This is a feature that has been on our list for over 18 months.  We’re really excited to announce it is finally available to you (it is a premium feature).

In a nutshell, this new feature allows you to create a Log Entry by sending an email to a special email address.

When I say Log Entry, realize you can:

1. Also create an Action Item,
2. Associate it with multiple contacts, companies and job postings, and
3. Change the time when you get an email reminder, if it is an action item.

If you are not a Premium users use the Contact Us form and we’ll bump you up for five days so you can play around with this very super cool feature. Here’s what you do:

Go to My Account (from the main menu, when you are logged in) and then click on the Email Address Tab

Here is the page where you set it up and make it active.  These are two security measures so others can’t create log entries on your behalf (not foolproof but they are pretty good).

The second/bottom section says Log Email Address.  This is where you activate it.

The first thing you do is set up your unique email address.  Simply put some keyword in the Keyword box – your personal, unique email address will show up as you type it – this is he email addy you will use to create a log entry.  I put the word “secret” in my box…

Notice (corresponding to the numbers above):

1. This top sentence tells you this is NOT active yet – you can tell because the email address is RED.  Once you finish the steps it will be GREEN (and active).
2. This is where you put your keyword.
3. As you type your keyword the email addresses labeled 1 and 3 will change, so you can see what your email addy will be.

Next, put in the email addresses that are authorized to create a Log Entry.

Note that you can put in multiple email addresses… just separate them with commas.  I have two main email accounts I use, so I put both of those in this box.  Email from other addresses to my unique address should not create Log Entries.

Finally, click on the Set Keyword button.  You should notice the bold/red email addy is now bold/green.

Now, go to your email client and send an email to someone in your JibberJobber network, and BCC your new unique email addy you just created.  I use BCC so people don’t “reply to all” and have a chance of creating a Log Entry.  NOTE: I put in multiple email addresses – all corresponding to contacts I have in JibberJobber, and a Log Entry was created for each email address I put in the email.  THAT IS COOL!

Then, within 5 minutes (we check for new emails every 5 minutes) you should see the Log Entry created on their contact record in JibberJobber.  Here’s the Log Entry created when I sent to the address I have on a record in JibberJobber:

#1 is the email Subject, and #2 is the email Body.

To do the other cool stuff, like associate multiple contacts, companies or jobs, or to make it an Action Item, etc., go to that page and click the HELP icon .

Let us know if you have any feedback on this feature… thank you!

The second Now What book that I didn’t write is available on Amazon and as an ebook download from Happy About.  The image to the right is pretty big because I LOVE how all of the people are represented by business cards, and the one in the middle (presumably YOU or ME) has hands out, ready to meet and welcome other people — how cool!

I’m at a Networking Event — Now What??? is a terrific resource for anyone who has to go to any kind of networking event for the purpose of… networking!

I remember a few years ago when I went to networking events and cheated… I went late and left early.  I totally missed the point of the event, and missed out on opportunities to meet people who could be helpful in my job search.

Now when I go to networking events I am really looking for networking opportunities.  But it is not as easy as I originally thought – to have a successful experience because of a networking event there is:

1. Preparation: what do you do BEFORE you go to the event.
2. On-site performance: not that you are performing, but I didn’t know how else to say this – you are “on!”  This means you need to put fear and pride aside and get the job done – many times all this takes is starting out by saying “hi” to someone.
3. Post-event followup: after you meet someone, get business cards, exchange emails, what do you do?  This is the key, and perhaps a great opportunity for failure (if you don’t followup).

In this book on how to work a networking event Sandy teaches you how to really, effectively get value out of your networking.  I don’t care if you are networking with job seekers, business owners at the  chamber of commerce meeting, at a luncheon with managers and directors, or with your target prospects – this book will help you understand how to more effectively work the room, find those key relationships, and then move forward from there.

Congratulations to first-time author Sandy Jones-Kaminski for this very useful book (see what others have said about it here)!

You can get it for $19.95 from Amazon or from Happy About, or get the ebook (immediate download) for only $11.95.

Once you get it, if you like it, consider giving it a favorable review on Amazon – thank you!

There are lots of books on Twitter right now – I was supposed to write one of the earliest but I was in the middle of rewriting I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? and I wasn’t sure I wanted to write another technical book that would have to be updated every year!  I opted to not do that but instead create hands-on, visual webinar recording that shows you how to use Twitter.

Twitter for Job Seekers (the video) is specifically designed for professionals in a job search.

It is a 1 hour and 24 minues (and one second) video, walking you through what Twitter is, and how to use it in your job search.

It’s based on the idea that you want to find network contacts who can help you in your job search – find people to add to your own personal/professional network, as well as how to communicate with them after you find them.

There is also training on what to do with your own Twitter account. As a professional, what could or should you be tweeting?  (going into personal branding, and how to use Twitter as a Personal Branding tool)

I show you how to get value out of Twitter EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE A TWITTER ACCOUNT.  This is essential for many professionals who aren’t excited to jump on this bandwagon, but still want to tap into the power that Twitter.com has created.  There is significant power there – and you can tap into it without even signing up for an account.

I won’t try to convince anyone to get a Twitter account, but I do want you to learn how to use this tool so you can achieve your career management objectives.

To access the recording (as many times as you like) simply do the following:

1. Login to JibberJobber.com.  This is as security measure so this video isn’t shared out inappropriately.  If you don’t have a JibberJobber account, get one on the front page – it takes about 60 seconds.
2. Mouse over the Tools link (from the main menu) and go all the way down to Videos (click on the Videos link).
3. The last tab on Videos is “Premium Videos.” Twitter for Job Search is the last one there.

This $50 investment into your career management is worth it… once you are done you should have your brain wrapped around Twitter as a tool, and know how you are going to incorporate it into your job search strategy.

(if you are already logged into JibberJobber, simply click here)

Another new update we did this week is so simple it barely merits a blog post.

Of course, some users will love it, even though it’s not a huge deal.  So I’ll tell you what is was, but I want to wrap it in a concept.

JibberJobber is… well, complex.  It’s not simple.  It’s very powerful, but the complexity kind of scares some people off.

I bet your job search, or career management, or personal branding management, is also complex.  There are tons of books, articles and blog posts about the stuff – it has to be complex.

Sometimes in the complexity we miss opportunities to simplify, while doing something that will have a “significant” impact on what we are doing.

Check out the first time I wrote about this in one of my favorite blog posts titled I Hated My Lawnmower.  One tiny change made a huge (significant) difference in my lawn mowing experience.  And my neighbors couldn’t laugh at me anymore (for that, anyway ).

The second time I referred to this was another favorite post titled Permission to Manage Your Career.  As someone who’s serious about CEO of Me, Inc, this was a significant epiphany for me.

My message to you is this: perhaps there is one simple thing you can change which will produce significantly different results.  Perhaps it’s a job search tactic… or perhaps it’s where you work (messy office vs. clean room or coffee shop)… or perhaps it’s what you wear when you start your day… or perhaps whether you smile when you are on the phone or not.

One simple thing might change a lot.

Find that one simple thing, and then I challenge you to make the change.

Ok, having said that, here’s the simple change we made (thanks to a few users who have suggested this):

On the List Panel one of the columns you can see is the Next Action Item Date.  This is now a hyperlink – you can drill down and go to that log entry/action item.

So simple, but a real enhancement for those who navigate a lot through the List Panel view.

There ya go, another cool enhancement, and an analogy of how you can relate the concept to your career management

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

Here’s what I’m up to the rest of this week.  If you are in or around Orlando note there are two events on Thursday you can come to.  Both are free, afaik.  (link to the original post)

Wednesday Oct 14

4:10 pm – Arrive at airport

6 – 8 – Open

Thursday Oct 15

8 – 10 – nuthin – that’s 6am Mountain time so I’ll be waking up :p

10 – 12 – Career Management 2.0 for a Job Seekers network meeting – open to anyone.  351 South State Road 434, Altamonte Springs, FL.  This is in a furntiture store, apparently.

1 – 3 – lunch with my buddies at Seasons 52

3 – 6 – private meeting

7 – 9 – Career Management 2.0 for LDS ProfNet (a Professional Networking group) – open to anyone.  45 E Par Street, Orlando, FL.  This is in an LDS church.

Friday Oct 16

7am – 9:30pm – Career Conference – I present at 10am (only for conference attendees)

Saturday Oct 17

7am – 3pm – Career Conference

3pm – airport to fly home

Three years ago I started to learn about this industry I had never heard of – outplacement.

I hadn’t heard of it because the company that laid me off doesn’t do outplacement.  When I got let go I got a very small severance and advice to go to a free resume clinic.

Outplacement, I learned, is a service provided by a company to help an employee who is being terminated to land on their feet.  Outplacement services typically include some coaching (individual or group), learning opportunities (seminars, webinars, etc.), and sometimes office space.  There are other perks of receiving outplacement, but those are at the core.

Outplacement packages typically start around $1,200 and commonly are more than $2,000.  Executive outplacement packages can easily be five figures.

As I was learning about this industry I thought about how cool it would be to offer something to companies like mine – there is no way they would have spent $1,200 per termination, but perhaps they would spend a few hundred dollars on each of us.  To that company, outplacement was too expensive.

Interestingly, traditional outplacement firms are not interested in going below a certain price point – there is a lot of overhead associated with traditional outplacement and they just can’t go that low.

My idea was to create an offering that could satisfy that price point.

Fast forward three years… I got an email from a recruiter a couple of months ago saying he was just let go and did I know of any opportunities.  After not doing anything with my idea for three years because (a) I didn’t have the mental bandwidth, and (b) I’m not a sales professional, I thought I’d throw the idea at him.

And here we are today, with a new website called Affordable Outplacement.  We’re definitely not going head-to-head with traditional outplacement, rather we are going where they have chosen not to go.

There’s more to the story, but I’ll leave it at this for now.  I think it’s quite exciting, and I’m anxious to see how things unfold over the next 12 months!

Oh yeah, I should mention, YES, we are looking for talent to help us move this forward.  Specifically (and only), right now we are looking for inside sales reps:

I’ll be in Orlando from Wednesday, October 14th (arrive around dinner time) and leave in the afternoon of Saturday, October 17th.

My schedule is below.  You can see this is a lot lighter than what I normally do.

Wednesday Oct 14

4:10 pm – Arrive at airport

6 – 8 – Open

Thursday Oct 15

8 – 10 – nuthin – that’s 6am Mountain time so I’ll be waking up :p

10 – 12 – Career Management 2.0 for a Job Seekers network meeting – open to anyone.  351 South State Road 434, Altamonte Springs, FL.  This is in a furntiture store, apparently.

1 – 3 – lunch with my buddies at Seasons 52

3 – 6 – private meeting

7 – 9 – Career Management 2.0 for LDS ProfNet (a Professional Networking group) – open to anyone.  45 E Par Street, Orlando, FL.  This is in an LDS church.

Friday Oct 16

7am – 9:30pm – Career Conference – I present at 10am (only for conference attendees)

Saturday Oct 17

7am – 3pm – Career Conference

3pm – airport to fly home

Maybe I’ll see you at one of these events?

Last night we made significant changes – hopefully they won’t affect you and how you use JibberJobber – but I thought I’d let you know what we’re up to.

About six months ago our current hosting company (where our server was hosted for the last 3+ years) informed me that they were changing direction and not going to host sites anymore.  This was sad because I had worked with the owner for many years before and knew him to be an amazing server guy.

In the course of doing research I found a new server guy who had pretty much everything I was looking for.  As an IT person, I look for character, skillset and customer service first – the technology is a given.  I was looking for a “partner” who would take ownership in the service they would provide.  (note: this is not a legal partner, nor someone who has equity in JJ)

Over the last few months my team and his team have been involved in planning, testing, and some dry runs.  There is really no good time to do something like this – many things can go wrong.  Midnight for us is daytime in other parts of the world – and we have signups from over 100 countries – so really, there isn’t a “best time.”

But we bit the bullet last night – I noticed the last emails from my team were around 4 and 5am… basically saying it’s done, tested, and let us know if there are problems.

I know the limits of Quality Assurance testing… and how great users are – so of course I woke up this morning to a problem from someone trying to buy the LinkedIn DVD – with just a few phone calls I got that resolved.

Anyway, this move means many things for us and you – hopefully the biggest change you’ll see is a FASTER JibberJobber.  I’ve seen it perform faster… and this was definitely becoming an issue.

If you have ANY problems – bugs, errors, or the system isn’t doing what you think it should, please use the Contact Us form to let the team know.

Thank you for your patience – and a HUGE THANK YOU to my team who was up all night (after testing and prepping all day) to make this as smooth as we hoped it would be!

Now that we have this behind us we can start working on some of those work orders we’ve been anxious to address!

Check out this very cool writeup in a newsletter after I spoke at POAC:

Jason Alba Scores a Major Hit with 102 people at POAC

Last evening Jason Alba held the POAC audience of 102 spellbound for two hours. Jason’s explanation of the methods used in conducting “Career Management 2.0″ was like a fine mystery novel, leaving the reader wanting to turn to the next page (slide). As he concluded the evening’s remarks there was a sanguine air in the crowded room, some sort of wishing it would go on for several more hours, yet others were feeling an electrifying charge to get a head start on revamping their marketing strategy.

The comments were awesome and still coming in.

Steve Gallison, Director of POAC

Wow.  Spellbound… fine mystery novel… sanguine air… very cool!

I admit, that was one of the funnest presentations I’ve done in a long time

Steve, by the way, has a really cool email signature… check this out (I took out the colors/formatting… focus on the content/message):

Stephen R. Gallison
POAC Founding Director
Maryland’s only free
outplacement assistance center
for the Professional, Executive,
Technical, Managerial and Scientific
communities since 1992.
Often Imitated – Never Duplicated!

I love it!