Professionalism

Performance / Professionalism — 4 Comments
29
Mar 11

Mandatory Social Media Training in Law Schools?

Should law school career offices require students to learn how to use social networking sites as job search tools?

Consider the following three scenarios:

  1. Yesterday, I showed a job-seeking lawyer how to use LinkedIn to search for a contact in the legal department of the corporation to which he was applying.  He contacted the Assistant General Counsel through LinkedIn rather than submitting his resume through the online job posting and has an interview scheduled for next week.
  2. Last month, I coached a candidate on how to use Twitter to prepare for a firm interview.  The candidate informed me after the interview that of all the information he reviewed before his interview, the information he gained from Twitter helped him the most.  The candidate subsequently received and accepted an offer from the firm.
  3. In my book, I profile a practicing lawyer and law student who obtained jobs through contacts they made on social networking sites.

Many law schools hold mandatory training on how to use LexisNexis and Westlaw career resources (click here for one example).   Shouldn’t law schools require the same mandatory training on how to use social networking sites?  I welcome your comments and thoughts on this subject.  Note – I’m referring to the career services holding the mandatory training sessions, not a mandatory course that is part of a student’s academic semester.

Professionalism — No Comments
12
Jul 10

Professionalism

You may have noticed on the About the Books page that the first “P” recently changed … “Purpose” is now “Professionalism.”  While reviewing the book a final time before I delivered it to my editor, I realized that Professionalism is a more accurate title for the chapter because all online social networking sites, including the Big 3, serve a professional purpose to some degree for attorneys.  There is no clear personal v. professional distinction because certain friends are both professional colleagues and friends (i.e., law school classmates).

Accordingly, Chapter 2 – Professionalism analyzes the purpose of each site based on the varying degrees of professionalism of each site.

Professionalism — No Comments
17
Feb 10

The Social Networking Food Group

Carolyn Elefant wrote an excellent blog post last week about the importance of face-to-face networking in this web 2.0 world — Social Media or the Internet Alone Won’t Help You Find a Job.  Reading Carolyn’s post reminded me of a caveat I tell law students when I present The 6Ps of the BIG 3™ – social networking is just one type of networking activity.

I tell students to imagine a food pyramid comprised of the various food groups.  A job-seeker’s networking activities form a similar pyramid with certain networking activities forming the groups of the pyramid.  For example, the bar association group would contain state and local bar functions and events as well as events affiliated with special bar groups like women lawyers or young lawyers.  The civic group would contain charity, civic and business groups and functions.   Social networking is just another group in the job-seeker’s networking pyramid comprised of the Big 3 social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) as well as blogs, YouTube and many others.

Just as a healthy diet is comprised of foods from all food groups, a healthy networking plan is comprised of activities from all networking groups.