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2009 is over.  The entire decade is over.

It’s all history.  I hope you did stuff you were proud of.  I did a few things I’m proud of, and have a few projects that will roll over to next year.

I even have a project I’ll rollover for anytime next decade.

The point is, no matter what you wanted to do, no matter what your good intentions were, it’s too late to count them for this last year or decade.

What you choose to do now, each day, each month, each year, is a part of the legacy you leave.  Hopefully your legacy will be rich and meaningful, not a simple byline.

You, I, we, have the power to do and change.

So get busy.

Or, as Dory from Finding Nemo sings, “just keep swimming, just keep swimming!”

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Many people ask how to send emails with/through JibberJobber.

It is important to understand that we are neither an email client (like Outlook, your Gmail page, etc.) or an email server (the system that processes emails – gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or a corporate email server).

Also, there are various services that allow you to send emails to many people (think: newsletters) such as Constant Contact, iContact, Mail Chimp, etc.  We don’t do that either – those companies invest mega bucks to ensure they are as compliant as they can be with current email policies (laws).  It’s messy, hairy stuff.

However, we can do various things.  Here’s my response to someone who recently asked how to send emails from JibberJobber:

“Just to clarify, JibberJobber is not sending the emails. We’ve found we get into trouble if we send too many emails (people flag us as spammers, which hurts all users). When you do what Liz suggests below (go to the Network List Panel, click multiple users, then click the Send Email icon (for premium users)), you are simply putting the addresses into the email client you are currently using – this could be outlook, gmail, etc. Whatever your computer recognizes as the default email client.

You can also do that from the List Panel – one of the columns you can show is the Email Address, and it can be hyperlinked to bring up the email client also (this is one at a time, compared to what Liz suggested). To show the column, if it isn’t showing, click Manage Columns. To make it hyperlink (if it isn’t), go to My Account, Preferences, and you’ll see a checkbox to turn on (one-by-one is a free feature).

My favorite way of doing this is with Get Contact List (premium feature – I see you are a Premium user). There is a video on how to use this on this page: http://www.jibberjobber.com/videos.php#Network (the first video is how to use it, the third is awesome).”

There you go…

Will we ever send emails FROM JibberJobber?

I doubt it… it is too easy to get into hot water with spam blacklists – it just takes one idiot who flags an email from JibberJobber as spam – whether it was by accident or because they forgot they signed up for a newsletter, or someone who was invited to JibberJobber from another user – and then every user is penalized.  I don’t want you to miss your Action Item reminders just because of all of the spam issues.

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The title of this book is 100 Job Search Tips from FORTUNE 500 Recruiters.

Get a highlighter and then print this book out (17 pages) – there are so many gems in here it is crazy.  It’s free, and yes, it’s priceless.

I got a sneak peak of this book and thought it would be cool and informative. I grossly underestimated the amount of information and value the book provides.

In this book EMC recruiters questions like:

• What is your favorite recruiting story?
• What are your top recruiting sources?
• What are the top 3 common mistakes that job seekers make?
• What are your top 10 job search strategies?
• Any final words?

The input is AMAZING.

Some stories are funny, some are sad.

The “recruiting sources” (where these recruiters look for talent) might surprise you!

I’m not going to go on anymore…. go download the free ebook and see for yourself!

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I have a lot on my mind as I finish this year/decade.  But the most important thing to share with you is what I just wrote on my LinkedIn blog:

I know, it isn’t Thanksgiving … but I wanted to write and thank each of you for your support, your readership, and your evangelism.

Many of you know my journey here (and on JibberJobber) started from a miserable job search.  There have been tough times – tough financially, socially, etc.  But we have made it through quite a bit, and have big plans for the future.

I realize, though, that none of this could have happened without your support – and believe me, we’ve felt your support!

So, with that, a heartfelt THANK YOU!

My heart is full with gratitude.  I think about many of you often – the ones I have met personally, the ones who I’ve not met but have corresponded with, and the ones who have come across my site and blog and who hopefully have received some kind of support or inspiration.

Thank you for everything!

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That word has been on my mind a lot this year.

I think I’m disrupting an industry, right now.

I won’t have many fans from within that industry, but everyone tells me the time is ripe to disrupt it…. someone is going to do it, why not me?

I want to be in charge of the disruption.  Or at least, one of the early disrupters.

This year, tens of thousands of people have had their careers disrupted.

Instead of being in charge of the disruption, they have been disrupted.  Many feel like the carpet was pulled out from under them.  Some got up fine, others lay on the ground wounded.

Would you rather be a disrupter, and have some control over the direction (or at least feel like you have some control), or a disruptee, and lay down wounded, wondering what the heck’s going on?

The year is over.  The decade is over.

Next year, next decade, is YOURS.

Disrupt.  Or be disrupted.

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We’ve had some really cool upgrades lately, and I wanted to share 3 things I do my own relationship management in JibberJobber that I really appreciate:

1. Adding new contacts just by using their Twitter handle. Sometimes I find myself adding a new contact manually, and then remember that I know them because of Twitter.  Alas, you don’t have to use Twitter to make use of this cool feature – the neat thing is we pull in stuff from their Twitter profile, including their picture (!), location, bio, URL, and some stats from Twitter.  It takes about 4 seconds to enter all of that if you have the person’s Twitter handle… so cool! (how?  click here)
2. Adding images of contacts from a URL. I just announced this last week, but man it’s so cool.  In fact, it’s been on my development wish list for over 2 years!  I LOVE how it takes about 30 seconds, from start to finish, to put someone’s picture on their profile.  Oh, if I’m already on their detail page it takes about 8 seconds!  So cool! (how?  click here)
3. Create log entries via email.  This is another relatively new feature, but I find myself using it multiple times each day.  When I write an email that I want to log, I first make sure the contact is in my JibberJobber database, and that their email addy is the one I’m sending to, and then I put my ultra-secret JJ email addy in the BCC and the log entry is automatically created.  SO USEFUL. (how?  click here)

Love it – thanks to the users who share their ideas, and thanks to my dev team who makes all the magic work!

Viva la relationship management!

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(didn’t mean to rant when I first started this… but this stuff really bugs me)

I’m in Utah, which is where this article comes from: Utah unemployment rate drops to 6.3 percent.  I clicked over because I find anything under 9% to be remarkable.

I recently read that “Detroit’s Unemployment Rate is Nearly 50%, According to the Detroit News” (and here is the Detroit News link).

Which seems more believable?  6.3% or 50%?

In Utah, a state economist is giving the number, and the article even says this “may mark a turning point in the state’s economic recovery.”

This bothers me (more on that later).

In Detroit, the mayor said (click the link to see it there) “the city’s official unemployment rate was as believable as Santa Claus.”  (sorry for the spoiler on next week’s main event)

Who is to believe, the state economist  with the good news, or the mayor of a city (an elected official) with the grim thought?

Surprisingly, I’m siding with the elected official.  To the state employee’s defense, though, he is only reporting on a certain kind of statistic that was predefined… so he’s just doing his job.

THIS STATISTIC (unemployment rate) IS FLAWED, MISLEADING, AND DECEPTIVE.

To the average Joe or Jane Worker, the unemployment rate seems to be the number of people who can’t get a job.

Unfortunately, the way unemployment is measured, it’s not that simple.  The official unemployment rate does not take into consideration “those who gave up the job search more than a year ago,” which, according to the Detroit News, could be more than 100,000 potential workers in Detroit.

100,000 workers.  And their families, and other dependents.  And their bill collectors.

Why are they left out of the unemployment numbers?

As far as I know, unemployment numbers are based on those who are reporting to the government — those who are collecting unemployment insurance.

Guess what… unemployment insurance RUNS OUT.  And then, you are so worthless, you aren’t even counted as a statistic!  You are essentially written off the books.

Yeah, this really gets under my skin. And we aren’t even talking about UNDEREMPLOYED people!!

I gotta stop blogging because this makes me so mad… but I’ll leave it with this one thought:

Aside from the sad fact that there are human beings on the other side of these numbers, the scary thing is that the government is making decisions based on these numbers.  Unemployment rising or lowering is virtually meaningless to me, as it paints an incomplete picture.

<angry!>

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I was honored to make the top 11 (not the top 10) in the Top HR Digital Influencers 2009 list.

The list of bloggers here is really fantastic, and it’s flattering to be on here.  This list is based on certain levels of traffic and links and stuff like that (quantifiable stuff), not necessarily quality of content or even whether they are active bloggers anymore (Joel Cheesman is ranked at #3 but discontinued his usually-number-one blog back in September).

It’s really cool to see relatively-newcomer Mark Stelzner on this list, and it’s even more cool to see he’s at #1.  Mark has done a fantastic job as the founder (cofounder?) of Job Angels.

Launce Haun has always been awesome  and well-respected, as have Jessica Lee (met her in person!) and Kris Dunn.

I’m surprised to have gotten a better ranking than Laurie Ruettimann (what a punk she is!) and Jason Davis, as both of them have been a big part of RecruitingBlogs.com, which is one of the best-run Ning sites I’ve ever seen.

It’s an honor to rank higher than Bill Vick, recruiting genius, and Peter Clayton, the mastermind behind Total Picture Radio, even though I think they are way better than I am.

There are a few names I don’t recognize, but I’ll get familiar with them in a bit.

If you are interested in jobs, job creation, employment, recruiting, the job search and hiring issues, there’s a great list of blogs to follow.

I do wonder (so does Laurie R.) why some other terrific advisors are not on this list – I mentioned the writers at Career Hub recently, and I never see Nick Crocodilos (brilliant information) on any of these lists, although he should be.  And it will be interesting to see my competition and other job seeker software vendors get on these lists next year (hopefully), as many of the resume writers and career coaches who have started blogging in the last year or two.  Oi vey, where are the outplacement firm blogs?

Thanks HR Examiner, for the recognition and work!

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I just got information from my JibberJobber Partner, Beverly Harvey, about a telesminar she is hosting on Friday called “How To Conduct a Highly Successful Job Acquisition Campaign and Land Your Next Position ASAP”

The call is this Friday, Dec 18, at 1pm EST.  She says you’ll learn:

• Why the job acquisition techniques you used a few years ago aren’t working
• What decision makers and recruiters are really looking for
• Why you may not be getting called for interviews
• Why you can’t take any short cuts when it comes to your job acquisition campaign
• Why you need a well-though-out strategy, plan and system
• Why you must treat a job acquisition campaign like a marketing campaign
• Why a haphazard, trial-and-error approach won’t work in today’s market

You can register here (affiliate link – she’s introducing her Platinum Job Acquisition Progam on that call).

A little about Beverly: I have met Beverly a number of times at career conferences and have found her to be well-respected, and in fact she is involved in coaching and training job search coaches.  She is definitely current on job search (or, as she says, acquisition) strategies and techniques, and passionate about helping professionals move on.  Her reputation alone is well worth your time on her call on Friday…!

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I’ve had a pet peeve with adding images for, well, quite a while.  But that pet peeve just went away, thanks to my fantastic dev team.  This might not seem like a big deal but it will shave significant time off of my JibberJobber use.

Before yesterday, the only way to put an image on a Contact or Company was to go to the add/edit page, and then browse to your C: drive and upload it.  Today there are new options (you can still do that option).  Check this out (I’m using a Target Company as an example):

From the Company Detail Page, mouse over the company image area – in this case I haven’t put an image so I just see the default image of a building:

When you mouse over the image, you see two icons.  The first icon is the standard EDIT icon, which  brings up the “open” dialogue box from your C: drive…. very cool that you don’t have to go to the entire edit page anymore.  This is pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll let you just figure this out on your own (it is very similar to how it has worked in the past).

The second icon is super cool – you can now simply put in the URL of the image from any website.  I’ll show you how to do that below…

To get a good logo, I go to Images.Google.com.  The reason I do this is because some corporate websites don’t have their logo as a distinct image (instead, it’s part of the background).  I want a distinct image…

1. Go to images.google.com and search for Franklin Covey Logo, like this:

2. I  click on one of these result pages… in this example I click on the one from BusinessWeek, and I get this page:

3. Now, RIGHT CLICK on the link the arrow is pointing to, and from the Right-Click options I choose “Copy Link Address” (or something like that – it is different with each browser). THAT LINK IS CRITICAL.

4. Next, go back to my Detail Page for the company, and click on the second icon … the one with a globe. When I click on that icon it opens a popup box where 5. I put the LINK that I just copied. You can see that I pasted it into the popup box.

5. Click the the OK button, and it takes that image and associates it with the contact record, which now looks like this:

That’s it!

I have dozens of contact records I’m going to do this for… I know this is simple but this is really going to streamline a process I’ve been spending too much time on… YEAH!!! So excited for this cool feature!