Manage your Contacts and keep track of your RELATIONSHIPS!

JibberJobber.com is a career management tool! Have you heard of this site? It’s so hot! This website earns it’s popularity as a job seeker’s tool- but there’s more to it.

So as a VA, how do I use it? What benefits do I get? And why I recommen this to all the other VAs and freelancers?

First, I use it to store my contacts. I know you’re thinking “what’s so special about it?”. There’s an import and export feature, so all my gmail, outlook, yahoo and even twitter friend’s contact info are all stored in one place. Not interesting enough for you?

Second, I can track my network connections. I have contact info of people I haven’t met or communicated with, contacts that were referred to me by people I know that I keep for future use. By using this site I can track the degrees of separation. I can remember who gave me the contact info (1st degree) so when I contact the person who has no idea who I am, I could easily inform him/her who gave me the info. And even if you’ve already formed a relationship, it would be something to remember who and how you got introduced.

Third, I can rate my contacts. This is my 2nd favorite. I rate my contacts specially my clients, former clients and potential clients. I rate my relationships with them. So at one glance I’ll remember, if this client has been great, do I want to work with him again. Or do I have a strong potential to get hired by this client. I also add notes to my contacts, I love adding information about my interactions with them, for example, I had a good chat with this potential client, he seems nice, or this client doesn’t like jokes, ect.

Fourth, Tags. They have a tag and category features which make filtering my contacts easier. I mean I can group all of my clients in my outlook or gmail and mark them as clients, but with JibberJobber, I can tag them as clients, good, bad,  generous, cheap, even their location. So for example I want to send my potential clients an email about a VA friend who needs work, I can sort them by clients, good and generous, or I can sort them by my star ratings… Too cool!

Lastly, my favorite, action items. I can plan things that I need to do to establish a good relationship with my contacts. Having a good relationship with my contacts is very important to me, specially my former clients and would-have-been-clients that offered me projects that I couldn’t accept because of my schedule. I want to maintain a good network with them. And action items helps me a lot. I can set an Action Item alert that will alert me via email. My action items are usually about emailing my contacts on certain occasions like birthday, xmass or how about remembering a very special request? Enter it on your account while your memory is fresh and you’ll definitely be reminded even if its months or years from the day you input it.

For me, staying in touch with my old clients and potential clients is important. And not just staying in touch but having a good relationship. It helps broaden my clientele, plus my connections with them can help me with my future projects. Most specially somehow they can help me when I need more hours or worst, I’m out of clients and I need work.

This jibberjobber tool is great for job seekers to track their job search- but it’s also a great tool to manage your professional(or business) network relationships. Try it, poke around the website, you can get a free account and see how it can benefit you. Probably not the same way as it benefits me, but you’ll find it really interesting. I’m sure you’ll have fun rating your contacts and adding notes about them.

Have Fun!

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