One of my favorite series was Char Polanosky’s Essential Tools posts where she interviewed web developers and freelancers about what they used in their jobs.  I figured I’d share what I use with you… I might have forgotten a few things but these are the main software tools I rely on pretty much daily.  In no particular order:

Gmail: it took a while to get used to, especially since I couldn’t file one message into a folder, but as I caught on I fell in LOVE.  I can access it from anywhere, and searching for old emails is awesome.  I use my gmail account as much as I use my JibberJobber account.

Microsoft Outlook: I’m an Outlook guy… always have been.  I love some things about Outlook, and I haven’t been able to replace those things anywhere else.  By the end of this year I suspect I’ll have my gmail and my Outlook 100% integrated, so I get the best of both.  Also, ALL of my calendaring is done on Outlook.

JibberJobber.com: I meet a lot of people and have a lot of conversations.  There is NO WAY I could do what I do without having a “customer relationship” tool.  Many people know JiberJobber as a job search tool, or a website to replace the job search spreadsheet, but I, as a business owner and CEO, use it to manage my relationships.  I login in the morning and it stays open in a browser all day long.

Firefox: As a web developer from 10 years ago I grew to dislike the “browser wars,” since coding something would have to work in multiple versions of multiple browsers.  They all sucked, as far as I was concerned.  But I was introduced to Firefox (FF) as a browser that was highly superior to Internet Explorer (IE) by a group of uber-geek programmers, and I thought I’d give it a shot.  I quickly fell in love with a few things… the most important for me is how fast it is (or, how much faster it is than IE).  This is my browser of choice… although I do some testing and other stuff in IE.

Skype: My business phone number is a “skype-in” number… I make all of my business calls from a headset hooked up to my computer through Skype.  There have been a few quirks here and there, but overall I’m really pleased with the service.  And the ability to chat with other skype people is icing on the cake, since it’s become a backup place to chat to my team members, who all work remotely.

Microsoft Live Messenger: I love what used to be called IM (the tool, which was “Instant Messenger”) and is not Live Messenger.  I tried Trillian, which would allow me to put all of my chat accounts in one place, but it didn’t satisfy me.  My messenger of choice is Microsoft’s.  I LOATHE Yahoo messenger (sorry).  But, as mentioned above, if it goes down (not totally uncommon), I can always jump on Skype chat… and increasingly I’m chatting with people on Gmail.

Notepad: This is one of those Microsoft utilities… lightweight and easy to use.  It has become my “sticky notes” or “post-it notes” … when I have a thought I’ll open up a new one, jot my notes down, and then when I’m done I’ll close the file without saving.  For example, the list of stuff in this post is on a notepad file that I’ll close as soon as I’m done writing it.  Another example: when I’m on the phone I’ll take notes in Notepad.  When I hang up, I clean up the notes and then copy and paste into a log entry in JibberJobber.

SnagIt: I grab images from the web regularly – whether it’s a screenshot for my development team or a picture of YOU (if I add you to JibberJobber)… it’s super easy to do with TechSmith’s SnagIt… which allows me to put annotations, borders, arrows, highlight, etc. on the image.  Any image on my blog will have gone through SnagIt before it gets to my blog.  If I don’t have SnagIt I feel lost.  I’ve used this tool for at least five years.

Twitter: Love it or not, Twitter does it for me.  It’s pretty cool.  If Twitter can figure out how to keep the spammers out/down, it would be better.  Meanwhile I’m enjoying it, and am able to communicate to a group of people who want to hear from me.  You can follow me at Twitter.com/JasonAlba.

LinkedIn: I use this when I see a name of someone I want to learn more about. If we are going to be on a phone call, go to a lunch, or have communicated via email and are taking our professional relationship to the next level, you can bet I’ve gone to your LinkedIn Profile to figure out who you are.

PayPal: I know there are PayPal haters out there, but I’ve not really had a problem with it.  There are many people I’ve paid with PayPal, and many people who have paid me through PayPal.  I’ve also been able to purchase a number of things using PayPal instead of my credit card, which has made it easier/faster to purchase what I’ve needed.

Honorable mention: Camtasia: Another TechSmith product, this is what I use to do the JibberJobber tutorial recordings.  LOVE IT.

I hope this has been helpful … I’m not saying you have to use any of these, but I find many of these indispensable.  What do you recommend?

I used to work for the Federal Government.  When I decided to leave my clerical position and go to private industry as a web developer, I had a number of people come and warn me that I was leaving the most secure thing I could ever have.  (read my thoughts about job security here)

How could private industry compete with the steady paycheck and the acceptable benefits that the gov’t would provide?  If I just stayed a few decades longer perhaps I could work my way up and make enough money to raise a family (at the time I was making about $10.50 an hour).

They thought I was nuts to leave such a good thing.  And good it was, for sure, for some people.  I have family and friends who have a great retirement after spending their careers in government service.  My career envy thoughts even made me think about the FBI or Air Force as options.

But here’s something that I think is just downright sad… check out this CNN article titled Pennsylvania withholds July pay.

WHAT???

Oh, it gets better… in the article it says Pennsylvania is withholding pay for 69,000 state employees. You’ve heard about California sending out IOUs?  That’s because they have a $26B shortfall.  So hey, take this IOU and pay your bills.  Actually, some debtors took the IOUs for a short time, but either they have stopped taking IOUs or they have a date on when they won’t accept them anymore.  This will ruin personal and business credit.

So much for job security.  The second to last line in that article says “Many thousands of California workers will lose their jobs.”

How’s that for security.

I feel my career envy dwindling already.

I have a friend who is in a job search.  My friend is mad.  He’s hurt, wounded, depressed, sad, and feels incompetent.

But really, he’s MAD.

He’s mad at the people responsible for him being in this job search.  (You might not be mad, but if you are overly hurt, wounded, depressed, sad, etc. and it shows, this post is for you)

Okay, I get it.  I’m mad too, and it’s been almost FOUR YEARS!  The problem with him, though, is that everyone knows he’s mad.

And people feel bad for him, and some get mad with him, and no one blames him for feeling MAD.

But no one is ready to really help him.  No one is ready to spend their “relationship capital” on him for one simple reason: they are not willing to risk their relationship capital when it might backfire.

Since he is so mad, the introduction might backfire.  You see, when I spent time to nurture a relationship, I don’t want it jeopardized by someone who is MAD… someone who I “highly recommend that you chat with.”

I would not give an intro to someone who will ruin my relationship capital.  This person needs to figure out how to talk about what has happened with him  Here are some key thoughts:

• Be concise. What happened to you has happened to… well, almost anyone who has been working for a few years.  I don’t want to hear every detail… just sum it up and let me know that you are in transition.
• Don’t be negative. As you tell “your side” of the story you might make yourself look like a risk. Was there a reason you were let go?  Was it performance-related? Where you a legal liability?  And, if you are talking this way about your old boss, how are you going to talk about ME?  You should be able to figure out a way to explain why you are in transition that does not make you look bad, nor does it make you look like a whiny gossip, nor does it make you look like you are anxious to spread the bad word about your past employer (which I might one day become).
• Make an impression about YOU. You have a few seconds to make an impression and share a message – why would you take precious time to talk about something that really doesn’t matter, or help you in any way?

I know that it sucks, and I’m not suggesting you have to be a Pollyanna, but beware of how you communicate your why, let you turn off your network contacts.

There’s a term I started using after talking with a Keith Ferrazzi employee a year or two ago: Relationship Capital.

When I talk about Relationship Capital I am referring to the “capital” I am building up in that relationship.  It comes from nurturing individual relationships.  People might be referring to the level of TRUST they have with a contact when they talk about relationship capital.

I do not think of relationship capital as something I need to get a return on… in other words, if I have an investment I want to get a return on my money invested.

With relationship capital I develop relationships so that I can add more value to the relationships or, if needed, they can add value to me.  I think a one-to-one comparison with any other investment, especially where you will take you investment off the table if it doesn’t give you the ROI you want, is not fair.  If you think of your relationships that way they will probably seem one-sided or fake.

Building relationship capital is deeper than that.

However, understand that one day I might want to take a draw on that relationship capital, which might mean i ask for a favor, or an introduction, or something like that.

Tomorrow I have a post that I talk about networking and using relationship capital….

Have you heard of, or do you refer to, relationship capital?  Perhaps an almost-good-enough phrase to describe something we all need to be working on.

Tomorrow is the free webinar with Mark Hovind, where we ask him about this recession and what he has learned and what he predicts based on past data.  SIGN UP FOR THE FREE WEBINAR HERE.  And come a few minutes early…  It starts on Tuesday, July 21 at 11am MST (That is mountain time… if you are Eastern you add two hours.  If you are in Pacific you subtract one hour.  If you are in Arizona you… well, I have no idea what people in Arizona do.)

Mark developed this graph where you can see the highs and lows of the economy from 1940:

Interesting that a few decades ago the HIGHS where really high and the LOWS were really low… but since the early 70’s there hasn’t seemed to be a significant LOW… until now.

Also interesting that the lowest HIGH was in the eary 2000’s, right after the dot-bomb.  A low HIGH and then dunking right into this current LOW?  Not fun.

Here are some of the questions I want to ask Mark (questions are relevant for job seekers, career managers, business owners, CEOs of Me, Inc., and those working for someone else):

1. What does this mean for us TODAY? Assume we are towards the bottom of this recession… what should we be doing today in our jobs or career management?
2. If we start to climb soon, then what?  What should we do? I’m guessing it won’t be all rosie (sp?) right away… but won’t we manager our stuff (careers, business, jobs) differently?
3. What are you projected time-frames for coming out of this recession? How should we plan accordingly?
4. What will it mean when we are above the green or black lines again?
5. What might “above the line(s)” look like?  Short, fast, … ? How long will the good be good?

What questions do you have?  Join us tomorrow morning, hear from Mark, and ask your questions.  I doubt we’ll have time to field all questions, because of the number of people signed up… but come anyway.

I’LL TRY AND RECORD IT BUT I CAN’T PROMISE ANYTHING RIGHT NOW…

Please let others know about this webinar – blog about it, tweet about it, etc.  We still have plenty of room left (there are 1,000 seats available).

This is a guest post by Chris Perry, of Career Rocketeer.

There are countless approaches you can take to successfully pursue employment opportunities in your MBA job search, many of which entail some use of web tools, job search engines and professional networks.

Despite all of the various options available online, you essentially need three things online to effectively pursue job opportunities: (1) an attractive online resume, (2) a professional network and (3) a way to keep track of all of your professional contacts and search activities.  Based on my research and personal experience from the MBA job search trenches, I recommend VisualCV, LinkedIn and JibberJobber as what I like to call the MBA Job Search Triple Play.

VisualCV offers you a new and free way to display your resume and begin establishing your presence and personal brand online.  I like to consider VisualCV the pioneer of resume 2.0. While your VisualCV looks more like a traditional resume than a typical online profile, it is so much more, allowing you not only to incorporate your professional experience, education, etc., but also a portfolio of your previous work and/or publications, references and recommendations, links to your social networks, professional media sources, such as video clips and images, and other achievements and awards. VisualCV brings you and your resume to life and really enhances your career search efforts. You can even buy your own domain name and forward it to your VisualCV so to quickly refer employers and recruiters to your information.

LinkedIn is the leading professional network on the web, so if you don’t have your free account already, get one today! Complete your profile with all of your information, add your photo and link to your website, blog and your VisualCV.  Build your network by connecting with coworkers, supervisors, professors, classmates, friends, family members and anyone else you know or meet throughout your career and your job search.  Get recommendations from respected contacts to increase your credibility, join and participate in groups to network with others to get more involved and answer questions to help others and gain expertise and insight in your field.  You can also identify target companies and connect with their contacts in your job search, as well as use LinkedIn’s own comprehensive job board to apply for opportunities.

JibberJobber is the ultimate career management system.  VisualCV offers you the resume and LinkedIn provides you the network, but it’s JibberJobber that helps you keep your head above water in your job search and manage all of your search efforts and activities for free.  Based on CRM software, the system allows you to add and categorize your contacts, track who referred them to you, keep contact-specific notes, rate the evolving strength of your professional relationship with them and create reminders for future networking.  With JibberJobber, you can also keep track of your target companies, your contacts within these companies, each individual job for which you apply and its status throughout the application process.  However, its features and offerings don’t stop there!  There are multiple career search resources and tools available to help career seekers with interview preparation, job search expenses, salaries and more.

These three tools are godsends for anyone seeking employment opportunities, but especially for full-time MBA students, collectively saving them time, energy and sanity in their pursuit.  So, don’t let the opportunity to leverage them in your job search pass you by!

Chris Perry is a Gen Y Brand and Marketing Generator, a Career Search and Personal Branding Expert and the Founder of Career Rocketeer, the Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.

I am asked to review LinkedIn Profiles on a regular basis – I really don’t have the time to do many, but every once in a while I like to do a healthy assessment of a LinkedIn Profile.  Normally I’d do this on my LinkedIn blog but today I’ll share it with you.

If you have any LinkedIn questions, consider getting my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD.  This is not just for job seekers… it’s a great tutorial to get up to speed on getting value out of LinkedIn (I spend the first 3 sections on Profiles).

Clint Goudie-Nice is the lucky one today… let’s start:

• THANK YOU for not putting anything in the name field except your name.  Drives me nuts to see email addresses, LION, etc. (which are all against the terms of service).
• Great picture – I love it.  One thing I like about this picture is how close your head is… I’ve seen a few recently where the person is like 10 or 20 feet away from the camera and I can’t make out enough details.
• The LinkedIn professional headline is … okay. You are missing an opportunity, however, to put a marketing pitch there (think 30 second commercial condensed down to a 5 second commercial).  The professional headline is a great place to communicate your value-add, and will be seen in various places in the LinkedIn experience.

• You need more LinkedIn Recommendations. I know Clint personally (he bought me a burrito yesterday!), and know that Clint is an awesome systems architect… why doesn’t he have more LinkedIn Recommendations?  I’d expect him to have at least 10 really awesome Recommendations.  Get to work on that!
• You should have more connections.  I know Clint networks a lot, and is a nice, likable (sp?) person.  I talk about how to grow a relevant network in my LinkedIn DVD.

• Do you sell candles… is that your “Company?”  Or is this a link to your current employer?  Is your “Website” your family blog?  Don’t make me guess – instead of choosing the default labels for this, choose “Other” and then type something descriptive in.

• I highlighted the things that stuck out to me as errors in grammar or spelling or formatting… I could be wrong on some, but they just looked wrong.  Clint should have cleaned this up by now (I haven’t looked), but you don’t want your Summary to detract from your message and capabilities.  Some people won’t care and won’t catch them … others will let errors like this become an issue.  Proof your Summary, and then have about 10 others proof it and provide feedback.
• I like how Clint has a lot more than two paragraphs here… I think he’s still shy of the limit (2,000 characters), which I’d recommend he works towards.
• I like the voice, and the message, in general.  Would like to see some “for example” stories.
• I think the ending could be stronger… it’s okay as-is, but I wonder how it could make more of an impression.

• I’ve never seen this before but I really like it – it solves the issue of “how do I talk about different jobs I had at the same company?” … he has done this a number of times in his profile.

• My question to Clint was, which of these add value to your branding and overall message, and which of these do not?  Those that do not are distractions, or noise, and you should not show them on your Profile.

This is kind of a quick-and-dirty LinkedIn Profile review… check out the LinkedIn DVD, were I go over five other professionals’ Profiles… and much more!

How is YOUR Profile?

JibberJobber will never be a fully-loaded CRM, with all the bells and whistles and processes and such.  But it is a terrific relationship management tool… no doubt about that.  You may think of it as a job hunt organizer, but I’ve used it for three years as my entrepreneur CRM.  So I was very pleased to get feedback from another entrepreneur who has seen value in JibberJobber in just a short period of time (yeah, three days!).  This is from Rob Llewellyn, in Europe (I tried to highlight and italicize the good stuff but that was pretty much every line – this speaks to my heart!):

I’m an Independent Programme Manager based in Central Europe with a good network across Europe & the Middle East where I do all my work. I’ve been lucky enough to rely on less than 5% of that network for all my work (6-12 month contracts) in recent years. I have a niche LinkedIn network of around 766 but it gets messy trying to work it AND stay organised AND do the contract search work AND remember in 6 months time what I last spoke to Fred Blogs about. Sure I remember the high profile conversations but not the lower priority ones.

The market is lean now and advertised work (that is, posted jobs) is massively over-applied to. So I need to WORK 100% of my network as opposed to 5% of it. I’ve always focused on building a network, but it suddenly dawned on me that I don’t take advantage of what I’ve built over many years. I was searching Google “how to approach your network for work” and I stumbled across JibberJobber (JJ) again and I’ve taken the trial.

On day one I imported my 766 contacts from LinkedIn, updated old email addresses of people who don’t keep their LinkedIn profile up to date, organised some of the major companies in my network and started filling out other fields in each record.

On day two I exported most of the contacts to a CSV file and imported them to my mailing program “GroupMail”. Then I mailed out to my network, personalising each email with the <insert field> option in GroupMail.

On day three I was overwhelmed with the response from my network and have spent the day writing personally to each person who wrote to me and subsequently increasing the ranking of our relationship, in some cases helping some of those people in their circumstances. That done, I can now update JJ and keep on top of my networking far better, especially as my network is quite large.

I didn’t write to my network blatantly asking for an assignment. I had something useful to tell my contacts (it was about my blog www.consult-llewellyn.com) and I could also refer to the fact that as of next month I’ll be available for a new assignment.

Being an independent, I never cease looking for new opportunities. JJ is a tool that I can use to help me manage my ongoing personal marketing efforts in the months and years ahead.

I’m still only on day three of my trial and the tool has helped me considerably. The excellent video tutorials helped me get to grips with the tool in no time and I shall be upgrading before the trial is up.

Rob Llewellyn

Rob, thanks for the really good feedback – my ego is stroked and the idea that JibberJobber is much more than a job search tool has been justified!

If  you’ve been following me for a few months you know I was a bad job seeker.  I did all the wrong things in my job search.  One of my favorite posts, because I like the advice, is my What I should have done in the first 30 days post ( I share with you what my strategy/tactics were, and what they should have been).

Today I’ll go down another path – if your job search sucks, here are some things to consider:

• Step away and regroup. Seriously – go away.  Or stay away (do a “staycation,” which is a vacation where you don’t go anywhere).  I had serious issues with what I was doing, and got into a bad rut.  The best thing I could have done was to walk away. Perhaps a camping trip (away from technology), or time with a friend, or something like that.  If you are in the job search rut I recommend you get out.  Remember one of the definitions of insanity?  Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results…
• Focus on relationships. As job seekers we like to think we focus on relationships, but I think too often we focus on relationships that can help us get to Point B.  How about you lose yourself in service… just call up your contacts and ask them if there is anything you can do for them, or somehow reach out to them and find ways to serve them.  Here’s an idea … if you have time (you should, if you are in a job search), spend an hour a day serving people in your neighborhood.   Mow someone’s lawn.  Weed a garden.  Buy a tree for $30 and plant it in a neighbor’s yard (get permission first ).  Pick up trash by your house.  Kill some weeds …
• Fix something at your house. I let my house go to pot during my job search… and that wasn’t good for anyone.  There are plenty of things you can do around your house – it might be fixing a drawer or painting a room, cleaning the carpet or repairing a fence.  You know what’s broken… try and get it resolved.  My job search was so fruitless, void of “wins,” that getting something fixed (and done) would have been a nice win I needed for my morale.
• Plant some flowers in your yard (or in an indoor planter). You can spend less than $10 on this one, and it should provide beauty for you for weeks, months or years to come.  A little color in our environment never hurt anyone, right?  I planted some flowers around Mother’s Day and they didn’t seem to do well, but now I see them flowering daily and it is really cool   Think this is too simple?  If it has an impact on your attitude perhaps your networking and efforts will be more fruitful.
• Go back to school. Seriously – maybe it’s time to consider a change, or an enhancement of your skill set… and sometimes a degree (or an advanced degree, or a technical certificate) is what you really need.  The widget on the right of this blog post can show you some schools you might consider.
• Change industries. Maybe you are bored, or burned-out, from your current industry.  If so, stop looking for jobs in that industry – I bet you have transferable skills… right?  Put them to work and think about other industries (or professions) you might be happier in.
• Quit the job search. I did.  I had to.  I was going nowhere looking for new employer, while I had the answer under my nose keyboard the whole time.  Maybe you aren’t supposed to have a j.o.b. anymore… maybe you are supposed to own your own gig, or be a consultant, or a speaker, or a writer, or something else.  Note: Quit the job search doesn’t mean you quit life, but there are other ways to make money than from an employer.  Ever hear of the phrase “income security?”

I agree the economy sucks for job seekers (duh), but maybe the problem is less the economy and more your strategies and tactics… so rethinking what you are doing might be just what you need to do.

Have any other suggestions for when the job search plain sucks?  Of course you should be using JibberJobber.com by now, to manage the admin and organizational aspect of the job search… what else do you suggest?