Pluralsight does NOT pay me when you sign up, but if you watch my course, that contributes to my royalty from them.
One more thing… we realize that JibberJobber is, well, kind of complex. It’s a complex tool to solve a complex problem. We’re working on simplifying the user experience… meanwhile, if you get stuck on something, PLEASE use the Contact Us form and reach out to us.
Glad to have you here, and we hope we can add value to your career!