Request Professional Feedback & Coaching via Google Buzz

Coworkers.com now makes it easy for you to share your feedback requests via Google Buzz (in addition to Twitter & LinkedIn). Our Get Feedback tool helps you quickly configure a request for feedback regarding: your work performance, a document or deliverable, an event or milestone, or even just ask a simple question. With one click, you can share that request any way you want - via email, URL, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now Google Buzz!

To Buzz your request:

• Choose "Get Feedback" from the "Feedback" drop-down menu on the site
• In the "Ask Via..." options, make sure "Web..." is checked
• Finish setting up your request, and you'll be presented with one-click links that let you share your request via Google Buzz & other services (see screen capture below)

Happy buzzing

Use your LinkedIn Account to instantly Sign up for Coworkers.com

We're excited to announce that new website visitors can now use their LinkedIn account information to sign up instantly for a Coworkers.com account. This is made possible thanks to the recently announced LinkedIn API.

How does the sign up process work?

If you have not yet registered with Coworkers.com, you can do so quickly, without a password, by signing in to your LinkedIn account. Simply visit our Free Registration page, and click on the "Connect via LinkedIn" link at the top of the page. We will import some information from your LinkedIn profile, such as your name, location, and work experience - so you won't need to enter it again. After you have registered, you can log back in to Coworkers via LinkedIn.

What about people who already have a Coworkers.com account?

If you have already signed up with Coworkers.com but have not yet filled out your profile, you can do so quickly by clicking on the "Import from LinkedIn" link on the Account page. This will instantly transfer information such as your industry, company, and work experience from LinkedIn.

Over time, we plan to add tighter integration with LinkedIn to include features that will benefit existing Coworkers.com users. We will continue to develop simple and effective tools for analyzing and improving your work, while leveraging the networking and messaging capabilities of LinkedIn, as well as other sites. We will keep you updated as we roll out new integration features, so be sure to login in to your Account Settings and sign up for our newsletter by selecting the "Send me periodic web site announcements" option - if you haven't already done so.

What is the difference between Coworkers and LinkedIn?

We realize that professionals use a portfolio of online services and tools to advance their career. Coworkers.com and LinkedIn work well together. LinkedIn is primarily used for networking – finding and connecting with other professionals, with whom you may or may not have work experience. Coworkers is focused solely on the people you have close working relationships with.

While LinkedIn has the concept of "recommendations" which are focused on personal marketing, Coworkers greatly expands the range of collegial input you can receive and share, giving you privacy control, the option for anonymity, templates, analytics, and other features focused on professional development. Bottom line: LinkedIn and Coworkers have different missions and serve different purposes, and we think you should use both – which is why we've made it incredibly easy for you to do so!

Feature Update: Feedback Template Library

We've made it even easier to browse, preview, edit, create, and share Review and Feedback templates. You'll find a number of predesign templates covering everything from in-depth 360 degree work performance reviews to simple forms for getting feedback on a meeting or presentation.

Our users can create their own templates by either modifying an existing one, or building one from scratch. If a user decides to, they can share their custom templates so that they appear in our ever-growing library. As always, our templates fall into the three major categories of:

1. Work Performance
2. Event/Milestone
3. Document/Deliverable

Visit our Template Library today!

Get Valuable Input, on Autopilot: Schedule Feedback Requests

Have a weekly meeting that you manage or attend? How about a monthly or quarterly milestone? Do you wish you could setup an annual or quarterly review request today, that will go out on a future date?

Coworkers.com PRO users can now Schedule Feedback Requests. This is a helpful way to get into the habit of collecting ongoing comments and ratings from your colleagues. Simply use our Get Feedback wizard and include the optional scheduling information. Set it up once and you can:

• Schedule a one time request to go out on a future date
• Schedule a recurring request to go out: daily, weekly or monthly
• As always, the feedback you receive can be private, and people do NOT need to be Coworkers.com members to respond to your requests

Find out more about Scheduled Requests and other great features included in our Professional Account.

Five tips for incorporating work feedback into your daily routine

The most effective individuals and companies share a common trait. They encourage frequent, honest feedback. The key to evolving beyond the dreaded periodic performance review, is to make workplace feedback more granular, recurring, and measurable. Here are some tips for leveraging professional feedback in order to improve the work you do.

1. Foster a feedback-friendly work environment. Tell your colleagues that you think an ongoing, open, honest, and informal peer review process is good for everyone. Don't be afraid to get the ball rolling without a formal process. Lead by example and start off by requesting feedback on a recent meeting, project, presentation or other current bit of work you have been involved with. Something specific and timely may be an easier starting point than than requesting a general work performance evaluation. Feedback should be exchanged frequently in all directions. When asking for feedback, focus on results and quality, not just on how hard you work or how nice you are.
2. Anonymity is your friend. When requesting feedback, try to share your request with as many people as is relevant to the question at hand. If possible, let people know that they are not the only one being asked, and allow them to respond anonymously. This helps people open up and underscores the non-threatening nature of the process. You are looking to gather unbiased constructive input, so do what you can to make people comfortable.
3. Be quick and proactive. If problems are exposed, don't let them fester, deal with them early. Don't complain about coworkers behind their backs. It is better to discuss concerns with them directly and get issues out in the open. Always try to resolve problems unofficially first. Only go to HR as a last resort, because then it becomes a matter of record.
4. Be honest with yourself. Get in the habit of doing regular self evaluations. You will often be your most honest and thorough critic. Taking the time to reflect on your work, a few times a week or month, is a lot easier than waiting every quarter or longer. No one is perfect, and your boss(es) will appreciate that you take the time to set the bar for yourself.
5. Analyze and learn. You can't manage what you don't measure. Repeat the process frequently, track the results. In reviewing your feedback over time, you will be able to spot strengths and weaknesses. You can keep an eye on trends, and set personal development goals more effectively. When you have greater insight into your abilities, you can present yourself with a confidence that gives you an edge.
   

'Tis the Season to Give & Receive (Feedback)

As 2009 draws to a close, it's important to look back and review the things that you and your colleagues have achieved. Reflecting on things that went well, or maybe not so well, can help you better understand how to make 2010 even better. If you're already sharing ongoing feedback with the people you work with - good for you! If not, make it a New Year's resolution that you will actively gather input in order to improve your career.

Give feedback to a colleague

Request feedback from the people you work with

P.S. Get 25% off your first year annual Pro subscription - only $29.95/yr while our promotion lasts (use discount code EARLY). At less than $2.50/mo for advanced workgroup features, analytics, and more, it's a great present for yourself that will last all 2010. Order Now or Compare Account Types first.

Share your feedback requests on LinkedIn

You told us we should do more mashing with other sites, and we heard you. You can now share your feedback requests with your network on LinkedIn, as well as Twitter.

To try it out, just create a new feedback request (be sure to keep the "Web" option checked), and then follow the instructions on the confirmation page. Have fun networking!



NOTE: This feature is also available for your previously-created feedback requests. Just login to your account and go to "Requests" in the Feedback drop-down menu. Click to view a particular request, and you will now see the new LinkedIn sharing option in the Details screen.

Coworkers.com Announces Professional Edition

Coworkers.com Releases Professional Edition of its Career Management Social Network Site; Subscription Version Provides Advanced Features, Including Tools for Workplace Collaboration

Coworkers.com today announced the launch of a subscription-based Professional service to complement its free, web-based suite of career management tools. The new enhancements give users the ability to attach documents for specific feedback, access more detailed performance analytics, and share materials and feedback within a group. They can be especially valuable to multi-site or global workgroups, virtual teams, and consultants.

“Our new Professional edition maximizes the site’s capabilities by providing Coworkers.com users with the premium experience that we've been planning for all along, including advanced and time saving features such as access to workgroup interactions, scheduling tools, and more sophisticated analytics,” explained Coworkers.com founder and president Jonathan Clay. "And of course Coworkers.com will continue to offer a powerful set of free tools that anyone can use to manage and advance their career, including the recently introduced Sharing and Network Activity features.” The Professional offering introduces the following new features:

• Workgroup Feedback Requests: Professional users can send out requests to a group of people and collect feedback that allows every participant to automatically access and track incoming responses.
• Scheduled Requests: Professional users can schedule recurring requests. For example, a user might schedule a feedback request to be sent out after a weekly status meeting.
• Attach Files to Requests: Professional users can attach files to their requests, such as: documents, presentations, spreadsheets, images, etc.
• Advanced Analytics: Professional users can access additional analytic charts and have the ability to view the underlying data used to develop the analytics.
• Ad Free: While Coworkers.com subsidizes its free user accounts by displaying a modest amount of advertising, Professional users do not see any ads.

An annual subscription to the Coworkers.com Professional edition is $39.95. For a limited time, users can receive a 25% discounted rate of only $29.95 for a one-year subscription. "The Coworkers.com Professional edition comes at a price that is nominal when you consider the potential return on your investment - landing that dream job, getting a promotion, closing on a big contract, or improving the dynamics in your workplace," continued Clay.

• See Coworkers.com Plans & Pricing
  
• Subscribe or Upgrade to Coworkers.com Professional Edition Today

Feature Update: Share Any Feedback You Receive

Privately & Selectively Share Any Feedback
with an Individual or Group of Contacts

One of the key strengths of Coworkers.com is that it allows you to send, receive and manage both Public and Private feedback. Public feedback is usually provided in the form of testimonials or ratings that are visible to all the people who visit your public profile page. Private feedback, on the other hand, is input that you receive from others that can only be seen by you.

In speaking with users, we realize that sometimes you will receive Private feedback that you wish to share with a select person, or group of people. That's why we are happy to announce that we've added robust Sharing controls to Coworkers.com.

Want to share received feedback with your boss, a recruiter, or colleague, etc.?

• Simply go to "My Feedback"
  
• View a particular entry
• At the bottom you will now see a new Sharing box that allows you to share with: a Group of contacts; and existing contact; or anyone with an email address - the people you share with will not be required to have a Coworkers.com account.

New York Post - Jobs column highlights Coworkers.com

New York Post Jobs column "The site stuff" has listed Coworkers.com among their "picks for what’s new, notable and work-related on the Web"

Here are some highlights from the article:

"By now we all know Monster.com and LinkedIn, but practically every day new Web sites launch that aim to help you find jobs, stay on top of your industry, improve your career prospects or otherwise help you along in your work life. We sifted through the latest offerings and compiled the following list of sites that are worth a click..."

"CoWorkers: This brand-new site follows the model of Ed Koch, who as mayor famously queried constituents with “How’m I doin’?” The concept is to aim that question at work colleagues, requesting feedback by forwarding various review forms for them to fill out. In addition to general reviews of your job performance, you can request feedback on your interpersonal skills or “core values,” as well as on a specific achievement such as a report or a presentation.

The site — which calls itself a “career development and reputation management” tool — offers a dizzying number of options. Feedback can be made anonymously or not, it can be requested or offered unprompted. Results can be kept private or made public for bosses and recruiters to see, and can be viewed in various formats, such as graphs and pie charts. So it takes some navigating, but it may be worth it to see how you stack up in your colleagues’ eyes."

We're excited to be included in this list of up and coming career-related websites.

• Read the full column at New York Post

NY1's Employment reporter Asa Aarons features Coworkers.com

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Asa Aarons of NY1, New York City's 24-Hour News Channel...

New Websites Provide Inside Look Into Jobs

"The Internet is where practically all of the good employment information is showing up these days. Two new companies are promising ways to help job seekers land their dream job...

...Staying with the idea that feedback is a good thing in the career world, check out Coworkers.com, which is based partly on the idea that successful people thrive on honest feedback...

"Coworkers.com is all about the question 'How's my work?'" says James Young of Coworkers.com. "We provide tools that let you get feedback so that you can figure out what your strengths are and promote them, and also figure out where your weaknesses are so you can improve them and advance your career."

• Watch a video of the full segment on NY1.com

Self-Reviews can help you improve work performance and boost salary

Coworkers.com has offered self-review tools since it's inception. A recent article on Cube Rules discusses the real world benefits of self-reviews in the workplace:

"Your performance review facts become your performance review ratings. And what you can’t tell your coworkers is this: you will write an accurate self-review while most of your coworkers will not. If they write a self-review at all...

As a manager, I looked at hundreds of self-reviews given by the people that worked for me. I can count on one hand how many people provided a complete self-review. Those that did had one of two influences on my rating: they justified my thinking on the rating by providing facts and figures. Or they showed me accomplishments that I had forgotten about and needed to include in my thinking about the rating...

You understand that only the employees, focused on their career, did this accurate self-review, right? And when I say they justified my thinking on the rating by providing facts and figures, you realize that the justification was for a higher rating, right? More pay and a larger bonus..."

Honest, accurate, and frequent self-reviews not only help you focus on improving your skills, they can have a concrete impact on your career and compensation. The article quoted above makes this point quite clear.

• Read the full article at Cube Rules
• Use Coworkers.com to create & manage your Self-review

"Get To Work: Take this job and love it?" Coworkers.com featured on SF Gate

We've been featured in today's SF Gate,
San Francisco Chronicle, blog:

Tom Abate: "Okay, so you're in the roughly 88 percent of the California workforce that does have a job. At this time of skyrocketing unemployment, what can you do to preserve and protect it?

One possibility is to tap into a new genre of Web sites, like Coworkers.com, that let you get frank and confidential assessments of your work performance from current and former associates.

"You no longer have to wait for your boss to tell you how you're doing, or what you need to do to address any issues," Coworkers founder Jonathan Clay says in a promo.

It's a new site and a new concept, so if anyone has experience to share, it would be helpful to know if there is a payback for inviting criticism -- and whether it is constructive or destructive..."

Read on at SFGate.com

Performance Review Software For the Rest of Us

Are you still emailing around Office documents, or (gasp!) using paper forms, to facilitate periodic performance reviews?

If you have been wary of moving to a costly or cumbersome enterprise-level performance management software solution, you'll be pleased to see how Coworkers.com can make review management flexible and affordable.

• Use our template builder to easily create & save web-based versions of your existing internal review and feedback forms
• Leverage our growing library of existing review templates - use them as-is, or modify to suit you needs
  
• Your entire company or distributed work-group can choose to adopt Coworkers.com as your platform for ongoing reviews and feedback - at the fraction of cost of traditional enterprise packages
• Our privacy controls allow users to request and respond to reviews within a closed loop, or share with others if desired
• Our service is web-based and secure, so you can be up and running quickly
  

Take advantage of Coworkers.com templates and other features today...

Data-Driven Feedback: Analytics For The Work You Do

With our unique analytical capabilities, you can get immediate, quantifiable and chart-able feedback on a report, presentation, campaign, or other work event or milestone, gaining an assessment of your effectiveness while building a comprehensive dossier of career accomplishments and marketable skills.

As you accumulate feedback (both private, and shared), you will be able to quickly visualize and identify aspects of your work that need improvement.


Our basic account has 8 distinctive chart types:

• Breakdown By Feedback Type
• Breakdown By Attribution
• Visibility (private vs. public)
• Score Distribution
• Overall Performance Over Time
• Category Performance Over Time (work performance, document, event, etc.)
• Breakdown By Subject Type, Visibility
• Breakdown By Group (grouped by respondents the user categorizes)

Gain greater insight into your career.
Get started with Coworkers.com Analytics today...

Coworkers.Com Launches Career-Managing Site For Competitive Times

We're out of beta and officially launching!

Flexibility, Honest Feedback And Performance Analytics Put Pro-Active Tools In Users’ Hands

"New York, NY, August 26, 2009 – A new web-based career development and reputation management solution, Coworkers.com (http://www.coworkers.com/), launches today with fresh, innovative features that enable users to build a powerful, authentic professional profile grounded in honest feedback, performance analytics, and focused networking. The analytical approach is a more practical and reliable career enhancement tool than periodic reviews or sporadic feedback.

Coworkers.com gives professionals at any level, those in transition, consultants, and small businesses, the tools to instantly create a personal dashboard to manage their work, analyze their performance, gain feedback on overall performance and get reaction to specific deliverables, events, and job milestones. Companies can use the site to monitor and analyze employee performance, and recruiters can gain access to detailed candidate profiles. Businesses with virtual teams or multiple offices will find a complete suite of tools to communicate, share feedback, and monitor workgroup performance without costly enterprise software..." Full press release below.
Coworkers Com PR 2009-08-26

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE COWORKERS.COM LAUNCHES CAREER-MANAGING SITE FOR COMPETITIVE TIMES: FLEXIBILITY, HONEST FEEDBACK AND PERFORMANCE ANALYTICS PUT PRO-ACTIVE TOOLS IN USERS’ HANDS New York, NY, August 26, 2009 – A new web-based career development and reputation management solution, Coworkers.com (http://www.coworkers.com/), launches today with fresh, innovative features that enable users to build a powerful, authentic professional profile grounded in honest feedback, performance analytics, and focused networking. The analytical approach is a more practical and reliable career enhancement tool than periodic reviews or sporadic feedback. Coworkers.com gives professionals at any level, those in transition, consultants, and small businesses, the tools to instantly create a personal dashboard to manage their work, analyze their performance, gain feedback on overall performance and get reaction to specific deliverables, events, and job milestones. Companies can use the site to monitor and analyze employee performance, and recruiters can gain access to detailed candidate profiles. Businesses with virtual teams or multiple offices will find a complete suite of tools to communicate, share feedback, and monitor workgroup performance without costly enterprise software. “The current environment demands a more robust and authentic solution to career and reputation management,” said founder Jonathan Clay. “Coworkers.com puts career advancement into the user’s hands. You no longer have to wait for your boss to tell you how you’re doing, or what you need to do to address any issues. With Coworkers.com you can find out quickly and painlessly, straight from the people who know you best – the colleagues that you interact with every day.” The easy-to-navigate, intuitive home page features four built-in tools including Get Feedback, where users can tailor a survey to get honest, anonymous feedback from colleagues and coworkers (requests can be sent via email or links embedded in social networks, blogs, etc.); Give Feedback, which lets users give fellow employees or colleagues public kudos or private viewpoints on their work; and Improve and Share, which analyzes feedback data, and offers unique, and powerful graphics tools to generate analytic charts and graphs that visually map and measure performance. “For a generation of professionals that has learned to build careers using social networking tools like LinkedIn®, Coworkers.com opens an important channel of communication between coworkers and potential employers,” noted Jason Whaley, COO of Fitzgerald Analytics, an IT/strategy consulting firm. “Coworkers could become an indispensable tool for managing the 21st century career.” During its Beta period, Coworkers.com responded to market demand by evolving from a simple performance rating system to a customizable assessment and feedback tool that helps individuals take greater control of their career development. “We’ve made the site truly flexible and adaptable to individual needs,” said Clay. “Both public and private data can be managed throughout a person’s career. Social networking can be as much or little as you want. The depth of feedback can be quick and top-line, or in-depth depending on the project. Do you want a quick assessment of your presentation, or a comprehensive take on your at-work image? The site was designed to meet your work needs regardless of the matter at hand or the stage you’re in.” About Coworkers.com Founded in 2008, Coworkers.com Inc. is a privately funded company based in New York City focused on creating on-line solutions that apply web 2.0 and social technologies to facilitate career development and enhancement. # # # Contact: Suzanne Mannion Newsmaker Group Office 201-445-8451 Mobile 201-725-0471 smannion@newsmakergroup.com 

Visit our Coworkers.com Press Kit Page for additional media information.

See Who's Using Coworkers.com

Coworkers.com gives professionals at any level, those in transition, consultants, and small businesses, the tools to instantly create a personal dashboard to manage their work, analyze their performance, gain feedback on overall performance and get reaction to specific deliverables, events, and job milestones.

Motivated Individuals:
Job Seekers, Movers and Shakers, Learn more...


Smart Workgroups:
Consultants, SMB's, Virtual Teams, Learn more...


Innovative Enterprises:
Managers Who Think Outside the Box, Learn more...


Modern Talent Management:
Recruiters & Human Resources, Learn more...

Tools to Manage Your Reviews & Feedback for Greater Insight

As part of our ongoing efforts to ease and improve the management of reviews and feedback that you send and receive via Coworkers.com, we've recently made some enhancements to the "My Reviews & Feedback" tools.



The icons in the first column make it easier to quickly see the attributes of a given review...



In addition to these helpful cues, the ratings column is now colored to reinforce the overall rating (green = 10-7, yellow = 6-4, red = 3-1).

Login to see your Reviews & Feedback, or Signup for free to get started. Keep your eyes out for additional management and analytics features coming soon!

Looking for Feedback on _?Yeah, There's a Review Template for That...

Whether you are looking to receive or send feedback, we offer an ever-expanding set of templates (some that we've developed, as well as ones created by our user community). If you can't find the perfect questionnaire, you can either modify an existing template or create your own feedback form using our easy template builder.

Templates are broken into three main categories, as seen below:



How's you work?

Feedback, Any Way You Want It:A Closer Look at Review Templates:

Different circumstances, often call for different types of input. Therefore, our goal is to make it easy for you to give and receive the right feedback, in the right format.

One of our recent site upgrades added the ability to control exactly what appears on the Review Forms that you use to collect and share feedback. We achieve this with "Review Templates".

Review Templates are essentially questionnaires that can contain any mix of interactive form elements, such as rating sliders, free text, single and multiple choice questions, date selectors, validated numbers, etc.



Coworkers.com offer great flexibility, you can:

• Use pre-designed templates: Get going right away with one of the Coworkers.com Best Practices templates; or select one of the many user-designed templates in our growing library.
• Customize existing templates: If one of the above pre-designed templates isn't quite perfect, you can customize it as you see fit, and save it for future use.
  
• Create and save your own templates from scratch: Perhaps the form you are looking for isn't in our template library at all. You can quickly create a custom one using our form building wizard. Save it for your own future use, and optionally share it with others by adding it to our template library.
  

No matter what kind of feedback you are looking to get or give, Coworkers.com has you covered. Click here to start using Review Templates!

Companies Rethink Annual Performance Reviews

NPR Morning Edition · The annual performance review is getting reviewed itself, and has received low marks. Employees say feedback from the review is too little and comes too late to be effective. Now companies are beginning to rethink how they give feedback.

Listen to the segment here...

Request Feedback, They'll Be Glad You Asked...

Using Coworkers.com for proactive professional development

Now, more than ever, it's important to be on top of your game. Periodic reviews can help you see the big picture, but often it's the more frequent input that can have the biggest impact.

When it comes to continuous improvement, there's no time like the present. So go for it, ask people what they think!

Our powerful and flexible review tools can help you:

• Request honest opinions from your colleagues about your work performance
• Ask people to assess events or milestones like a meeting, client presentation or trade show
• Receive input on a document or deliverable, such as a presentation or resume

You can choose from our growing library of customizable pre-designed
Review Form Templates, or easily craft your own questionnaires. Get
feedback, so you can find out how you are doing and where you need to
improve. Click here to get started.

Recovering From Negative Reviews

WSJ.com Video: "A Web site can be a marketer's lifeline with its customers, but what happens when it's marred with negative reviews and comments? Bruce Weinberg, marketing professor at Bentley University, tells WSJ's Erin White how to address and recover from poor feedback..."

This video addresses how to deal with reviews of a company or product Website. However, it's broad message is applicable to many situations. Feedback received, good or bad, is still better than not knowing about potentially legitimate problems with your product or performance. Watch it here...

Happy New Year!

We have some exciting site improvements planned for 2009, and can't wait to share them with you.

Here are a few new things you can start taking advantage of right away:

• Get Valuable Feedback with our improved request feedback feature
• Browse and select pre-made Review Templates - choose to give or request feedback on Work Performance, Events/Milestones, or Documents/Deliverables
• Create your own Review Template from scratch - from a simple question, to a detailed structured form, you can ask exactly what you want