When I started JibberJobber, there really wasn’t any competition.  I’d get on the phone with a career center and they’d say “wow, that is brilliant!!”

No one had heard of a relationship manager just for the job seeker (job search CRM).  It was novel.

That was good and bad… bad because I had to educate people on what it was.  Job seekers didn’t immediately get why they should use such a heavy duty tool.

Then, I got my first competitor.

I have to say, I hate competition. I hate losing, and I hate having to compete.

But everyone said “competition is good!”

I thought “I’d rather not have any competition.”

This week, by Tuesday morning, I had learned of TWO new competitors in the job search CRM space.  One is ____ and the other is ____. (nope, not going to link to them :p)

Are these two competitors going to be good for the space?  For our clients?

Who knows.

Before they came along, over the last five years, I’ve seen about 9 others come out.  I refer to them as “me-too” plays.  They mimic or copy JibberJobber.  One even got a software team to develop accounts on JibberJobber so they could rebuild what we had.

Two of them are now out of business.

They couldn’t figure it out.

Another one, I’ve been told, doesn’t “get” the job seeker. I heard that from a user of mine who started using them.  They don’t “get the job seeker like I do,” I was told.

Is that my competitive advantage?

No, but it might be a component of it.

Competition – good or bad?  I don’t know.

But I do know this: I have a window of opportunity, and it will only be open for a period.  I have to take advantage of that, because when it closes things are dramatically different.

I saw that with my last company.  We tried, the window closed.  End.

Not this time.