I received a comment from “Ray” in response to my blogpost, “Lawyers Get Clients Using LinkedIn” , saying,

In my response to him, I explained that LinkedIn was not designed to be a job bank, made suggestions of how he could network, and offered my assistance. Most likely, there are other attorneys and professionals, reading this who are in similar situations, so here’s my guidance publicly.

One of the hottest trends in recruiting these days is the ability to announce job openings on social media sites. The biggest example is Google. Google’s HR recruitment campaign on YouTube went viral in a less than a week.

Following this trend, companies all across the world are beginning to create profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and upload videos to YouTube. Statistically, legal firms are notoriously slow moving forward technologically. But, they really don’t have the choice of not utilizing social media anymore, and you’ll want to be ahead of the game when they arrive.

As you probably already know, one of the hottest social media sites on the web is Twitter; and you can use Twitter to find a new job. Twitter is a gathering place on the web. It’s instantaneous, it’s quick, and thanks to Twitter’s 140 character response field, you can read 40 people’s “what are you doings” in less than a minute. On average, recruiters spend less than a minute to read over a resume, so they’re loving Twitter.

In July of 2008, the number of Twitter users surpassed 1 million. So if more people are beginning to use Twitter, what better avenue to market yourself and your resume?

Social media is fast becoming the platform of preference for interacting with existing and potential clients across business, and the Monster.com’s of the world are over-populated with resumes. Suppose a firm is looking for an attorney who specializes in real estate, has a love for the web, and who knows the latest and greatest in advertising as well as social media? It makes perfect sense that they would search for that person on a social medium, such as Twitter or Facebook, even more-so than an attorney “jobspot”, like Findlaw.

Many recruiters are advertising their job openings on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn because they know that the talent they’re looking for are going to be more involved on these sites than they would be on the regular job boards.

Take this opportunity to get your resume and/or portfolio online, and brand yourself well via blog and/or website. Then you simply network your blog or website on Twitter using the Search Customization Applications I have posted, and follow someone you know who is a recruiter (for example: http://twitter.com/gwilson17). While there aren’t many legal recruiters here yet, they’re coming!

Many human resource departments have created their own LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. They’re not only an online presence for their company, they also “add friends” (aka add potential candidates) to their network.

Should you upload your resume on Findlaw? Absolutely! But you definitely should think outside the box and begin to use social media sites as well to network. Network, Network, Network!

Referenced from Jeff McCord, a recruiter from Dallas, TX