A few years ago my friends at emurse were recognized by Rafe Needleman fro CNet’s Webware.  Rafe is a big voice in the web 2.0, online space (webware is software for the web… get it?), and having a mention in an article he did was a big part of emurse getting some good traction in the market.

Shortly after I saw the article I contacted Rafe with something like “hey, check us out – we’re cool too!”

I’m guessing Rafe gets pitched hundreds of times a day and has to sift through a lot of meaningless (or ill-prepared) pitches.  I was flattered when he finally did a writeup about JibberJobber on webware in November of 2006 (wow, that was a LONG time ago!).

Then, I heard about the Webware 100, which is a list of 100 of the best web apps (that is, applications, not just brochureware websites). Oh how I longed to be on that list… I don’t think I came close to making the cut, however, and when I saw the list of Webware 100 winners I knew I didn’t have a snowballs chance in ______.

Until 2009, that is.  A buddy of mine submitted JibberJobber as a Webware 100 finalist and forwarded me what he submitted.  I was flattered that my buddy (I won’t name him here – he’s in New Jersey and knows who he is!) submitted JibberJobber, and really happy with what he wrote about JibberJobber in his nomination (he’s been watching JibberJobber since the very early days).

Of course I didn’t think I’d make any cuts… but Rafe emailed me about a week ago and notified me that JibberJobber is a finalist!  Oh man… what a terrific honor!

Considering how big the winners of past are, like Amazon, BlogTalkRadio, Google, Craigslist, ebay, PayPal, Skype, Opera, Yahoo, Woot, iPhone, YouTube, etc. I don’t think I have a chance at all… they have traffic and reach that is extraordinarily larger than my reach… but let me just sit here super flattered, and elated, that we even made it in the cut – from around 6,000 nominations down to the final 300.

What a freaking cool honor.

Now, just because I don’t believe we won’t win doesn’t mean I won’t ask for your vote… if you have a minute to spare, please head over and vote for your favorite job search organizer… er, I mean, career management toolset, er, I mean, personal relationship manager, er… you know what I mean 😉

Thank you to J.R. in New Jersey for nominating me, and thank you for Rafe and team for letting me enjoy being a Webware 2009 finalist … what a terrific honor!

I came across a listing of the “20 best job search websites,” according to PCMag.com (see Cheezhead’s comments here).  I think this list of sites is… well, junk.

Seriously, I would not recommend many of these sites to anyone who is starting a job search.  If you find them on your own, and find value in them, great.  But none of them are on my top list of anything.  Here’s what they are:

1) Beyond.com Beyond claims to be the “largest network of niche career communities” on the Net. It essentially hooks together different organizations like PRJobForce.com and PhillyJobs.com all in one place, which makes it easy to find leads in your community.

2) CareerBuilder.com As the Web’s biggest job site, CareerBuilder gets more than 23 million visitors a month. The company has been around since 1995, and has developed an incredible network of listing sources and job search centers since that time.

3) Craigslist.org The granddaddy of online classifieds gives those who are focused on searching for jobs within their communities an easy way to look. It might be one of the least-polished entities listed here, but the sheer number of local job listings makes up for it.

4) Execu|Search This site looks to be a selective, higher-tier job search property. Execu|Search screens and reviews every resume that is submitted, and helps employers find the best possible candidates for their open positions.

5) Hound Hound’s search engine shows jobs from employer Web sites only. In theory, this cuts out duplicate listings and shows opportunities that are not posted on other job boards.

6) Indeed Indeed works as an aggregator for listings from major job Web sites, company Web sites, associations, and other online sources. Its simplicity and ease of use are its best features.

7) JobCentral JobCentral is a service formed by a nonprofit consortium of U.S. corporations like IBM and Dell, which makes it ideal if you’re looking for corporate job listings.

8) JobServe JobServe claims it was “the world’s first Internet recruitment service.” In 2008, JobServe advertised more than 2.5 million jobs across 15 industry sectors.

9) Jobster Jobster uses an active approach to help employers and recruiting teams of all sizes find their candidates. The company calls its method “social recruiting,” and it services 24 different job categories.

10) LinkedIn Best known for being a social network for professionals, LinkedIn also has thorough job listings, some of which are exclusive to LinkedIn.

11) Monster In addition to being arguably the best-known global job-listings site, Monster also offers advice on resumes, interviewing, and salary information.

12) Oodle Oodle, which specializes in online classifieds, includes a job classifieds section that finely cuts job opportunities down to job title, category, industry, and company. Did you know, for example, that Best Buy has nearly 10,000 openings?

13) onTargetJobs onTargetjobs owns a lot of smaller niche sites like BioSpace.com and MedHunters.com. Its expansive niche database allows users to find compatible job listings more easily than with general sites.

14) Simply Hired SimplyHired is similar to Indeed, as it also aggregates listings from major job Web sites, newspapers, company Web sites, and associations. However, the site goes a little deeper and allows users to send their resumes out for posting on five other sites for free.

15) SnagAJob SnagAJob is basically the antithesis of sites like TheLadders and Execu|Search, as its focus is on hourly employment only. The site has partnered with companies like 7 Eleven, Red Lobster, and AMF, to bring the most up-to-date hourly job openings.

16) TheLadders This job site has branded itself as the place to look for $100,000+ jobs only. Job seekers have to pay $30 per month to fully take advantage of the site’s services.

17) Trovix Trovix’s free search engine makes the job-search process more personalized. Users input their work experience and qualifications and the site matches results to what info they have given. Trovix also has an innovative feature called Job Map, which allows you to type in your location and see on Google Maps how many jobs are available in your area.

18) TweetMyJobs One of the newest sites to take advantage of social media, TweetMyJobs supplies Twitter users with instantaneous job listings that are derived from TweetMyJobs’ Job Channels.

19) USAJobs.com USAJobs is the official job site for the U.S. government. With the government looking to significantly increase spending during the next few years, looking at federal jobs might not be a bad move if you’re in a tough place.

20) Yahoo! HotJobs As one of the biggest job sites on the Web, HotJobs distinguishes itself by focusing on features such as status (which shows how many times one’s resume has been viewed) and the ability to block companies from seeing your resume.

Out of this list, here’s what I’d recommend:

Indeed (#6) or SimplyHired (#14): using one job board aggregator instead of poking around dozens of job boards makes a lot of sense. For some reason I’ve migrated to Indeed, but I last I’ve seen, SimplyHired is just as good.

LinkedIn (#10): of course. No explanation needed. If you don’t get it then buy my LinkedIn book or get the new LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD.

The Ladders (#16): I think their resume reviews are shady (more on that later), and not everyone is getting value out of them, but many are. Not free, but could be valuable if you are a six-figures person.

That’s it… from my last 3 years in this space I can’t say that hear any career experts evangelize any of the rest (and some are harsh on The Ladders)… I’m kind of surprised at the suggestions in their article but this seems on par for articles like this.

What sites would YOU suggest?

One of my favorite premium features in JibberJobber is the Get Contacts List page, which allows you to export your contacts from JibberJobber into various formats, including a .csv file (which opens in Excel).  This is what I use when I send my newsletter to bloggers, or to family/friends, etc.

This allows you to slice and dice your data.  You can see a two minute video here.

I asked my Twitter network how to merge a csv file and a Word document and my California buddy Walt Feigenson was kind enough to create a whole blog post out of it.  You can read his post, How to use Microsoft Excel and Word to send multiple emails, at the link.

Why is this important?  Because it helps you send newsletter-like emails to your contacts.  This is HUGE and something I think every job seeker should do.  How? Read this post on newsletters for job seekers.

What’s more, every PROFESSIONAL should do this, imho.  In The Google Story it talks about how the Google founders sent their friends and family newsletters announcing what they were doing, their projects, etc.  This was a personal newsletter.

Whether you have “the next google” or not, you should reach out to your contacts with a newsletter.

(thanks Walt, for the awesome post)

A few days ago I read Dan Schawbel’s post about 10 great social sites for resume building.  You can take “resume building” one of two ways, either (1) a site to put your resume up, or (2) a site to build credibility or authority or something like that, and then put it on your resume.  If you are interested in #2, read the You Get It Personal Branding award winners.  If you are interested in #1, read this post

I like the idea of creating a place where your quote-resume-unquote can be online.  I think there are two real, solid, true ways to do this:

1. Code it yourself on your own website… using html.
2. Use emurse.com.

Either of these show a “traditional resume” online.  The other non-traditional resumes are things like a LinkedIn Profile, a VisualCV profile, etc.  Read Dan’s post for a list of ten options.  And then read the comments of that post for more options.

And then you may have heard that “google is the new resume.”

Here’s my hangup – I don’t believe that you should have your resume, or a resume-like profile, on every social tool out there.  If I were in a job search and read Dan’s post, my first thought would be, “seriously?  I have to go create resumes on all of those sites?  That is too overwhelming!”

My second thought would be, “is anyone looking at those profiles/resumes??”

I speak frequently about social marketing, or to the job search crowd, about using social networks for career management.  Know what one of the most common questions I get is?

“If I can’t even seem to manage my email, how do I fit in all of this other stuff??”

I agree that you gotta be in it (the social space) to win it (a job, business, etc.).  But I don’t think you need to be everywhere… perhaps you simply need to be in just the few right places.

With regard to the resume, I say (1) LinkedIn, and (2) emurse.com… and after that, I don’t have any recommendations for other places.  Not that they are bad, but I’m not convinced that they are essential.

What do you think?

I spoke at the J-School (that’s “journalism school” for the uninitiated) at Columbia, which I’m told is the #1 J-School in the world.  Wow, how cool it was to speak at the #1 school… !

As cool as it was, I couldn’t shake this feeling of “what are these people going to do for a living?”  Perhaps some of those very sharp journalists were going to school just to learn, and not for their career advancement (here’s a contraversial post with hot comments about this idea). But I’m guessing that most of them are there for there for their careers.

I asked myself then, as I do now, “what careers? What’s going to be left of that ‘industry’ in the next few months, or two years??”

I feel like it’s a big fat pink elephant, and wonder how much discussion journalists have about this very topic, especially in school.

Here’s an article from two days ago on CNN.com, titled Newspapers fold as readers defect and economy sours.  It talks about the RIP-status of the Rocky Mountain News, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the LA Times and Chicago Tribune parent company bankruptcy, news about the Ann Arbor (Michigan) newspaper cutting back… this is not the beginning (we’ve seen this a lot over the last year) and it won’t be the end.

I almost felt guilty because I haven’t had a newspaper subscription for years.  But I knew this wasn’t something for me to feel guilty about.  I didn’t cause this ending.

Back to the individuals and careers affected.  What’s a journalist, or aspiring journalist, to do?  They aren’t going to pitch to newspapers, I bet…

What would you do?  Or if it was your kid who was finishing up school (that you were paying for), what would you advise them to do?

I just listened to Kathy Simmons, President of Netshare, share 25 minutes of information about the executive job search.  Very cool stuff – Kathy is right in the trenches with her Netshare members and gets a great perspective of current executive job search issues.  Here are two things that Total Picture interviewer Peter Clayton picked out, that I thought were TERRIFIC statements:

“The greatest line I heard recently was when someone said, ‘no matter what your job was before, you’re in sales now.’ “

and

“I always used to say people hired for two reasons: you can make me money or you can save me money, and now it’s can you stop the bleeding?“

I LOVE IT.

Click here to listen (for free) to Kathy and Peter Clayton talk about current executive job search issues.

I’m at a crossroads with my blogging.  It could be that I’m mentally exhausted from three weekend-to-weekend business trips over a four-week period.  Or it could be I’m feeling stressed because of some changes to the business model at JibberJobber (just natural evolution from a startup that gets no traction to a website that is having success, and the issues associated with the success). It could be because I’m putting some mental energy into writing for Career Resumes.

Sometimes I think about all the stuff I’ve written about in the last almost-three-years and wonder “what else is there to write about?”

Nothing, really.

This stuff isn’t rocket science, and I don’t think that much of what I’ve written is outdated.

I’ll keep blogging, partially because it’s therapeutic for me, and partially because I need to or else JibberJobber will have just a stale corporate face.  There are other reasons… but suffice it to say that I’ll keep blogging.

I wonder, though, what I’ll blog about.

What do you think?  I’ve been called a prolific writer because I write SO much.  I’ve been recognized as a thought-leader in a few spaces because of what I write about.  I’ve connected with people at a level I would never be able to connect with if it weren’t for this blog. But in the last few weeks I haven’t written as much… with good reasons.

If you have ever taken on a long-term project like this before, what advice to you have for me?

Yesterday I asked Is There An Expert In The House?  I said I’d share an idea to claim your expert status.

Perhaps you can start a blog on your area of expertise.  After all, that’s what I’ve been recognizing in my personal branding “You Get It” award, right?

Perhaps you can write articles and submit them to newsletters and magazines.  Being published helps define you as an expert, doesn’t it?

Perhaps you can speak at industry conferences, or on teleseminars or webinars, right?

Yeah, all of these help define you as an expert.  I’ve done all of them, not to be able to say I’m an expert, rather to help get exposure and branding for my company.  Being called an expert because people see my blog, articles or presentations is just a side benefit.

But I think these are all akin to “flash in the pan” hits.  In other words, one article isn’t going to cut it.  And one presentation can easily be forgotten.  Even one blog can get lost in a sea of blogs (there are over 100 million blogs, I think).

Here’s something I’ve done, and seen, that creates expert status like nothing else: WRITE A BOOK.

I know two things about many of you (because you’ve told me):

1. You have wanted to write a book for years.  You have even started to write stuff down… you have a book in you and you know it!
2. You don’t know how to move forward, … the writing process, or the publishing process, or even if it is worth the time to do it.

I think some people who write a book get a lot more value out of their book than others.  Let me suggest two resources for you:

First, my publisher has a book he recently published titled 42 Rules for Driving Success with Books.  I honestly thought it would be rather boring (sorry Mitchell), but a few days ago I started reading it.  I’m totally consumed with the two-page stories of other authors (my two page story is in there), and how they have driven success with their books.

These stories are so inspiring me I’m anxious to start my THIRD book.  If you are wondering if it’s worth the time to write a book, pick up this book (16.96 for the paperback, or 11.95 for the ebook).  I love stories like these, and I give this book a 5-star rating for inspiration.

Second, I did a webinar a year ago called Write Your Book.  I share some of my experiences, and ideas on three different publishing options.  When I gave the webinar i had two people on the call – one has since published her book and the other is in the process of writing his book.  The webinar is $49.95 and available for download once we receive payment.  You can get the Write Your Book webinar here.

How do you claim your expert status?  Unlike the other ideas at the beginning of this post, your BOOK will last a lot longer than a flash in the pan.

One question I love asking when I do presentations is “who here is an expert in something?”

Usually people are slow to raise their hands.  But I believe that most everyone is an expert in something… especially the audience where I speak.

We revere experts in our space because of their stature… everyone else recognizes them as thought leaders, or they have a book, or they write a column, or they speak at conferences… somehow they have developed themselves into expert-status.  And sometime… sometimes there are others who know more about their area of expertise than they do!

Perhaps YOU know more about your area than the acclaimed industry expert… perhaps you could write a better column or you could give a better presentation.

Let me invite you to think about this: IF YOU ARE AN EXPERT, YOU BETTER START GAINING EXPERT STATUS RIGHT NOW.

Why?

Being recognized as an expert in your industry or profession can help you for the rest of your career.  Tomorrow I’ll share an idea to help you claim your expert status… something that each of you can start doing right now.

(and if you are wondering, it’s SO GOOD to be back home.  I’ll write about last week’s travels on my Jason Alba blog later)

(I’m writing this on Saturday morning… not sure when I’ll update the blog)

Tomorrow (Sunday) I head to the airport at 6am so I can fly to NYC.  Here’s my schedule:

Sunday, March 8

I leave home at 6am to arrive at 3pm in JFK and pick up the box of my books that Delta had lost from my trip two weeks ago.

Dinner with Tom York, a senior executive who I met through the ETP network.

Monday, March 9

Long Island from noon – 2pm: Social Media Business Tools and Technologies for Entrepreneurs, Small Business and Career Transitions 2009 and Beyond (This is a Bill Sobel event) This is focused more on Entrepreneurs and businesses.

Head back to JFK to go get on my Turkish Airlines (if you are my wife, or close loved one, don’t read this) … heading across the pond for the first time in my LIFE!  Wow!

From Monday night through Thursday night I’ll be in Istanbul, Turkey.  I’m doing a one-day event called Social Networking for Marketers, which will be simultaneously translated as I speak – I’m very excited to learn how Turkish business and marketing professionals are using social networking in their marketing, and to see how my message is received.  This is also the first trip that I’m not overbooking myself so I can do some sight-seeing and buy stuff for my family (more than the customary postcard, which my kids put on their wall)….!

Thursday, March 12

Arrive at JFK around 5pm.  I’m told all flights into JFK are late, so I have no idea when I’ll really get there, or get through customs… and I’m also told my body and brain will be messed up from jet lag for at least 2 weeks.

Great, another thing to mess up my brain 😉

I’m intentionally not scheduling anything on Thursday night although it pains me to have a whole in my calendar.

Friday, March 13

Hm, just read that this is Friday the 13th.  Hope things go well!

NYC, 7:30am – 10pm: Another Social Media Business Tools and Technologies for Entrepreneurs, Small Business and Career Transitions 2009 and Beyond (Bill Sobel event), but this one focused on career transitions.

NYC, noonish: Columbia J School (not sure where it is, but here’s a blog you can reference – hopefully Sree sees this and can leave a comment with details).  This is an open presentation where I’ll talk about “Next Generation Job Hunting,” sharing my own experience from the last three years and talking about how JibberJobber can be used by college students to prepare them for their job searches.  I’m sure I’ll talk about other cool stuff, too :p

NYC, 7pm (I think): Dinner with the ETP folks… I can’t find a link to this, so someone from ETP please leave a comment with a link, and let us know if there is more room to come.

Saturday, March 14

Morning: somewhere I hope to do an event but we’re still working on the details (looking for a free venue).  This is in coordination with some a meetup (more info later, I hope).

Afternoon: meet with with Dave Perry and Kevin Donlin… excited to meet with them!

7pm, fly back to SLC, arriving before midnight.

And after this I’ll be home for about a month… !  Yippee!