How To: Use Coaching Interface

The worst part about being the designer of JibberJobber is that I am asked how to do things that I think are simple… but they are simple to me because I spend hours each day living in JibberJobber. Here’s the latest:

How do I set myself up as a coach? I’ll answer this from start to finish… note that coaching is Beta and there are some cool enhancements planned, so if you have any ideas or suggestions please let me know asap!

And, you have to be logged in to do this stuff … 😉

First, click on the My Account link on the main menu.

click on

Second, you’ll see a “Coach” tab… click on that.

click on the

Third, you will see a checkbox that says “I am a Coach.” Just click in the checkbox (so it is checked), and then hit the “Save” button.

check that you are a coach... and save!

That’s it! You are a coach! But let’s make this a little more useful, and explore a little.

If you mouse-over the Tools link on the menu, you’ll see the option “My Coach Landing Page” … click on that.

See the bottom link?

It should have a bunch of “panels” with a message like this:

you have no connections!

So now what you need to do is have the person you are coaching set you up as their coach. The best way to do that is over the phone or in person, have them login, and mouse-over Tools, and then click on the My Coaches link.

click on My Coaches

This brings up a page that will likely say they don’t have any coaches. Have them click on the “Add a Coach” link. Then, tell them your username in JibberJobber, and when they hit the “Add Coach(es)” button you will immediately see them in YOUR coach landing page!

just have them add your username

Pretty nifty, eh? A few things to note:

You can have as many coachees as you want. In other words, if you want to “coach” your brother-in-law in his job search, and then his friend, and then their other friend, just have all three of them add you as their coach.

You can also have as many coaches as necessary! It doesn’t make a ton of sense to have many different coaches but if you want, you can have more than one.

I realize there are real, professional job coaches out there that do this kind of thing for a living. I would like each of them to use JibberJobber, of course. But I know there are plenty of folks (like me) who can’t afford a job coach. I maintain that a coach needs to (1) teach by true principles, (2) have a process, and (3) have a set of tools. JibberJobber is a great tool to help in a coaching relationship, but if you get a yahoo who doesn’t know current job search (and networking) principles or have a real process then you don’t have a real coach.

If you have a suggestion on who a good coach would be, shoot it my way as one of these days I plan to blog on my favorite coaches 🙂