August, 2010

#LawJobChat / Performance — No Comments
31
Aug 10

New Tool for Tweeting Law Schools

Most law schools and law school career offices use Twitter to post or share articles ranging from news and events to career related topics.  And, most schools share at least 5-10 article links each day.

Do students and alumni see or read all of the links?  Would it be more effective if students and alumni received a single digest of all articles tweeted?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I recently discovered a tool that seems like it may work well for tweeting law schools.  Paper.li turns your twitter news feed of links into an online newspaper comprised of content from the people you follow.  Instead of retweeting all the links from the people you follow, you share the link to the online newspaper or digest.

Here’s how it could work for a law school career office Twitter account–I’ll use my alma mater, @UTLawCSO, to illustrate.

  1. @UTLawCSO is the editor-in-chief.
  2. The Twitter users that @UTLawCSO follows are the journalists.
  3. Paper.li analyzes the links shared by the journalists (or a single Twitter list of followers/journalists) in a given day and creates a newspaper front page.  News is displayed in sections.  For example, @UTLawCSO’s newspaper may have sections containing job postings, career-related articles, UT news, and CSO events–all in a single page rather than multiple tweets.
  4. @UTLawCSO would then tweet the link to the newspaper.
  5. @UTLawCSO’s followers only need to pay attention to the newspaper link rather than dozens of tweets and retweets.

For an example of a Paper.li newspaper, check out #lawjobmkt Daily by my #LawJobChat co-host, Melissa Sachs.  The newspaper is comprised of articles from users on Melissa’s #lawjobmkt Twitter List.

#LawJobChat / Performance — No Comments
26
Aug 10

Landing an In-house Law Job (Summary of #LawJobChat No. 3)

The third #LawJobChat featured Richard Russeth, VP & General Counsel at Leprino Foods Company, answering questions about landing an in-house law job.  I’ve noted some highlights of the discussion below, and you can read the full transcript here.

Qualifications You Need to Obtain In-house Law Job

  • 5 years of experience
  • Some larger corporations will hire recent law school graduates with no experience
  • Specialized roles like IP may require more than 5 years of experience
  • General contract work may require less experience
  • Generalist background is helpful
  • SEC experience also helpful

Tips for Litigators Who Want to Transition to In-house Position

  • Most companies farm out their litigation work so you need to be able to manage litigation if you want an in-house position
  • Do Westlaw search to see which companies are drowning in litigation and target those companies in your job search
  • Consumer intensive companies (not business to business) are more likely to hire litigators

Tips for Law Students Who Want to Work In-house

  • Don’t overspecialize in law school
  • Intern for a company after your 1L year, intern for a firm after your 2L

In-house Hiring Process

  • Slower process (compared to firm hiring)
  • Don’t look for in-house jobs in 4th Quarter
  • Use your networks and recruiters
  • LinkedIn is key to building your network – Richard advised law students to begin building their networks on LinkedIn in their 1L year (he’d like my First-Year Plan! :-) )
  • ACC job board is excellent source for job openings
  • Avoid Monster.com
  • Build relationships with GCs on Twitter – Twitter is a great place to find out about people

In-house Compensation

  • Typically 70% lower than firms initially; close to parity after 7-10 years
  • Bonus tied to company’s performance; 30% is typical

Advantages/Disadvantages

  • Advantages:  Quality of life, interesting practice
  • Disadvantages:  Not easy to transition back into private practice (litigators and IP folks have easier time transitioning back into private practice)
#LawJobChat / Performance — No Comments
23
Aug 10

Landing an In-House Law Job (#LawJobChat No. 3)

The third #LawJobChat is scheduled for Thursday, August 26 at 9pm EDT, and the topic is how to land in-house law jobs.  Our guest co-host is Richard Russeth, VP & General Counsel at Leprino Foods Company.  You can follow Richard on Twitter @richard_russeth.

Richard also publishes The Last Generalist blog, and two recent posts include:

Click here for details about how to participate in a Twitter Chat.  If you can’t participate, you may email questions to me (amanda@aellislegal.com) in advance and I will ask your questions during the chat.

Privacy / Profile — No Comments
22
Aug 10

Get Hired Through a LinkedIn InMail

Perhaps the greatest benefit to maintaining a robust profile on LinkedIn is the possibility that a recruiter or law firm hiring authority may discover your profile and reach out to you about a job opportunity.

How can recruiters and hiring authorities you don’t know contact you about job opportunities?  Are there steps you, a job seeker, must take to allow recruiters/hiring authorities to contact you?  Do you need a paid account for recruiters/hiring authorities to contact you?

Connection Not Required to Send InMail

The recruiters/hiring authorities may contact you about job opportunities by sending you an InMail message on LinkedIn.  The recruiters/hiring authorities don’t need to be connected to you to send an InMail.

Acceptance of InMail Messages Required

However, recruiters/hiring authorities can only send you an InMail message about an opportunity if you indicated in your LinkedIn Contact Settings that you will accept InMail messages.  Thus, the burden is on you, the job seeker, to set your account to receive InMails.

To check to see if you accept InMails, click on Settings in the upper right menu bar.

LI Settings

Scroll down until you see the Email Notifications category on the left side of your page.  You may stop here if LinkedIn indicates that you are receiving InMails.  If you aren’t receiving InMails but want to receive InMails, click on Contact Settings.

email notifications

Then, click the second option, “I’ll accept Introductions and InMail.”

LI contact settings

All Accounts May Receive InMail–Paid Account Not Required to Receive InMail

As you can see in the chart below comparing the various accounts on LinkedIn, anyone–including users with the free, basic LinkedIn account–may receive InMail messages.

LI compare accounts

You will note, however, that recruiters/hiring authorities must have a LinkedIn Business account or higher (and, most do) to send an InMail message.

Bottom Line for Job Seekers

  • You DO need to accept InMail messages.
  • You DON’T need a paid account.
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3
Aug 10

Career Networking on Facebook

BranchOut, a new Facebook application for career networking, launched last month and has been referred to as the LinkedIn of Facebook.  BranchOut allows you to see where your Facebook friends work or used to work.

If you are preparing for interviews, you can search for the name of the firm in BranchOut to see if any of your Facebook friends work at the firm or previously worked at the firm.  For example, I searched for Andrews Kurth, and BranchOut identified two friends–one who currently works at the firm and another who worked at the firm between 2003-2006.

FB BranchOut AK

So, what do lawyers and law students need to know about using BranchOut?

  1. Work Information.  BranchOut only works if your friends share their work information.  Using the previous example, I have two other Facebook friends who work at Andrews Kurth.  BranchOut didn’t identify those friends, however, because they did not list their work information on their Facebook profiles.  In general, I’ve noticed more people sharing work information–especially compared to when I joined Facebook in 2007.  If this trend continues, BranchOut should work well.  In my book, I recommend that job seekers include their work information on their Facebook profiles.
  2. Friends of Friends.  BranchOut allows you to view where your friends’ friends work, thus you may gain career information from your non-professional/non-lawyer Facebook friends.  Your best friend from high school may be married to the General Counsel of a Fortune 500 company.  Or, your college roommate’s mother may be the hiring partner in a law firm.  If your best friend’s spouse and roommate’s mother are also on Facebook, you may recognize their career connections through BranchOut and ask for introductions.
  3. Job Board.  If you are a job seeker, you can search the BranchOut job board for jobs posted by your Facebook friends.  Perhaps you work at firm that pays a referral bonus to employees when the firm hires a candidate referred by an employee.  You may want to post a job on the BranchOut job board for your Facebook friends to view (you could also use the the Facebook status update feature or note feature to do this).

Let me know your thoughts as you use BranchOut.  Feel free to share your stories in the Comments.