Organize Your Job Search & Manage Relationships

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is JibberJobber?

  JibberJobber is your Personal Relationship Manager for your career. Just as a salesperson would use a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) system, like Salesforce.com or Goldmine or ACT!, to keep track of their sales leads, JibberJobber helps you keep track of your job search, networking contacts and other career management information. Many businesses, especially entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and people who have a need to manage a relationship, use JibberJobber as their CRM. For example, we use JibberJobber as our relationship management tool as we network into companies.

• How do I keep track of my job applications?

  The typical job search involves applying to as many jobs as you can. The real challenge becomes keeping track of all of the places you apply to. JibberJobber helps you keep track of the jobs you applied to, including your target companies, anyone you have contact with there (including interviewers and decision makers), and dates and information about each contact. This might not seem confusing at the beginning of your job search but once you apply to a few jobs at a few companies, day after day, it can get very confusing. In JibberJobber you'll want to use the Jobs page to add each job you apply to. You can easily paste in in the job description (since by the time you interview you might not be able to find it online), as well as which version of which resume you used to apply to the job. All of this tracking will come in handy a few weeks into your job search when things feel confusing!

• What is the best job search method?

  There is no single best job search method because there are so many factors involved, the most confusing of which is the human factor. Ask ten different people involved in hiring for advice and you'll get ten very different answers, usually based on personal experiences. Even the age-old wisdom (and statistics) that "most jobs are found through networking" is apparently based on a survey from the sixties! Looking for a job right out of school is different than looking for your third or fourth job, which is different from looking for an executive job. Throw in discrimination, the economic climate, and industry shifts and coming up with one bit of advice can be difficult. Having said that, there are certain principles of almost any successful job search, including: Talking to people. This is also called networking. People need to know you, and what you are looking for, in order to give you the right leads. We created an awesome program called the Job Search Program to help you have the right conversations with the right people. Check it out here. Looking where jobs are. This might mean on job boards, or at companies that are hiring, or talking to people who are really connected to the job search process in your area. There are companies out there growing, and hiring, and they need your services. Finding those is a matter of looking in the right places and talking to the right people. Consistently repeating those two things over time. They have said the job search is a numbers game. If you think that means sending out a certain number of resumes, I'll disagree with you. But if you think that means you consistently, over time, talk to the right people the right way about the right things, I'll agree.

• Why shouldn’t I just use a spreadsheet?

  You can make your own spreadsheet to manage your information, which is kind of how JibberJobber started. Here are some reasons why we wouldn’t go that route:

  1. The free version of JibberJobber already does more than what your Excel spreadsheet could do.
  2. If you are like most people, your spreadsheet will continually change, until it gets to be too much to manage, or not make sense anymore.
  3. If you lose your Excel file (it was on your computer at work, and since you got laid off, um, you don’t have access to it or your computer crashes), then you lose all of your information (and possibly, you lose your mind).
  4. How many spreadsheets have you started before that are meaningless now? JibberJobber’s features will only improve and be more relevant to you as time goes on.
  5. This is only for the engineer-minded people out there: We know you spend hours, days and weeks creating and tweaking your spreadsheet. We hear it from you and from your coaches and counselors. Stop wasting your time tweaking and start your job search. JibberJobber is already set up – just use it and then go network!

• What happens to my data if I downgrade (say, once I find a job?)

  You get a lifetime free account (Regular) with the option to upgrade to (or downgrade from) a Premium account as you wish. When you downgrade you will not lose any of your data – it is all still there and accessible to you. You can associate your Contacts to Companies, create Log Entries, etc. If you are over the limit on the number of records you can have you won’t be able to add a new record, but you’ll still be able to see your data and use it. This is very helpful for future job searches. And really, you should network between job searches!