Networking Tools to Manage Your Job Search

How would you like to easily manage your job search, especially after you lazed through the summer months, and suspended your job search activities?

It’s about time! The kids are heading back to school in a few days, and the lazy, and somewhat hazy days of summer have come and gone. Now you won’t have any excuses for not ramping up your job search. It’s time to get back to job search school, and the first subject I recommend you enroll in is, How to Network Effectively. To assist you, I am introducing two networking tools to manage your job search. They are Twoople and JibberJobber.

Twoople was developed in my backyard – in my own City of Brampton – so I am pleased to be highlighting it here. I first heard about the tool in an article on TechCrunch and Fast Company. When you are mentioned in these two media, you know you ‘have arrived’!

A few months later I met the co-founders, Pat Arlia, Rino Spano & Cristina Arlia, at a networking event hosted by The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Toronto. A few weeks ago I reached out to Pat to find out how job seekers could use Twoople to network and engage with recruiters, and potential employers. Here are some of the main points from our discussion:

• Twoople is an engagement messenger for people who don’t know each other. It is, therefore, a great networking tool for job seekers and recruiters.
• A Twoople address is an alternative to a phone number or email address. My Twoople address, for example, is http://www.twoople.me/daisywright.
• Unlike Skype and BBM that require registration, Twoople users don’t have to wait for someone to add them or accept an invitation. Registration is one click and you’re ready to chat.
• Email addresses are never shared. That ensures a certain degree of privacy, especially if someone does not want people to know his or her email address.
• The tool is universal, meaning it can be used from anywhere in the world, and since it’s a URL, no apps are required.

To begin networking on Twoople, a job seeker could offer their Twoople address as a way for a recruiter to quickly chat with them, should they prefer a chat instead of an email or phone. Increasingly, people prefer to chat but it’s not always possible between two people who aren’t yet acquainted. Twoople opens the door to potential connections.

Experiment with this free, easy-to-use tool and see how many network connections you can make. And by the way, businesses are using it to connect with other businesses, as well as with consumers.

JibberJobber was developed by one of my colleagues, Jason Alba. It is a powerful tool that lets you manage your career, from job search to relationship management to target company management (and much more). According to Jason, it “allows you to do everything you need to do to manage a job search and optimize your network relationships – for the duration of your career!”

To organize your job search, and manage all of the information you are going to have to manage, sign up for a free account on JibberJobber.com. This is where you can put contact information, including phone numbers and email addresses, list your target companies and what jobs you have applied for. You can enter information such as which version of your resume you used to apply to what job; who it was sent to, and when do you need to follow-up. That is a lot of information to keep track of, especially as you network more and more, and apply to more job openings.

JibberJobber’s strength is helping you follow-up and not miss opportunities. This is done with the log entries and action items. For a nominal upgrade (as low as $5 a month), you can have additional features, including the ability to send emails to JibberJobber to create new contacts, log entries and action items.

Jason does weekly webinars to help users get started, and I highly recommend that you sign up at JibberJobber Webinars.

As you head back to Job Search School, take these tools with you and use them if you want to stay ahead of your competitors. Please use the Comment space below to share any other job search tool that you are aware of that could help another job seeker. Will you?

About Daisy

I am Daisy Wright, an award winning certified career management and interview coach, author, and certified resume strategist. I collaborate with executives, managers, and mid-career professionals in all aspects of their career and job search to help them get hired FASTER! I am the Founder and Chief Encouragement Officer of The Wright Career Solution and quite passionate about diversity and inclusion and women's issues.

Website: www.thewrightcareer.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/daisywright
Twitter: @CareerTips2Go