I've been reading Jason Alba's blog for quite some time now. I chatted with him earlier in the week and wanted to share some information about his company and product; JibberJobber.
JibberJobber is a “personal relationship management tool” set up by Jason. Jason lost his job in January 2006 - you can find out about this via his blog. Basically though, Jason realised that he wasn’t being very effective, efficient or organised in his job hunt. In fact Jason wasn’t getting any results. He decided to better organise the process via a relationship management tool which he created himself. Then he had one of those eureka moments (actually, I don’t know if he had a eureka moment – but I guess he must have!) when he realised how useful it would be to share this newly created tool with others.
JibberJobber is a way for individuals to organise and manage a job search (where did I send my CV?, what CVs and reference letters do I have?, who is in my network?, etc). However, it’s not just for active jobseekers. In fact, Jason thinks he probably has less job seekers using the system than people interested in managing their long term relationships. Jason’s advice is to have all the resources ready for when you need to look for a new job.
The site doesn't replace job boards, recruitment agencies, face to face networking and/or looking for jobs in newspaper adverts. It’s positioned as a complement to these; acting as a central hub to allow someone to manage all of the information/data that they get from each of these sources (and more).
Statistics show that people change jobs every 3-5 years – JibberJobber ensures you have all the information from your last job search to hand as soon as you are ready to start looking again - you don't have to start from scratch each time.
JibberJobber has a paid for service. However, you can use about 90% of the functionality for free. For example you can manage up to 250 contacts as part of the free service.
So how can a recruiter benefit from JibberJobber?. If you want to help out the candidates that you can’t place right now why not recommend they use JibberJobber to manage their job search. In much the same way you may recommend a specific job board or an interview coaching company. Apart from the fact that you will have made a good impression you should find that the candidate comes back to you at a later stage (probably 3 to 5 years time when they are looking for another job move) and maybe this time they’ll be a candidate you can place. Actually, maybe they’ll call you as soon as they get a new job – as a client! Jason tells me that at least one recruiter he knows is including a link to JibberJobber in his email signature file.
Of course, recruiters also need to change jobs occasionally so you might find it useful for your own career management
Jason now runs JibberJobber full time. He has registered users spread across the world – but with a strong audience in the US (he is based in Utah). The UK is probably his second largest market and one he'd love to develop more in.
I like the site and Jason seems like a really nice person to do business with. It’s basically a free tool with extra functionality you can pay for. Definitely worth a look – and consider passing the word on to your candidates.
