Retrieving list of a custom post type in a widget without using WP_Query?

I’m using the following widget to retrieve a list of the custom post type jobs:

class FeaturedJobsWidget extends WP_Widget
{
  function FeaturedJobsWidget()
  {
    $widget_ops = array('classname' => 'FeaturedJobsWidget', 'description' => 'Displays a random post with thumbnail' );
    $this->WP_Widget('FeaturedJobsWidget', 'Featured Jobs', $widget_ops);
  }

  function form($instance)
  {
    $instance = wp_parse_args( (array) $instance, array( 'title' => '' ) );
    $title = $instance['title'];
?>
  <p><label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>">Title: <input class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('title'); ?>" type="text" value="<?php echo attribute_escape($title); ?>" /></label></p>
<?php
  }

  function update($new_instance, $old_instance)
  {
    $instance = $old_instance;
    $instance['title'] = $new_instance['title'];
    return $instance;
  }

  function widget($args, $instance)
  {
    extract($args, EXTR_SKIP);

    echo $before_widget;
    $title = empty($instance['title']) ? ' ' : apply_filters('widget_title', $instance['title']);

    if (!empty($title))
      echo $before_title . $title . $after_title;;

    // WIDGET CODE GOES HERE
    ?>
      <ul class="featured-jobs">
      <?php // Create and run custom loop
        $custom_posts = new WP_Query();
        $custom_posts->query('post_type=jobs&posts_per_page=8');
        while ($custom_posts->have_posts()) : $custom_posts->the_post();
      ?>
        <li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
      <?php endwhile; ?>
      <li class="see-all-positions"><a href="http://www.pixelmatic.com/open-jobs/">See All Positions >></a></li>
      </ul>
    <?php

    echo $after_widget;
  }

}

The problem is that this part:

  <?php // Create and run custom loop
    $custom_posts = new WP_Query();
    $custom_posts->query('post_type=jobs&posts_per_page=8');
    while ($custom_posts->have_posts()) : $custom_posts->the_post();
  ?>

Seem to break other widgets (not sure if it is a bad practice to use WP_Query in a widget).

Is there any other way of displaying a list of custom post types in a widget?