5 Social Networking Sites for Legal Job Seekers

Today’s legal job mar­ket is tough. To suc­ceed, you need to use all the tools you can. Some of these tools require new rules, although all build on old-​​fashioned approaches, like net­work­ing and build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion. So here are five tools to bring your job search into the world of online social net­work­ing: Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, and JD Supra.

Facebook

Facebook is a social net­work­ing Web site focused on con­nect­ing peo­ple with each other. Many of us have now expe­ri­enced the joy (and occa­sional pain) of (re-)connecting with peo­ple from high school, col­lege, or law school through the site.

Many peo­ple have decried the neg­a­tive aspects of Facebook in the job search, pri­mar­ily the abil­ity of poten­tial employ­ers to find per­sonal infor­ma­tion (such as drunken party pho­tos, political/​social lean­ings, etc.) out about you through the ser­vice. Although this can cer­tainly be a prob­lem for a naïve indi­vid­ual, it should not keep you from using the ser­vice, pro­vided you: (1) do not post pho­tographs (or bet­ter yet, do not par­tic­i­pate in sit­u­a­tions) that you would derail your chances of employ­ment (drunk­en­ness, drug use, etc. — this is par­tic­u­larly true for legal pro­fes­sion­als) and (2) keep your per­sonal life con­fined (through var­i­ous Facebook lim­it­ing mech­a­nisms) to those who know you. If in doubt — don’t put it online.

From a job seek­ing per­spec­tive, Facebook will not find you a job. It is not Monster​.com or sim­i­lar job search site. Instead, it is an exten­sion of old-​​school net­work­ing — meet­ing peo­ple, con­nect­ing with peo­ple, shar­ing with peo­ple. Use sim­i­lar approaches on Facebook that you would use in per­son, but remem­ber: Facebook is focused more on per­sonal con­nec­tions that pro­fes­sional ones, so treat it accordingly.

• Do not attempt to “friend” busi­ness con­nec­tions who you barely know via Facebook. (Save those for LinkedIn, next on the list).
• Do let your actual friends know via Facebook that you are look­ing for a job.
• Do search for peo­ple you may know who do work like you wish to do, or who work where you want to work. You may be sur­prised that you actu­ally know some­one who can put in a good word for you.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is like Facebook for pro­fes­sion­als, minus the games, the shar­ing, the pic­tures, and every­thing else that makes Facebook so “sticky.” But these lim­i­ta­tions are its biggest asset, because they turn it into a truly pro­fes­sional zone. Everything you put on LinkedIn should be pro­fes­sional, with only a pass­ing nod to your per­sonal life (to make you real). In terms of post­ing infor­ma­tion to LinkedIn, it is best to think of it as an in-​​depth, network-​​enhanced resume. It is not for arring­ing to meet friends at the movies, nor for shar­ing your vaca­tion pics to Cancun.

Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is the per­fect place to con­nect with busi­ness acquan­tances who you do not know well. In this sense, think of LinkedIn as your social Rolodex of busi­ness con­tacts, with reciro­cal con­nec­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions, and easy searching.

• Do con­nect with those you meet.
• Do not con­nect with peo­ple you have never met, unless you arrange an intro­duc­tion (sup­ported by LinkedIn). To do oth­er­wise is to invite trou­ble and do your rep­u­ta­tion more harm than good.
• Do update your sta­tus on LinkedIn with pro­fes­sional infor­ma­tion related to your job search.
• Do search for com­pa­nies and look for peo­ple you know there.
• Do pay atten­tion to “friend-​​of-​​friends” who you may be able to be intro­duced to through LinkedIn. This is a very valu­able part of LinkedIn networking!
• Do get rec­om­men­da­tions from cur­rent and for­mer co-​​workers. A LinkedIn pro­file of an active job seeker with no rec­om­men­da­tions is poten­tially prob­lem­atic, as it sug­gests that no one wants to rec­om­mend you!
• Do keep your pro­file updated with cur­rent information.

Plaxo

Plaxo is in some ways like LinkedIn and Facebook: it con­nects peo­ple with each other. It has a more pro­fes­sional bent than Facebook, and in that way is more sim­i­lar to LinkedIn (includ­ing an online pro­file hat is more like a resume than Facebook’s, for exam­ple). Its cur­rent incar­na­tion is more focused on “lifestream­ing”: gath­er­ing up and syn­chro­niz­ing your online life in one place:

Plaxo is about syn­chro­niz­ing all that’s impor­tant to you in one sin­gle place. It’s about stay­ing in touch with all those who you care about… your fam­ily, your friends and your busi­ness con­tacts. With Plaxo’s Pulse, we keep you up to date with what your friends, fam­ily and Business con­tacts are up to.

• You can Share pho­tos, videos, reviews and more…
• You can share con­tent from the web­sites you use like Flickr, YouTube, Digg and a grow­ing list of activ­ity stream sites you can activate.
• You can rep­re­sent your­self on the web with your own pro­file. Choose what to share and with whom.
• And with the Plaxo Address book, get the infor­ma­tion you need for the peo­ple you know and Sync it to places you already use.
• You Plaxo cal­en­dar syncs with Yahoo!, Gmail, Outlook, Mac and a grow­ing num­ber of sync points to make sure you don’t for­get what you’re doing.

Plaxo is all this in one place and that’s why it’s the most effi­cient and fun place to be in. And most impor­tant of all, you decide who gets to see what.

It is worth it to estab­lish a Plaxo pro­file while job search­ing, and keep it updated. (Not hav­ing rec­om­men­da­tions on Plaxo is also less of a prob­lem, as long as you have them on LinkedIn.)

Plaxo’s aggre­ga­tion sup­port for your online activ­i­ties is pow­er­ful, but has the poten­tial to mix your per­sonal and pro­fes­sional lives together. Thus, be very care­ful of this.

• Do estab­lish and main­tain your profile.
• Do use the aggre­ga­tion and synch­ing tools, if they are use­ful to you.
• Do not mix per­sonal and pro­fes­sional updates.
• Do use Plaxo’s tools to con­tain your per­sonal updates to your per­sonal friends.

Twitter

Twitter is a newer con­tender to the social media land­scape. It per­mits post­ing short sta­tus mes­sages, which may include links to arti­cles, blog posts, pic­tures, etc. In a pro­fes­sional con­text — remem­ber, you are job seek­ing — these sta­tus mes­sages should stay away from “crazy party last night” and steer more towards the “excel­lent arti­cle, I rec­om­mend you read it.”

Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo, con­nec­tions in Twitter are one way: you can fol­low peo­ple, or they can fol­low you, but reci­procity is not required.

To find use­ful peo­ple to fol­low, look for those in your field. A good place to start is LexTweet, which aggre­gates legal Tweets — con­sider join­ing as well and participating.

My rec­om­men­da­tions:

• Do read about how oth­ers are using Twitter professionally.
• Do keep your post­ings professional.
• Do mix in some per­sonal updates to be “real,” but remem­ber — a poten­tial employer may be read­ing them, so be judicious.
• Do “add value” by Tweeting use­ful information.
• Do not use tools to mass add fol­low­ers, or sim­i­lar “spammy” behaviors.

JD Supra

JD Supra is a dif­fer­ent alter­na­tive to the above sites. Unlike the four above, it is focused exclu­sively on the legal community:

As a legal pro­fes­sional, you post your court fil­ings, deci­sions, forms and/​or arti­cles to JD Supra’s data­base, a free tool for legal research. You also cre­ate an in-​​depth pro­fes­sional pro­file that is freely avail­able sim­ply by brows­ing or key­word search­ing, or via link from any of your posted documents.

A pro­file on JD Supra pro­vides a use­ful addi­tion to your LinkedIn and Plaxo pro­files — but that’s not the core value of the site. The main point is to demon­strate your value to poten­tial employ­ers (and clients, for that mat­ter) by shar­ing your work via JD Supra: fil­ings, briefs, arti­cles, etc.

At first glance, it may seem like you are giv­ing your work away for “free” — but in real­ity, you are receiv­ing value: respect. Your value as a lawyer, after all, does not come through directly sell­ing your prior work — but rather in using your prior work to sell yourself.

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