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The 6Ps of the BIG 3 Book

What’s Your November Challenge?

If you are looking for one last challenge to accomplish a monumental task before the end of 2012, now is chance. We all know that the month of December is crazy–holiday parties, family, vacation time (making it harder to transact business toward the end of the month), etc. So, why not challenge yourself to accomplish (or at least start) one more big project in November, before the December madness arrives?

In the past week, I’ve learned about three November challenges. Perhaps these will give you an idea on what you wish to accomplish.

National Novel Writing Month. Melissa Sachs mentioned National Novel Writing Month (#NaNoWriMo) in several recent Facebook posts, so I had to learn more. Participants in #NaNoWriMo attempt to write a 50,000 word novel (approximately 175 pages) in the month of November. You can read more about the project here.
Three Book Diet. Chris Brogan introduced the Three Book Diet (#3bd) in a blog post last week. As noted in the blog post, we read many books a year but implement very few ideas. With the Three Book Diet, you select three books that you’ll read multiple times (at least twice) between 11/1/2012-11/1/2013 (so, this challenge would last beyond November 2012). If you are like me and keep a running list of business books you want to read, participating in the Three Book Diet is a great way to commit to reading at least a few of those books and committing to implementing ideas shared in those books! If you need ideas for books to select, review Cordell Parvin’s list of books he recommends to his coaching clients.
Hard Core Turkey Challenge. I’m a member of Exhale, the home of the original barre/core class known as Core Fusion, and the studio recently launched Hard Core Turkey Challenge. With this challenge, members are encouraged to take 14 classes in 21 days (which is 14 classes between November 1 and Thanksgiving).

Still looking for an idea for your challenge? Improve your LinkedIn network – here’s a post I wrote last year about a LinkedIn Challenge.

My November challenge is to spend time each day working on the 2nd edition of The 6Ps of the Big 3 for Job-Seeking JDs. While speaking at law schools last month, I realized the book is now two years old and needs to be updated with the new tools available for job seekers. My “writing time” will be from 6-7 am on weekdays and 10 hours on weekends. Each Sunday in November, I’ll blog about my progress and preview a new tip or resource that will be included in the 2nd edition. Stay tuned and good luck with your November challenge!

Job-Seeking Lawyers/Law Students: Follow #NALP12

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) is hosting its Annual Education Conference this week in Austin, Texas. There is a Twitter hashtag, #NALP12, that anyone may follow to receive updates from or about the conference. I highly recommend that job-seeking lawyers and law students follow this hashtag for the following reasons:

Meet the players. Many law firm recruiting/hiring contacts will appear in the #NALP12 Twitter stream as they tweet from the conference. By following #NALP12, you can identify these contacts and follow up with questions or comments. Don’t ask them for a job immediately; but, get to know them and what their firms have to offer. Begin to build relationships with them.
Raise your profile. If you tweet thoughtful questions in response to the #NALP12 tweets, attendees at the conference will notice you. Perhaps the panelists/speakers will even monitor the tweets for their sessions and respond to your questions during the sessions.
Receive job search tips and market intelligence. The substantive content of the sessions is incredible for job-seekers. You have the opportunity to receive job search tips and market intelligence directly from the employers making hiring decisions. Keep your eyes open for tweets from the following sessions:

“Rocket Docketeers” – Judicial Clerkships for the IP Student

Alternative Careers: The Upside Down Pyramid

Assessment Tools and Innovative Interview Techniques: What Are They and How Are They Used?

Beyond the Beltway: Opportunities in Federal, State and Local Government

Landing a Job with the United Nations

Launching an Immigration Law Career at the Courthouse

Navigating U.S. Bar Exam Requirements for Foreign Trained Lawyers

NALP Update on the Legal Employment Market

Understanding the Current Legal Economy

Skills-Based Hiring for Effective Post-Recession Lateral Associate Recruitment

Careers in the Military

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Feb 12

Evaluate LinkedIn Groups with Statistics Dashboards

LinkedIn added a statistics dashboard to each LinkedIn group in November 2011. The dashboards show the demographics, growth and activity of a group. Since you can only join 50 groups, job seekers should evaluate the statistics dashboard for a group to determine if a group is worth joining. Specifically, job seekers should evaluate the following:

Seniority. Is the group comprised of partners or senior level attorneys who are likely the decision makers with respect to hiring decisions? Or, is the group comprised of entry-level associates?
Jobs. How many jobs were recently posted in the group?
Comments. How many comments were left in the past week? A group with low comments is probably not very interactive.
Location. If you are looking for a job in Dallas and 90% of the attorneys in a group are in New York, you may want to consider how effective that group will be in your job search.

To access the statistics dashboard, go to the home page for the group you are contemplating joining. The dashboard is on the far right side of the page, below the “About this Group” section as shown below.

Performance / The 6Ps of the BIG 3 Book — 1 Comment
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Jan 12

LinkedIn’s CardMunch … A Networking Necessity

Happy 2012!! If one of your goals for 2012 is to improve your networking, you might decide to follow what I refer to in my book as the “business card rule.” This rule, simply stated, suggests you connect with people on LinkedIn each time you exchange business cards with new contacts.

LinkedIn’s free CardMunch app for the iPhone helps you execute the business card rule. CardMunch is a business card scanning service which LinkedIn acquired in January 2011. CardMunch is the only business card scanner that syncs with LinkedIn and links scanned cards with the card owners’ LinkedIn profiles. You can then invite the card owner to connect on LinkedIn from the CardMunch application. After downloading the CardMunch app, follow these steps as you collect business cards in the course of networking:

Go to the CardMunch app and take a picture of the business card collected.
CardMunch will ask you to confirm the legibility of the scanned card.
Within minutes, CardMunch transcribes the content on the business card and checks to see if the card owner has a LinkedIn profile. If the card owner has a LinkedIn profile, CardMunch displays information from the LinkedIn profile such as name, title, picture, contact information and mutual connections.
From the CardMunch app, you can send the card owner an invitation to connect on LinkedIn and a follow-up networking email.
You can also save the card owner’s contact information in your iPhone address book.

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Dec 11

LunchMeet for LinkedIn

One recurring theme in my book is the need for job seekers to take online relationships offline. Now, the free iPhone app LunchMeet facilitates offline meetings with your LinkedIn connections. LunchMeet syncs with your LinkedIn account and identifies connections who are available to meet for lunch, coffee or drinks.

I love the concept of LunchMeet and decided to try it last night. I logged in using my LinkedIn username and password. The app prompted me to set a time slot I was available to meet. After choosing a date and time, I searched to see who was available to meet. None of my 1,028 LinkedIn connections appeared in the search results. The only result was a “Vice President of Information Technology” in the Printing industry (LunchMeet identifies people outside of your LinkedIn network who have indicated they are available to meet, but LunchMeet only reveals the title and industry of the people).

Finally, LunchMeet posted the following update to my LinkedIn profile so my connections who aren’t using LunchMeet will see the note about my availability and (presumably) inquire about LunchMeet.

My initial thoughts about LunchMeet:

I continue to think LunchMeet is a great concept designed to facilitate offline meetings.
More people need to use LunchMeet for it to become a powerful networking tool.
Some professionals might shy away from posting their availability out of fear that “unwanted connections” (e.g., vendors) might take advantage of securing meetings with them.
I’m not inclined to meet with non-connections such as the Vice President of Information Technology in the search results above. My preference is to use LunchMeet to develop the relationships I’ve already created on LinkedIn.

Have you tried LunchMeet? What are your thoughts?

#LawJobChat / Performance / The 6Ps of the BIG 3 Book — No Comments
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Mar 11

Twitter Chats to Calendar

As my regular readers know, Melissa Sachs and I launched #LawJobChat last June. In the last few months, other chats for legal professionals have surfaced. The following list contains the legal chats I recommend law students and lawyers calendar. The list also contains some chats that aren’t specifically for legal professionals but helpful nonetheless.

Chat	Date/Time	Moderators	Description	Recent Transcript
#LawJobChat	Last Thursday 9pm Eastern	@aellislegal @mjsq	Twitter chat focused on attorney/lawyer job search questions and career paths. Chat includes guest co-host each month to discuss specific career path.	2/24/11 Transcript
#lawschoolchat	Sundays 9pm Eastern	@brihoffman @j2_whittington @t10nbaum	A conversation for law school students and potential students regarding the issues, concerns, and rigors of law school life and beyond.	3/13/11 Transcript
#legalchat	Fridays 11am Eastern	@dannymjohnson	Weekly chat for lawyers and legal professionals touching on everything from technology to social media and the death of billable hours.	3/11/11 Transcript
#LinkedInChat	Tuesdays 8pm Eastern	@LinkedInExpert	A chat focused on the various uses of LinkedIn	3/15/11 Transcript
#blogchat	Sundays 10pm Eastern	@MackCollier	If you are looking to start a blog or improve your current blog, this chat is for you!	3/13/11 Transcript

For a complete listing of the 300+ chats available on Twitter, please click here.

To learn about the benefits of participating in a chat and how you can participate, click here.

Finally, if you have a copy of my book, Twitter chats are discussed on pages 231-232.

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Mar 11

Descriptive Changes to LinkedIn’s Privacy Features

On February 15, 2011, LinkedIn began rolling out a new Settings page to certain LinkedIn members to gather feedback and test new features. Three privacy features discussed in my book appear differently on the new Settings page. The features have not changed – only the description of each feature. They are now labeled with a more descriptive phrase as noted in Table 3.1. I’ve noted page references where I discuss the features in my book.

Table 3.1

Privacy Feature	Old Settings Page Description (Image 3.1)	New Settings Page Description (Image 3.2)
Prevent notifications from appearing in your contacts’ news feed each time you make significant changes to your profile	Profile and Status Updates (page 102)	Turn on/off your activity broadcasts
How are you described when you view another user’s LinkedIn profile (3 options – (1) name/title is shown; (2) profile characteristics like, “someone in the legal industry from the DFW area;” (3) anonymous user	Profile Views (page 97)	Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile
Prevent your LinkedIn connections from seeing your other connections	Connections Browse (page 92)	See who can see your connections

Image 3.1 shows a view of the old Settings page.

Image 3.1

Image 3.2 shows a view of the new Settings page – the three features described above are highlighted.

Image 3.2

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Jan 11

Interview Prep with Twitter to Gain Industry Insights

I was helping an out-of-state real estate candidate prepare for an interview yesterday, and she commented, “I’ve tapped all the usual sources – Martindale, NALP Directory, Chambers and Partners, Google, LinkedIn, and Vault.” I asked if she was prepared to ask or answer questions about the real estate industry in Texas (where she’s interviewing), and I suggested she turn to Twitter.

In my book, I discuss how law students and lawyers can use Twitter to learn about specific attorneys (page 207), firms (page 208), and practice areas (page 209). They can also use Twitter to gain insight about the industries the firms and attorneys represent.

I suggested that this candidate start with the local business journal’s Twitter feed. As you can see, three of the six tweets from January 19 alone contain information about real estate industry. And, the Twitter feed is user-friendly – simply skim the stream, identify relevant tweets, and read linked articles.

I also recommended the candidate review the Twitter feed of a local real estate attorney who frequently tweets about the industry. While my candidate was not interviewing with this particular attorney or firm, she can still learn from the attorney’s tweets. Moreover, she can glance at the users the real estate attorney is following and read their Twitter feeds. For example, we found that the attorney followed a hotel broker and investment banker, medical real estate developer, Dallas-based commercial real estate broker, and Dallas-based property tax consulting firm. All of these users had informative tweets about the real estate industry.

Bottom line – even if the attorneys and firms are not on Twitter, you can still use Twitter to learn about the industries they represent.

Performance / Success Stories / The 6Ps of the BIG 3 Book — 1 Comment
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Jan 11

Yes, Law Firms Can Use Social Media in Recruiting

I obtained four qualified candidates through social networking last week. I posted a status update on Facebook and LinkedIn early in the week about a position for which I am recruiting. Within hours, I received replies from friends of friends, relatives of friends, and former colleagues who were interested and qualified in the position.

Law firms can take the same steps to attract candidates from their existing networks. In my book, I discuss several free ways law firms can share job openings on social networking sites, including:

Facebook Note (page. 126). The Facebook Note allows you to use more characters than a status update. You can also tag friends who may be interested in the position you post in the Note. And, your friends can share the Note so that it appears on their Facebook pages.
Facebook Marketplace (p. 129). Firms can post job openings in the Facebook classifieds.
Facebook Firm Page (p. 131). Firms can post job openings on their own Facebook page, and the posting can be shared by fans of the page.
LinkedIn Group Job Posting (p. 171). Identify the LinkedIn Groups that will contain candidates you are seeking and post jobs in the relevant Groups.
Facebook or LinkedIn Status Update (p. 174). Firm recruiters and hiring personnel can share job openings in their individual status updates on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Tweet Job Openings (p. 201). Share your job openings on Twitter.

Of course, the above efforts won’t work without connections and strategies. I have over 500 Facebook “friends” and over 500 LinkedIn “connections.” I probably would not have obtained the same results if I had only 100 friends and 200 connections.

And, notice that I posted the job opening on Facebook and LinkedIn but not on Twitter. There was a strategic reason for not posting on Twitter. I wanted to reach out to people I knew well and trusted for this particular position. I don’t know the majority of my Twitter contacts that well (that’s the purpose of Twitter).

So, yes, law firms can use social networking sites in their own recruiting practices. But, they must first understand the sites, build their connections, and formulate their own social networking strategies before diving in.

The 6Ps of the BIG 3™Get Hired Using Social Networking