Have you ever received an e-mail newsletter from one of your friends or professional contacts? This is the kind that say something like “here’s all the stuff going on in my life” and mixes professional with personal information? I wrote about this in February and have since seen two more examples that I wanted to pass along.

Has it made you mad to receive it (in other words, have you felt it was spam)? I actually love getting these (usually) monthly updates.

Thanks to Mike Schaffner, the February You Get It winner of the month (!!), who recently become the CIO of a huge company in Houston (congrats on the successful transition Mike!!) I found two very cool newsletters. He got the idea from his buddy Gerry Fusco and I wanted to share them with you since they are so cool. This one is the “holiday season” letter:

Dear Friends:

I hope this message finds everyone in good health and having a great year. I have not sent out a communique since December, so I thought a current update would be timely.

Activity in the Job Search arena seems to remain strong, both for recruiters who I have worked with here in Houston as well as those throughout the U.S. and with the Senior Managers’ group I co-lead at the Between Jobs Ministry here in Houston. Landings appear to be on the rise, too, from my view, and I am also seeing greater opportunities for myself of late. I will continue to work with many of you, sharing my contacts with you for positions you are trying to fill or to just pass along top-level candidates whom might be beneficial for you to know. To my “non-job search friends”, I wanted to include you in this communication as you have all helped me in some way.

I did want to provide you with an update of my own search and my recent election to several C-level business development & problem-solving organizations. Many of you are aware that, besides the Between jobs Ministry leadership, I have also taken on the Membership Chair responsibilities as a Board member of the local Section of the Society of Plastics Engineers. Growing membership, through the development of new marketing approaches, is a primary challenge of this position. Since my last broadcast, I have also been asked to join:

Vistage — the World’s largest CEO Membership Group, focusing on business and organizational problem-solving and new business development

The Executive Council — a Houston-based group of diverse business owners sharing similar values, trying to grow their market share

C-Suite — an In-Transition & Alumni C-level networking group, in which I have played an integral role in defining this organization’s Mission & Focus

I am also a member of the Houston Strategic Forum.

As most of you know, I am interested in a VP/ Director level Operations or Supply Chain position in a Manufacturing organization. I have had a number of senior level opportunities in Engineering and Technical Service in manufacturing businesses and 2-VP Operations positions in service-based industries, but these are not of interest. I have also been contacted by 3 retained search firms in the past 45 days on specific assignments that were/are potentially good fits. Finally, I have been preliminarily contacted on 2 different, 1-year turn-around assignments; one in California and one in Shanghai. I am interested in these if the responsibilities are diverse & challenging. We will see if these opportunities develop any further.

Recruiters, continue to feel free to contact me if you have client needs where my network may be of value to you and please continue to include me in your “candidates to contact” if a manufacturing company is looking to improve its earnings, customer relationships, supply chain effectiveness, process efficiencies or trying to develop a more effective operating organization of leaders.

To the Rest of My Friends, thanks for your continued help and support.

Continued Success,

Gerry Fusco

This is longer and more detailed than the February example. Lots of things to like here, and some room for improvement (perhaps more contact info in his signature?). Here’s some things I like:

• He knows he is sending this to different types of people (job seekers, execs, employed folks, recruiters) and addresses them with specific content
• He let’s ME know what he’s up to
• You know how they say “quantify results on your resume?” This newsletter is great because it has specific titles, comapanies organizations and an “I am interested in… ” statement. There’s no question how I can help him and – here’s the best part – he makes it easy for me! Instead of an open ended “help me” it has specifics that might jog my memory.
• His letter is warm. I can tell he is a networker and lives the “giver’s gain” stuff. I want to help him because (a) I know he is helping others, and (b) if I ever need him to help me he’ll be there.

I’m obviously a big fan of these newsletters. I have one (if you’d like to get it shoot me your e-mail). If you have one please add me to your list.

So, what do you think about Gerry’s e-mail? Any negative comments on the style or idea? Any success stories using a similar strategy?

We’ve been working on lots of new features that you’ve been asking for… here’s a rundown of what should be released today (you’ll know it’s released when you see the “Search Jobs” option under “Jobs”… keep reading for more info) Update: The release was issued at 7:15pm MST:

Add multiple e-mail address and phone numbers for contacts

In preparation for the Outlook integration (we hit a delay on that project by the way, so it will be a while before it comes out) we had to make the user experience more inline with how Outlook works. Which is great because many of you have been asking for the ability to add more phone numbers and e-mail addresses to your contacts. Now you can! (there is a new csv download so premium users can import contacts with multiple phone and e-mail records… I’ll post on it later but here it is for now)

See the box that says “personal hotmail”? That is something that you define – you name the e-mail address whatever you want.

Same thing with the phone numbers… in this example I call it “Personal Long Distance” but you can call it whatever you want.

Job Search DelightI recently talked about using BounceBase to keep tabs on blogs and news… and now we’ve integrated the Bounce technology into JibberJobber which gives you amazing job search capability. Two things I want to point out:

1. You can search over multiple boards at once. While this is similiar to using an aggregator like SimplyHired or Indeed, this includes a lot more. I’m not going to claim that we have “the most job results” like everyone else does, but I’m sure you’ll be pleased to see the results. Bounce doesn’t just aggregate job boards, it aggregates aggregators.
2. As with the saved job feed results, when you view these results you can add them to a job tracking record with one click.

Here’s how it works:

From the Jobs menu, click on Search Jobs.Note that mousing over the main menu items will usually show a drop down of additional menu items. So just mouse over Jobs to see the image on the left.

You’ll see this input form on the left. Notice that all of the sources are checked – feel free to uncheck whatever you want.You can see that searching across all of these sources should give you great results!

The results show up on the right – the Create a new job based on this info link will add this as a job record.How cool is that!

You can also save these searches for later – so you don’t have to put the same criteria in every time.

Other Stuff

• If you have tried to edit a log entry before it may have seemed weird. Well, it was. It’s all fixed now and editing a log entry is as powerful as it should be. Thanks to Dan Johnson for the nudge!
• We added a “no ranking” on the rankings throughout the system (on contacts, companies, jobs, etc.). Before, if you ranked someone between 1 and 5 stars you could not UNRANK them. Thanks to Tige in Washington D.C. for the suggestion!
• Tige also submitted a few contact importing issues that we hadn’t caught, and are now resolved (had to do with formatting as well as other stuff that you probably aren’t interested in).
• On the detail page we show you the “referred by” person – that is, the person that introduced you to this contact. Before it wasn’t a link… now it is. Super-easy to implement for us but it should make using JibberJobber more streamlined with how it should be.
• Somewhere in our releases we accidentally took a page away (sorry, and thanks to Oleg in Ohio for nudging us on this one also) … this mostly affects premium users as it’s one of the coolest premium features there is (imho). Now, when you click on “Interview Prep” you’ll see the interview prep dashboard, on the bottom right is the page to print of the interview stuff by category. This is very powerful as it allows you to prepare for two different interviews and have printouts of each one (without getting mixed up on what response is for big healthcare and which is for small high-tech startup). This was actually released a while ago but I didn’t tell anyone.

HUGE thanks to YOU for letting me know what enhancements JibberJobber needs, and to my team of development and QA ninjas for their excellent work.

It’s May 15th and that can mean only one thing here at JibberJobber headquarters: chocolate birthday cake!

Quick update (at 12:40 pm MST): this is the birthday of JibberJobber.com, the program. This blog (which is something different) is still less than a year old and we’ll have all kinds of celebrations for it next month

That’s right, the first year has come and gone and we are inching our way away from being a “startup.” This last year has been amazing – it has been stressful but the stress was so different than the stress that I had at my last job. It was full of many, many ups, a few downs and lots of relationship building. Here’s a short post from my buddy Devin Thorpe (the content is from an e-mail that I sent out yesterday – it has some the past year’s accomplishments).

You might be interested in reading the JibberJobber birthday interview by Jacob Share of JobMob (and, if you have a few minutes go vote for his blog – it’s an excellent blog) – each interview is different in its own way and this one has a lot of questions that I haven’t been asked before.

There have also been well-wishes from some of my favorite friends, and those that have had a significant impact on this journey, including CM Russel from Secrets of the Job Hunt, Dan Johnson from Get That Job!, Matthew Reinbold with Growing Software with (Vox) Pop!, David Sandusky of Your Brand Plan, Scot Herrick of Cube Rules, Krystyna Mazur of Krys of Europe (and Positive Thinking)… that’s all I’m seeing for now (sorry if I missed someone).

And, if you haven’t had enough, here are some cool e-mails that I got yesterday (I’m not posting all of the high-five and congrats e-mails but certainly appreciate all of the support and well-wishing!):

Congratulations and HAPPY BIRTHDAY. This is very exciting….to realize how that one little idea has blossomed into a system that has benefitted thousands of lives. Imagine the loss to the world if you had dismissed that little idea, like so many of us do every day, without any action. Faith leads to action. If there is no action then it never was never. Congratulations and thank you for all your hard work and for sticking to it even when you really wanted to throw in the towel. And best wishes on year #2.

Lane
VP Marketing
Utah

and from the Chief Encouragement Officer himself:

As a virtual friend, I want to say this to you: No matter how easy it
may seem to get to this point, what you have done in the past year is
virtually impossible for 99% of the rest of Internet users. I hope
you really appreciate and ENJOY what you’ve accomplished, thus far.
Your work is a model of what the rest of us should be doing…

Vincent Wright
Chief Encouragement Officer
www.MyVirtualPowerForum.com |
www.MyLinkedinPowerForum.com |
“Encouraging Networking”

Okay, this is way too much self-indulgence, even for me. Thanks to everyone that’s been a cheerleader or supporter this past year – you know who you are – you may not know how you influenced me but I’ll tell you, it was significant!

Happy birthday JibberJobber!

I’m passionate about what I do and feel like my message is awesome for everyone. But it isn’t. And yours isn’t either – sometimes when you network (or interview) with people you will click, and sometimes you won’t. Here are two contrasting e-mails that I got this last week:

I just wanted to drop you a quick line to let you know the impact your blog has had on me. Although I haven’t commented on any of your posts, I wanted you to know that I have been reading your outstanding blog entries and they have opened up a whole new world to me. I’ve begun to see the importance of personal branding and career management from reading your blog. This has also introduced me to the blogosphere, and I’m starting to think about ways that I can begin to work towards using this critical medium.

Rik F.
Project Manager
Idaho

That’s very cool Rik – when I got this it made not just my day but my whole week. Here is the contrast (I’m leaving all the text as she wrote it)…

Subject: Good For You

I have not read your article and don’t know if I will or not. Have you lost your job lately? and how old are you? My S.O. lost his job a year ago and turns 57 today, he worked for an organizationfor 11 years that housed the homeless they told him his job was done away with but within a week put someone else (someones friend with no experience) in his position . UE has run out with no extensions. There are no jobs for someone over 50 other than meeters and greeters that barely pay minimum wage. Employers treat our age bracket like common garbage. I don’t recall our parents being treated the way we are treated today. So don’t say this is a good thing as everything we have struggled to work for will be taken from us as the piddly money I work for doesnt stretch that far. I have been also caught in quaterly layoffs 3 times in a row so I won’t say it is a good thing. 20 years experience in anything means nothing.

Angry in Minnesota

I’ve already responded to “Angry in Minnesota.” I’m not sure how she got my e-mail address (it’s not the JibberJobber e-mail), or what article she is referring to… but man can I feel her pain. I haven’t connected with her emotionally but I can certainly feel her pain. Those of you that are older than me might disagree with where I’m coming from, since I don’t have as many years in the workforce, but I’ll tell you what, I feel like I’m as passionate about my mission as she comes across in her e-mail. Here’s a little more about me:

• I’m 33. And a half. I’m not Gen-Y but obviously not as experienced as some (many) of you.
• I have 2 cars and a mortgage. In fact, I went from about 14 years of house payments to 29 years, since I moved from a very affordable house in a small town for the company. And then I got screwed. And guess what – the car and house bills did not stop coming in – even though my income did.
• I have four kids. I had three when I got laid off. My wife was pregnant. Think it’s fun to get laid off when you are pregnant? Guess what folks – NO ONE will pick you up on insurnance, even if you get a new job. That’s enough to scare anyone (especially me).
• I did “all the right stuff” and still couldn’t get a job. In a big city, and in a job seeker’s market. I have an MBA and have been CIO, VP, GM, Programmer … titles that should have carried weight – but didn’t.
• I neglected my career management thinking that a degree and experience would do the job – it didn’t.
• I didn’t even think about networking or personal branding.
• My kids prayed for many months that “dad would get a job” … except my 3 year old prayed that I would get to work safely (even though I didn’t have a job :p)

So is it about age? Education? Job level?

I don’t think so. I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to connect. I hope that you are not prejudging me, saying that I’m too young, nieve or inexperienced to know the HELL of getting kicked out on your butt with nothing and nobody to help. I’m sure this would have been harder and worse had I been older – I don’t discount that.

But please don’t discount me. I’m passionate about my mission and my message. Whether you are just getting out of school and can’t get a job, or 30-something and going through your first layoff or 50/60-something and been through this a few times before but now facing age discrimination – my message applies.

I’m not PollyAnna – I know this is HELL. I’ve been there. I’ve lived through it. And my only hope is that I can help one person through a change, like what you see in Rik’s e-mail. That’s all I’m here for – to just help one person say “I’ve begun to see the importance of personal branding and career management” — that’s what drives me to blog each day.

So there you go – I’m pleasing some and not others.

By the way, does anyone know what’s so special about tomorrow? It’s a HUGE day for me!

I’ve been working pretty hard since I got laid off last year (over 15 months) and haven’t really taken a “vacation.” And for the three years before that, because of my roles and responsibilities I hadn’t taken my vacation time (I thought I was rolling it over, but when I got laid off they informed me that since I didn’t use it, I lost it).

It was interesting to meet with Dave Perry this week at Kennedy’s Recruiting 2007 conference in Las Vegas where we talked a little about running hard. He said that he is enforcing a personal policy of taking regular vacations.

Man that sounded good! Especially now, as I write this post – I am running on 3 hours of sleep (very early flight to Chicago) and not much food – I’m very tired, physically and mentally!

This summer I’m going to force myself to take two vacations – one campout and one something else (haven’t figured it out yet). But I think it’s healthy – for you (as my reader or JibberJobber user), for me, for my wife and kids, etc. I just can’t run and run and run.

I know it’s hard to slow down, or do something different. But I hope that you too can make sure that you get the proper balance of things – for you and those around you. I don’t think I’ve ever brought bible scripture into my blog but this is one of my favorites, and it is a good starting-point for figuring out what your balance could/should be:

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

Luke 2:52

This shows four areas to consider for having a balanced life:

• wisdom – knowledge, mental, etc.
• stature – physical fitness, health
• favour with God – spirituality
• favour with man – social skills

This scripture has had a profound effect on my life for a long time – not that I’m good at balance but it gives me a starting point to think about with. Hopefully it’s good food for thought for you, too!

(Day 2 in Las Vegas (tomorrow I fly to Chicago for almost three days) – I’ve met some amazing people that I’ll blog about next week. Today is a guest post from Dan Schawbel, who blogs on personal branding – Thanks a ton Dan! Whether you (my reader) are new to personal branding or not, this is a great post with much to think about)

I’m here to tell you today that every single one of you have a unique Personal Brand. You don’t have to be Oprah, Donald Trump or Tom Cruise to stand out and be excellent. All you need to do is discover what is inside of you, your strengths and how you can portray them to your audience positively.

This is easier said than done, but like anything else, you need to put your time in. The more time you allot to discovering, brainstorming and developing your brand, the higher the output you will receive.

Personal Branding is completely in your control. Many students and professionals alike have confronted me on this subject, and those with stronger Personal Brands are ones that invest the time. What do you need to invest time in? Developing a strategy focused on where you are, where you want to be and how you will meet those goals or objectives. These goals could be internships, jobs, education, skills development, communication classes or simply a mentor to guide you. You may also look to those who are already accomplished to gain further insight.

The top Personal Brands in the world share these characteristics:

• Determination to succeed
• Focus on a particular niche market
• Short-term and long-term goals that are aligned
• Leverage all assets and personal network
• Opportunistic and politically savvy
• Turn failures into successes, without giving up

Remember that, it all comes down to how others perceive you, so you need to make a lasting impression. The only true way to do this is to have some of the qualities listed above and to understand who you are. Your audience can see right through you if you’re being phony or fail to project the “real you.” That’s not to say that you can evolve your brand over time to match other qualifications, but at the root of it, you must be yourself to be respected.

Dan blogs at The Personal Branding Blog – go check him out. He recently awarded Carl Chapman with a personal branding award for his own blogging efforts (this is not related to the JibberJobber You Get It award).

Branding your company is extremely important.  Consider getting your company’s name out there and buy great promotional items such as personalized coolers and personalized pens here!

(I’m packing to go to Las Vegas for two days and then Chicago for almost three days so I asked some friends to fill in for me while I’m gone (can you tell? Scott Allen was yesterday…) today’s post is by Penelope Trunk, author, blogger, columnist and a really, really cool person – Thanks a ton Penelope!)

I am a list writer. I do it by hand. Every day. Sometimes three or four times a day, if I’m feeling really overwhelmed.

Lists are a great way to force yourself to prioritize your life. When you read lists of why people fail, it’s clear that writing a list of goals every day will make your more successful at reaching them.

But a lot of days, I think the motivator for me is not being a successful person. I just like the act of writing the list. I do it every morning, before I start work. And it’s calming, like a meditation.

It also helps me to see my day — and when I write big goals, my life. There is a discipline that comes with rewriting every morning. You know those things that you keep on your list forever but never get to? You face reality much sooner if you rewrite by hand. The repetition of rewriting something that will never happen starts to get to you. You leave it off.

I am not alone in the idea of writing by hand to gain focus. Dave Wirtschafter, president of William Morris Agency said in an interview in Fortune magazine: “I believe in writing down anything important by hand. I don’t now whether it’s staring at the piece of paper or the physical exercise of moving the pen. Whatever it is, the information seems to really stay in my head and make me more focused.”

If you don’t do this, I recommend that you give it a try. Get rid of your electronic list for a week and see what happens. Henriette Klauser says that if you write down what you want the commitment you give to the writing of the goal will actually help you commit to making the goal come true. I think there’s some truth to that. And maybe you should check out her book, Write It Down, Make it Happen.

But maybe what you should do is just buy some good paper and good pens. I like to use notebooks of graph paper. I think the boxes make me feel more organized than just horizontal lines. And I use pens that ooze ink. You can’t underestimate the importance of feeling the pen sail on the paper.

Don’t tell me you’re too busy. The mere act of devoting time each day to your list is an acknowledgment of the importance of your prioritizing, goal-setting, and focus in your life.

Go check out Penelope’s blog, it is one of my favorites and she has thousands of fans (because her stuff is worth reading – if you don’t follow her you should).

(this is a guest blog by Scott Allen, author, blogger, columnist and a really, really cool guy – his bio is at the end of the post… Thanks Scott!)

I kicked off a group blogging project last week called Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn. As you might guess, I have a couple of my own. One of my favorites is to use LinkedIn to fill out your schedule for your business trip. You’ve probably been in this situation, right?

You have a business trip planned, but you have some blocks of free time while you’re there, and you want to make good use of it by meeting some new people, preferably that are relevant to your business, or meeting up with some people that you’ve perhaps only met online. Maybe a former colleague or classmate lives there and you didn’t even realize it.

There are a couple of ways that LinkedIn can help you with this.

For starters, do an Advanced Search. Choose the industries and/or enter keywords that will help identify the people you’d like to meet. For location, select the “Located in or near:” option, then choose the country you’re visiting, and the zip code, if available/applicable. I recommend changing the sort order to “Degrees away from you” instead of “Keyword relevance”. You’re going to have better luck setting up meetings with your first-degree contacts (perhaps you only know them virtually, or just weren’t aware they were living there) and second-degree contacts, to whom you can get a direct and timely introduction, than third-degree contacts with the possibility of a weak link somewhere in between you and them.

Review the profiles, pick the ones that look most interesting and promising, and send an introduction request, saying that you’re going to be in town on such-and-such date and would like to meet them.

Now this approach pretty much puts the selection process in your hands. Here’s another approach that leverages relationships even more.

Search LinkedIn and/or your contact management system for one of your direct contacts that lives in the area. If you’re searching LinkedIn for them, look for people with a fairly decent number of connections,  let’s say 200+. They don’t have to be a mega-connector,  just someone who’s actively using the system. Alternatively, they don’t even have to live in the area,  maybe it’s someone in the industry in which you want to meet people, or just someone who you know to be a good networker and whose opinion you truly value.

Now, contact them, explain your situation and ask for their assistance. Ask them to perform a search basically like the one above. The difference here is that instead of you perusing dozens or even hundreds of profiles, they can quickly scan down their list of 1st-degree contacts and know, without even looking, which people would be a good connection for you. They can simply copy the names of those people, which are hyper-linked to their profiles, and paste them in an e-mail to you.

You are now looking at a much smaller list of people that has been intelligently selected by someone who knows both you and them well, rather than just relying on a search engine. Pick the ones you want to meet and send an introduction request via LinkedIn. It only takes your friend a few seconds to forward each of them.

Having done this for a couple of other people, I can tell you it takes less than five minutes, and I welcomed the opportunity to help a friend with very little risk or effort.

Have a great trip!

(From Jason: if you have a blog you might want to consider writing a post about LinkedIn for the group blogging project – there are over $4,000 in prizes! Click here for the details – tomorrow is the deadline. My post is here.)

—

Scott Allen blogs at Linked Intelligence,  ”The smart source for all things LinkedIn.”He is coauthor with David Teten of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, the first guide on how to use Web 2.0 tools to achieve your personal and professional goals.

I’ve been following Penelope Trunk’s blog for quite a while – she does a lot of stuff right as a blogger and I’ve learned a lot from her. I was excited to get her book in the mail a few weeks ago and dig into it. The very first page of the book assured me that I wouldn’t miss out on her no-holds-barred attitude and perspective:

I would be lying if I told you that writing a book was easy. My editor, Diana Baroni, transformed me from a columnist to an author. No small feat. Sometimes I imagine that while she was going through edits with me on the phone , she was throwing darts at a wall to keep her voice so even.

This is the Penelope Trunk that we all know and love, and her writing style is a perfect example of transparency at it’s best. Shortly after I met Penelope she announced that she had just signed to write for Yahoo! Finance, and became something of a celebrity in the space (this is after years of writing a career column for the Boston Globe). While she had a significant impact on JibberJobber (she wrote about it a couple of times, and it ended up on Yahoo! Finance (which then was on the front page of Yahoo! for three hours)), she has never played favorites and we’ve had some really good talks on how to either make JibberJobber better, or improve my message of what it is (stuff I have yet to implement).

So Penelope knows about writing. She likes to write with lists, use lots of examples, and give you her raw advice and perspective. Don’t expect sugar-coating in her stuff. And if you disagree with her it doesn’t matter – most of her columns on Yahoo get hundreds of (sophomoric) comments questioning her logic but she keeps coming back with stuff that is right on target.

There is a lot to her book and I don’t want to paint it into a certain corner. But as I read through it there is one resounding theme that jumps out in every chapter: the difference between Gen Y and every other generation (somewhere Gen X seems to have gotten lost between the Baby Boomers and the YouTube/MySpace masters).

Here’s the cool thing – no matter what generation you are in this book is a must read. I found myself shaking my head a number of times saying “no way, it’s not like that” only to give in and agree with her. I’m not sure how I feel about the modern workplace as compared to the workplace of my parents, whether it’s better or worse, but the truth is it is different. And Penelope packs every single page with a broad range of information on how to compete and excel in this new environment. Here are some examples, from miscellanous chapters:

• Introduction – “Young people have no interest in climbing ladders when they know they probably won’t be working at one place long enough to hit every rung.”
• Chapter 3: Hunting for a Job Is Not a Task, It’s a Lifestyle – “But the hunt is not for the money. It’s for more interesting work and a better personal life. So what can you do to make sure you get a job that will encourage new experiences both at work and at home?”
• Chapter 4: An Interview is a Test You Can Study For – (regarding stupid questions that you shouldn’t ask) “What needs to be accomplished in this position in the next six months?” This is a useless question at the end of the interview, but an essential one for the beginning. (!!)

And here are some chapter titles:

• Chapter 6: First-Time Managers Do Not Need to Suck
• Chapter 9: Sex Discrimination Is Everywhere, So Don’t Try To Run
• Chapter 13: Getting a Promotion Is So Last Century

Here’s my advice: this book is a must read for everyone. If you are a Gen Y, read it and figure out your strategy for a successful career. Read it slow, mark it up and keep it as a reference. If you are a Baby Boomer, read it to understand a lot more about what drives and motivates Gen Y (and even some Gen X folks). If you are Gen X this is a must read to understand all of the oldest child syndrome (Baby Boomers) and youngest child syndrome (Gen Y) issues that you see every day at work (I couldn’t resist that analogy!)!

Like me, you’ll probably shake your head as much as you nod your head as you read this, but you can’t really argue with much of the stuff that’s in here. I had high expectations from Penelope and she certainly didn’t let me down with Brazen Careerist – The New Rules For Success.

Here are some more reviews of the book:

Joanna Babarger at Punditmom

Rowan Manahan at Fortify Your Oasis

Cody McKibben at Pursuing Excellence

Diane Danielson at Downtown Women’s Club

Marshall Sponder at Web Metrics Guru

Frank Roche at KnowHR Blog

Ramit Sethi at I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Maureen Rogers at Pink Slip

Note it was also reviewed by Guy Kawasaki, Keith Ferrazzi and Bob Sutton (more info here)

Excellent job Penelope!

Last year in the heat of my job search one of my biggest frustrations was the resources available to me. While there are billions of articles and job boards, I still found myself using my own homemade spreadsheet to manage my job search.

There were a few sites that claimed to have a job seekers toolbox, or toolkit, or job search resources, but they were either too empty (no value to me) or too full (it would take a year to sift through the stuff to find the gems).

I have been working on accumulating resources for career management (not just job search). Of course the first thing on the list is a personal relationship manager, and JibberJobber is my recommended tool .

But there is a lot more, based on what I’ve learned over the last year as well as recommendations from my expert network. I have been working on putting it all together and my only hope is that it provides value to you, in your own career management. I’m really excited about this toolbox – if you have any suggestions on what should be included please let me know. It will evolve over time.

Special thanks to the experts that have already weighed in on this cool project:

Brad Attig – My Retail Career

Mike Ballard – Turning Points

Deb Dib – The CEO Coach

Makani Harvey – Career Abundance

Wendy Terwelp – Opportunity Knocks

Barbara Safani – Career Solvers

(sorry if you contributed and I missed you, I just went through the e-mails that I filed)

You should see the first version of this toolbox next week… so stay tuned!