Cross Referencing

Cross-referencing enables you to manage information simultaneously among all of the players in your pursuit of your next job. If you have a recruiter who wants to submit your resume to a couple of employers, you need only reference the employers in the cross-reference box and your done. The employers are created on the fly if they don't exist and automatically cross-referenced. You can then go to each of the employer's activity page and see the exact same information you just typed into the recruiter activity. If you edit and save the activity on the employer tab the changes are updated automatically on the recruiter tab. Whether they are recruiters, employers or networking contacts, anyone referenced in a note or email is automatically included in that activity.

While this may seem redundant at first glance it is actually a highly beneficial facility. During the course of your search you will be talking to recruiters and networking contacts about employers. You will be speaking to networking contacts about recruiters as well and vice versa. Rather than duplicating this information for each entity when maintaining your discussions, wouldn't it be easier to just cross-reference all of the participating parties and be done with it? JobTabs allows you to do precisely that as illustrated below.

Each of the three drop-down boxes represents a contact category and is ordered in the same sequence as they are on the main tab. The listboxes below the combo boxes show contacts you have cross-referenced already. To cross-reference any contact, just click the dropdown box and select the contact. The contact will then show up in the colored listbox below the entity type. Alternatively, you can type the first few characters of the contact name and the combo box will be filled with the closest matching contact in the list. If the contact is not in the list it will be added to the database. The following example illustrates this.

In the activity below, John Cole has received some job search information from his networking contact Steve Keen. He types in the information under Steve Keen on his networking contacts tab. Rather than type the same information for his recruiting contact, he simply cross-references the recruiting firm, the employers and saves the activity.

Upon switching to the recruiters tab all of the information is there as if John Cole had typed it in at that location,

Take a moment to look at the cross references. Steve Keen is appropriately referenced as shown in the green listbox. CTG is properly cross-referenced, but because you are looking at a CTG activity, CTG is not shown in the red listbox. Since you can only view activities under contacts who are referenced in that activity you can say that the CTG reference is implied. If you take a moment to look at the graphic just above this one you can see that Steve Keen is missing and that CTG is showing in the red list box. Again, because you are actually looking at an activity attributed to Steve Keen his association is simply implied.

JobTabs minimizes data entry errors by removing a name you have cross referenced from the dropdown list. If you were to click the Recruiters drop down, CTG would not be in the list of recruiters because CTG is already cross referenced. Neither would Steve Keen because he is already listed as a cross reference as well. Any of the other recruiting companies (Comms People, Computer Horizons,....) listed in the treeview to the left would be in the drop down list box.

This is a considerable advantage for any job seeker. It greatly simplifies that job seeker's ability to develop a compendium of valuable information. Suppose John Cole has a friend looking for the lowdown on SecureWorks. John can simply go to SecureWorks on the employer tab and immediately see that they are looking for an Asset Management specialist. Even if that position is closed, he can refer that friend to a recruiter who already has their foot in the door and who can possibly get their resume in front of the appropriate person. Additionally, when John wants to review who has helped him on his job search he will easily be able to appreciate the contribution Steve Keen has made and reciprocate in kind. The possibilities are limitless and they are readily at your disposal.