The piece that hit the hardest was as follows:

But there is another group of clients. They’ve done NOTHING. No phone calls, no meetings, no real opportunities.
All they do all day is send out a few emails, check the job boards, tighten up their resume. That’s it.

Then he goes to to say, “you are just avoiding getting a job!”

After pondering on it for a second, I realized how right he is. If you are not putting real effort into finding a job, you are likely not going to get one. You have to put forth an effective plan and that plan should have a component of reaching out and meeting real people that can help you land your next job. If your plan doesn’t attempt to get you in touch with people that can help you find champions or hiring managers then you are missing out on a critical piece of a job search. By reaching decision-makers, champions, or key influencers you are greatly improving your odds of landing an interview (and getting hired).

While Rich Gee and JobCannon may not have the exact same plan for reaching those decision-makers we do agree that this is critical to the success of a job search.

So if we can give you nothing more to think about today it would be this: get out and meet some real people. Step out of your comfort zone and try and reach key people that can help you find your next job. We at JobCannon believe email is an effective medium for making those initial inquiries and finding key people to support your job search, but no matter what method you use choose (phone calls, written letters, carrier pigeon, etc) you are only helping yourself.

Imagine my relief when I found that it’s a blog post with some excellent advice that has nothing to do with what JobCannon does.

The post is really about how you should customize your cover letters and applications when applying for positions.

I would like to draw your attention both to the post and to the comment that I made to the post regarding how what JobCannon does is different from what she’s talking about.

Please help JobCannon get on the U.S. Department of Labor’s radar!

Instructions:

1. Visit here and click on “Login/Sign-up” in the top-right area (grey background)
2. In that pop-up, login with your Google, Wordpress, AOL, etc. account (easiest), or just create a login.
3. Click over to JobCannon’s page and click the THUMBS UP. Make sure it increments by one vote.

Thanks!

Thank you for your patience while we work to improve our site.

We wanted to let everyone know about an activity the US Department of Labor is sponsoring. They are trying to identify the best on-line job search and career advancement tools. JobCannon has been added to their initial list. We would certainly appreciate your support by voting for JobCannon. Here is what The Department of Labor is saying about the challenge.

The Department of Labor invites you to help us identify the best on-line job search and career advancement tools! We’ve compiled as many on-line tools as possible to help America’s job seekers quickly and easily connect with jobs. Now we need you to test-drive, comment on, and recommend the tools you like best! We’ll publish the highest ranking tools on our websites and encourage the nationwide network of One-Stop Career Centers to make them available to the more than 20 million job seekers they serve each year.

We would really appreciate your support. You can get to the JobCannon listing by going here. You can also start from the initial page at http://dolchallenge.ideascale.com and search for JobCannon. To vote you must login (or create an account). You may use an existing google, yahoo, wordpress, or aol account as your login. You can vote for multiple tools, but please make sure that JobCannon gets your vote.

The voting will continue through January 15th. You can also find a link to the site at jobcannon.com/dol. It will only take a minute to vote and you might find some other interesting tools by looking through the list. Thanks again for your support and getting out the word about JobCannon.

Voting Instructions:

1. Visit here and click on “Login/Sign-up” in the top-right area (grey background)
2. In that pop-up, login with your Google, Wordpress, AOL, etc. account (easiest), or just create a login.
3. Click over to JobCannon’s page and click the THUMBS UP. Make sure it increments by one vote.

Thanks!

Happy Holidays, everybody.

The first feature is the “Send Test Email” button, which allows you to quickly send the current message to your email address (as listed in your JobCannon account).  This allows you to see the email exactly as your contacts would.

The second feature allows you to disable the opt-in/opt-out links at the bottom of an email sent to your contact(s).  Normally when reaching out to your network via email, JobCannon requests that each person opt-in or opt-out of further communication.  This allows you to only contact those who are willing to help with your job search.  However, one JobCannon user pointed out that it’s not desirable to send an email to some types of contacts with the opt-in/opt-out footer.  For example, when mailing a resume + cover letter to a hiring manager, attaching those links is undesired.  Thus, we have added a check box on the “Email My Network” page,

[ ]  Disable opt-in/out links in the outgoing email (5 or fewer contacts only).

Leaving this box unchecked will include the opt-in/opt-out footer, whereas checking this box will remove those links from the footer.  Note that this feature is only allowed for five or fewer contacts email at one time; if more than five contacts are selected, the check box will be cleared and the opt-in/opt-out footer will be included.

Thanks to our JobCannon users for their feedback!

We believe this should help some users with the question our users have asked most: “What should I do next?”

The new dashboard includes two components:

1. On the left, we have a video player which will include screencast videos that we are currently producing. These videos will have guidance on how to do various tasks. The video you see will depend on what you’ve configured so far in the application. At the moment, we have a few videos available, but over time this should turn into a rich library of material.
2. On the right, we have your status in various areas. If you’ve been active in the various parts of the application, it will show what you’ve done; if you haven’t started in an area, it will tell you what you could do to get started.

We will continue to refine what we present here over time and as always, we appreciate your feedback on what you would like to see.

Concurrent with the update of the dashboard, we have also added another video. This one is on importing your contacts.

I’m excited to reveal the first of these here on the blog.

Over the next few days, we will have more videos available here on the blog, and they will subsequently appear as part of the application.

We hope these videos will enhance your experience in using JobCannon. As always, feedback is appreciated.

We also had a live demo showing how to import and merge contacts in JobCannon.

Clublet leadership was announced at this meeting. Emmett, John, and John have volunteered to lead the Job Tools Clublet.

This Friday’s meeting will cover the importance of networking as part of a job search. The meeting is 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. on Fridays (after the Launch Pad Job Club meeting), at the Phillips Pavilion just west of Promiseland Church (www.promiselandchurch.net), 1504 E 51st Street, Austin, TX 78723.