Software to Help You Manage Your Job Search

Perhaps not surprisingly, conscientiousness is a proven key to job search success. According to a University of Missouri study conducted in 2009, job seekers who set goals, established job search project plans, analyzed their skills, followed up with contacts and monitored their progress landed more job interviews and job offers than job seekers who weren't as organized and conscientious. 

Staying on top of all those plans and details—all of the resumes you send and all the calls you make—quickly becomes an unrelenting administrative burden when you're in the middle of a protracted search, you're networking like crazy and applying to dozens of jobs each week.

Many job seekers create elaborate spreadsheets to help them stay organized. But updating a spreadsheet requires constant cutting and pasting and retyping details such as company names, names of recruiters or hiring managers, and contact details.

44score is a Web-based service designed to ease this administrative burden. It consists of a toolbar job seekers can download onto their Internet Explorer or FireFox browsers (Safari users are out of luck; a Chrome-version of the toolbar is currently under development) and a Website where job seekers can keep track of all of their applications.

The toolbar recognizes when you submit an application through a job board or an employer's website, and it asks you if you want to save information from your application (including the job title, employer name, the version of your resume that you submitted and the date you applied) to 44score's website. The toolbar automatically picks up this information, and in two clicks you can save it to your job search history on 44score.com. 

44score also helps job seekers keep track of calls and emails. "When you send an email, it asks you, do you want to add a reminder to follow up?" says David Sickmiller, the 29-year-old developer who conceived and co-created the application. 

Another cool feature: 44score sends users summaries of their job search activity at the beginning of each week so that they can stay on top of what they need to accomplish.

Sickmiller says he soft-launched 44score last year and is now trying to attract more attention to it. He adds that 100 people have signed up to use it. Users pay nothing for the service until they've landed a job. And at $39.95, it's a bargain.

Another application that can help you keep track of job search details is JibberJobber. JibberJobber was designed by an unemployed IT executive and offers some very specific and nuanced capabilities. It doesn't just keep track of specific jobs you've applied for. It allows you to keep track of your networking activities at a more granular level, as well as companies you may be targeting for employment and trying to network your way into.

For example, JibberJobber can help you nurture specific network contacts, help you keep track of relationships (such as who introduced you to whom), and help you identify how many degrees of separation a contact is from you. You can also export contacts from LinkedIn to JibberJobber.

JibberJobber's basic service is free.  It's "Silver" service costs $5 per month; the "Premium" service costs $9.95 per month.