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!

Here’s the latest on my trip – I’ll be out of the office from today through Monday Sept 28th.  I tried to get 12 presentations but I’ll have to settle for 7.

Friday, Sept 18:

Fly in late (9:30pm).  Grab rental car and stay with friends in Maryland.

Saturday, Sept 19:

sightseeing with my oldest daughter in D.C.  Any suggestions?  I think all the Smithsonian museums are closed on Saturday?

Sunday, Sept 20:

Running around Woodbridge, VA showing her were I met her mom – and dinner with a buddy and my sister.

Monday, Sept 21:

1:30 – 3:30 – Private presentation in Hunt Valley, MD (outplacement firm)

7pm – Bel Air, MD – Grace Career Networking Group.  Free – come if you can!

Tuesday, Sept 22:

11:00 – 12:30 – Private corporate presentation in D.C.

1:30 – 3:30 – Private presentation in Fairfax, VA (outplacement firm)

6:30 – 8:30 – socStardom at Johns Hopkins University Montgomery Campus, Rockville, MD.  This is for entrepreneurs and businesses and will focus on how to use social media to grow your business.  Register here. Free.

Wednesday, Sept 23:

1:00 – 3:00 – Human Resources Association – National Capital Area on job search/career management in Washington, D.C.  Location and registration info here.  Not sure if you have to be a member, but this event is… Free.

4:00 – 5:30 – LinkedIn for Executives ($50 or $60) – register here.  Note times are Eastern … you’ll have to do the math to figure out what time that is for YOU.

6:00 – 8:00 – State of Maryland Professional Outplacement Assistance Center (POAC) presentation (location here).  Already booked solid.

Drive to Annapolis for Conference

Thursday, Sept 24:

conference in Annapolis

Friday, Sept 25:

conference in Annapolis

Dinner with my sister, her man, and my daugter in MD or D.C.

Saturday, Sept 26:

conference in Annapolis, then fly home around lunch (oops, I thought I had this scheduled on Sunday)

Every once in a while I get a harebrained idea to do something new and cool.  I know, I’m nutz.

First it was to start a crazy job search organizational website… JibberJobber.com.

Then it was to write a book that might sell a few copies… I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???

Then it was to actually become a professional speaker (got dragged into that one) … this is what prompted the redesign of JasonAlba.com.

Then it was to develop other informational products like the LinkedIn DVD: LinkedIn for Job Seekers.

Look where all that got me :p

Well, here’s the next one.  This met all of my criteria for doing a new thing (complement the other stuff?  Check.  Fun?  Check.  Rewarding? Check.)  Let me tell you how this all started.

Alison Doyle is the Job Search Expert at About.com.  When she comes to Park City with her man, who is the Ski Expert at About.com, she lets me know so we can hopefully have lunch together.  About a year ago I went to lunch with Mark Newman, CEO of Hirevue (a very cool company) and we were just chatting… no agenda, nothing planned, just chatting.

Somehow we got the idea to start an industry blog/site that talks about the plethora of job search tools (and stuff)… new ones, old ones, etc.  The idea was to create a place where we talk about what there is, what we think of it, how they could improve, and stuff like this.  Something like TechCrunch for the job search world.

Of course, we are not going to be, or compete with, TechCrunch. But we thought there was an opportunity to fill a gap.  We were SO EXCITED!

And then we all went back to our day jobs and got busy :p

Until recently… we finally pulled it together and decided to make it happen.  This week we came up with the name Job Search Talk, bought the domain, set up the blog, and started moving forward.

We’re jazzed, and hope to be able to provide value to people in the job search space (HR, job seekers, recruiters, software developers, etc.) – but we don’t want to (or, can’t) write all of it!  So, if you have any opinions on what is out there, or what should be out there, let us know – we’d love to have experts (whether you are a job seeker with expertise as a product user or a career coach or a software vendor) help us put up information and opinions about what is available… !

Cool, huh?  Crazy but cool.