User Documentation - JibberJobber Blog

Welcome to the JibberJobber User Documentation. If you have any feedback, or see outdated content, please contact us.

Introduction/Overview

JibberJobber is a web-based organization and tracking system to help you with your career networking. JibberJobber was designed and launched in 2006, when the founder was in his own job search. We have worked on JibberJobber full-time ever since we launched, adding breadth and depth with the sole purpose of empowering YOU in your networking.

Most people come to JibberJobber when they are in a job search. Many people continue to use JibberJobber for networking even after they land. Others put it on pause, and come back when they are in transition again.

Some of our users are small business owners who prefer the simplicity and focus on networking and follow-up to traditional sales-oriented CRM systems.

Whoever you are, we’re glad you are here, and excited to help you with your networking.

Overwhelmed a bit?

It’s easy to see a really big, complex system and get overwhelmed. This short video introduced the core benefits of JibberJobber, and puts this system into perspective so you can focus on the right things.

[vimeo clip_id=”124556820″ width=”500″ height=”281″]

Getting Started

There are various getting started guides… which format do you prefer?

Or, check out the Getting Started video series in the Video Library. Scroll through the list to see what the topics are, and watch whatever video you need to watch.

Also, on the homepage of JibberJobber (you can get there by clicking on the JibberJobber logo, once you are logged in), you can add the Getting Started widget (if you don’t see it, click Manage Widgets). This is a checklist with a few things to to do help you get up and running.

Finally, if you are looking for specific information, here are two tricks:

First, control-F on this page. Simply hold down the control key and press the F button to do a FIND on this page. For example, if you are looking for information about “exporting,” you’ll find all of the places we use that word on this page using control-F.

Second, a site search using your search engine. For example, go to Google and put this search phrase in: site:jibberjobber.com/blog export. This tells Google to only return results from the JibberJobber blog that have to do with exporting. More information on the site search here.

Is this really free?

JibberJobber is a freemium service. There are a few things that you might want to upgrade for, but most of the system is free for life. We want you to use JibberJobber for the duration of your career to manage personal and professional relationships, without worrying about losing your data if you don’t pay.

You can see the premium features on this page. The month-to-month price is $9.95. If you upgrade for a year it is $60, which comes out to $5 a month.

Veterans and active duty military get one year of premium upgrade as a “thank you for your service.”

You can earn free upgrades by watching the new user orientation (live or recorded), and any of Jason Alba’s videos on Pluralsight (see the video below to show you how to earn extra weeks of JibberJobber upgrade).

[vimeo clip_id=”124704995″ width=”500″ height=”281″]

Understanding Contacts in JibberJobber

Contacts are records in JibberJobber that are usually people. If you meet someone at a networking event, or want to put in a family member, you would add them as a Contact. Once you have their record, you could add contact information such as email addresses, phone numbers, etc. You can also add Log Entries to record important conversations or highlights of conversations.

Contacts can be ADDED in different ways. You can:

Import contacts in bulk. This is a premium feature, and most people import from LinkedIn and Outlook and other systems in the 14 day trial, where they have access to all premium features. Here’s an article showing the three big steps to import into JibberJobber, including (1) getting your contacts data out of the other system, usually into a csv file, (2) “scrubbing” that data, or cleaning it up and perhaps adding other fields (totally optional), and (3) importing into JibberJobber.
Similar to importing a csv file, you can also sync with your Gmail contacts. We have found that your Gmail contact list will have a lot of garbage records (like, support@company.com), so if you sync with Gmail Contacts, pay attention to the steps and questions so you can exclude contacts with certain characteristics. You might want to simply export from Gmail to a csv file, then scrub that file, then import the csv file.
Adding one-by-one. Under the Contacts dropdown is a link to add a new Contact record. This is the standard form you would expect to see to add a new record. The first three fields are usually the most important (first name, last name and email address).
Adding new Contacts with Email2Log. This awesome feature allows you to create new Contacts in JibberJobber simply by sending an email to those contacts! This allows you to work your networking process and not worry about going into JibberJobber. You can learn how to set this up, and how to use the advanced features of Email2Log, in the Getting Started videos.

When you add new Contacts, most of the fields should be intuitive. Some of the less intuitive fields include the Referred By (which is, who introduced you to this person),

You can see your Contacts on a Detail Page, which is where you see the details of that Contact, including the Log Entries and Action Items, all on one page. Or you can see multiple Contacts on one view called the List Panel, which looks more like an Excel spreadsheet (with columns and rows). You can edit your Contact records from either of these pages.

A fascinating way to see your Contacts is with the Tree View. The Tree View gives you a graphical depiction of who introduced you to who. This helps you quickly see if you are asking for introductions, and networking into the third, fourth, fifth, etc. levels, or if you are just meeting new people without asking for introductions. This is a real depiction of your degrees of separation, since the “referred by” doesn’t change even if you get to know the person better (this change is what social networks tend to do, giving you an altered version of the degrees of separation). You can also see a “relationship diagram” of the same information, which some people call the genealogy chart of their network.

In Keith Ferrazzi’s book Never Eat Alone, Keith talks about ranking the strength of relationship you have with your Contacts. In addition to collecting contact information (email address, phone, etc.), Keith says rank your contacts so you can understand how strong your network really is (instead of assuming the size of your network is the same as the strength of your network). In JibberJobber, use the ranking system (the stars) to designate the strength of your relationship, and work towards improving relationships over time. Here’s a blog post that goes more into ranking.

Tags are a critical part of data management in JibberJobber. Put another way, Tags allow you to “slice and dice” your data in different ways. If you tag your Contacts, you can easily search for all Contacts that have that Tag. For example, “show me every Contact I’ve tagged as hiring_manager.” In the List Panel search box you can combine a Tag search with other criteria, like this: tags:hiring_manager state:texas. Here’s a post to help you understand Tags more (ignore the part on Categories). Here’s a post on Tag management.

You can easily add new fields to your Contact record. These are commonly knows as user defined fields or custom fields, and help you make JibberJobber more flexible to accommodate your needs. For example, let’s say that during your job search you pick up some freelance work. You might want to track the contract start date, or contract amount, or bill date, etc. These are fields we don’t have, by default, in JibberJobber. One the add/edit page, you’ll see the Custom Field 1: field. You can add as many custom fields as you want.

You can export your Contacts. You can export ALL of your Contacts (to have a backup, for example), or you can export parts of your Contact list. For example, from the Contacts List Panel, search for a subset of your Contacts (all recruiters, or all Contacts who live in California, or all Contacts you’ve tagged as “family”), and then select all (the checkboxes on the left), and then there is an icon at the bottom to export those records into a csv file. You can also export your Contacts from the Get Contact List page, which you will find under the Contacts dropdown. This page allows you to get an export of your Contacts in various formats (including html, csv, vcard, or just email addresses), with various configurable options (fields to export, filtering to only certain Tags, etc.).

Understanding Companies in JibberJobber

Companies records are for your target companies (companies you want to work for, or network into), and for companies you want to store information about. For example, if you want to keep a record of your vehicle maintenance, you might have a Company record for your mechanic, and create a Log Entry every time your car needs service.

Almost everything we talked about with Contacts (above) applies to Companies. The Companies and the Contacts Detail Pages look very similar, with the main details at the top, then Notes, then the Log Entries and Action Items. The power of Companies is in the Log Entries, and the ability to associate multiple Contacts and Jobs with each Company.

You can import and export Company data, the same way you can with Contacts.

Global Company records are Companies that JibberJobber users have entered into JibberJobber and said “yes, I’ll share this company’s information with other JibberJobber users.” You won’t see Log Entries from other users, but you will see the name, address, and other general information. More information on Global Companies.

To see the Company List Panel, simply click Company from the main menu.

Understanding Jobs in JibberJobber

Jobs are typically job openings that you are tracking, whether you have applied or not. If you find an opening on a job board, you could put the job description and any important information in a Job record. If you are a freelancer, you might use Jobs for the gigs and opportunities you are trying to get.

The add/edit page, Jobs List Panel, and Jobs Detail Pages, are all similar to the respective pages you see with Contacts and Companies.

If you use a job board that gives you a job feed of your searches, you can add the search into the Job Feeds page. Under the Jobs dropdown, add a new job feed, and every time you go to that page you’ll see the current jobs, from that search, delivered from the job board you were on. This allows you to see multiple job searches, from different job boards, on one page.

The Events section allows you to see, at a glance, where you are at with any particular job. If there are dates in any of the boxes, you’ll know when you did a particular thing (send a resume to someone, had the first interview, sent follow-up thank you note, etc.). You can add custom “events” in case you want to see things like contract start date, etc. This view allows you to know where you are at, and the next step, for the job without scrolling through the Log Entries.

Documents

The Documents section allows you to upload, or associate from, Dropbox. This allows you to “associate” the docs to Contacts, Companies and Jobs records. On the Docs List Panel you can see how many associations each document has, and get an idea of how often you are using which resumes, reference letters, etc.

Tools

To Import Twitter Friends

To Import LinkedIn Contacts