Using Social Media in a Nonprofit Job Search

Leveraging Social Media in a Nonprofit Job Search

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I loved this article about the use of social media like Linked In, Facebook and Twitter in a job search. I plan to incorporate some of these suggestions myself.

Readers: How do you use these social networking sites professionally?

Taking a Paralegal Job to Ride out the Recession?

I have been sending out resumes and networking my ass off lately..  Today, I got a call from a headhunter, asking about whether I would take a position as a paralegal working on a short term document processing project.  The pay is almost as much as our local Legal Aid group pays.  (Without the benefits and super coolness of public interest law.)

This is tempting because:

I haven't worked since April.
I haven't been able to spend any money on anything but bills and insurance since May.
I would love to get out of the house a bit more.

However, I am not sure that an employer that needs someone for 2-3 months would be very pleased if I left after a month.  I mean, what do I do if I get a real job?  I would have to quit, and I hate putting anyone in a bad position, as it could burn a bridge I might need later.

We shall see....

Google Webmaster is hilarious

So I tried out the Google Webmaster gadget that is part of the Blogger Dashboard and found some interesting stuff.  Like the most searched term to get to this blog is "Burger King Secret Menu."  I thought I was known for my honest take on law school and life afterward, but my real claim to fame is knowing that you can order "off menu" at fast food restaurants. 

Great!

Best Value Law Schools

OMG - the National Jurist ranked my law school in the top 25 for best value.  Well, so far it hasn't exactly paid off.  Maybe in a normal (non-recession) economy it would, but not right now. 

What's interesting about the list of the top 50 is that the school with the highest US News ranking is Texas (followed by Minnesota), but most of the schools listed as great values are those ranked in Tiers 3 and 4 by US News.  Not a single Harvard Law School or Yale to be found on the list.

My question is this: If the "prestige" of many of these "best value" schools is so low, how are they worth it to attend?  If you graduate in the middle of your class at my school, you are probably unemployed right now.  That's not a good value at all.  I doubt that many Harvard grads are unemployed right now, regardless of class rank.  Yet here I am waiting for a job to come my way. 

I also have to laugh about the statistic of 90+ percent of grads from my school being employed.  Not this year!

Consumer law: getting out of your cell phone contract

Most recently law school graduates, and those just beginning law school have probably moved recently.  And, if you are like me, you desperately want an IPhone, instead of whatever you are using now.  That usually means switching cell phone networks.  But, if you are in the middle of a contract, getting out means early termination fees.  There is a great article with video about how to get out of your contract early. 

Ideas for doing this include:
1) Waiting for the cell provider to change the terms of the contract, which sometimes means you can cancel without penalty,
2) Complain frequently about service issues and log your complaints,
3) Use a lot of roaming minutes, if your cell provider pays for them.  They might find it is cheaper to let you out of the contract rather than keep paying for you to roam, or
4) Move to an area with no service for that provider.

As soon as I get a job, I am going to ditch my current service, and get a nice juicy Iphone!

I got offered a job

My friend is a lawyer, and he needs a legal assistant.  In Colorado. 

If this job pays more than $40,000, I would seriously consider moving there and taking it.  I have no interviews coming up, and only 2 outstanding applications.

This state isn't doing it for me, and I absolutely loved Colorado when I stayed there for a week in 2007. 

Sad that I would consider this, but I am. 

Thoughts?

Major case of the blahs

I seem to be suffering from a major case of the blahs this week.  Or maybe it's just boredom. Part of it may be that I got rejected from 4 different jobs this week.  I also have been spending way to much time by myself.  I thought when I moved back to my home city, that friends who live here would want to do stuff all the time, and that my social calendar would go back to being full, like it was when I lived here BLS (Before Law School).  But my friends are getting older and most of them have children, which takes up a lot of time.  Four of them had babies while I was in school.  So that means they are pretty much unavailable.  And others just found other friends to hang out with since I wasn't there, and forgot what it was like to have me around. 

Or something.

 I tell myself this stuff so that I don't start feeling too pitiful about hanging out in my sister's basement so much.

When I worked full time, I was also in school part-time, and volunteered registering voters about 15 hours a week during half the year.  I would fantasize about how great it would be if I didn't have to work and could have my days to myself. 

Except I never fantasized about doing so without any money and while living with my sister.  It's not the wonderland I imagined.  I do get out sometimes, to accompany my sis to the grocery store, or take my nephew to his soccer games or even go visit friends once in a while.  But the image of taking yoga classes and becoming fluent in multiple foreign languages really can't happen without good old money. 

I wish I could barter my legal skills for a fabulous fall wardrobe and a gym membership and Spanish tutor and find a way to fill up my days.  (I really do have some legal skills, ya know?)

Recently, I got an email "from" President Obama, encouraging people to volunteer as an homage to the 9/11 victims.  So I went on the local volunteer website and sent out some emails.  Hopefully, someone will let me volunteer and that should be a good outlet for my nervous energy.  This pity party certainly isn't that fun!

Public interest law blog

If you are a wanna be public interest lawyer, you should check out the Equal Justice Works blog. One of the contributors, Heather Jarvis, is an expert on student debt and its impact on public interest careers. I had the opportunity to meet with Heather last year, and she was very informative. The blog itself contains all kinds of interesting stories about students working in public service internships over the summer, loan repayment options and career choices.

For those who don't know, I also have a lot of information about student loan repayment options, how to find out how much you owe, and ways to use the Income Based Repayment and Loan Forgiveness options set forth in the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about your loans.

What does Facebook know about you?

If you're like me, you don't read most of the privacy notices that are attached to the applications you include in your profile on Facebook. All those quizzes you take also include a caveat that the developers will be accessing your profile, which, in most cases contains a lot of private information.

The Consumerist blog posted a link to a quiz that you can take to educate yourself on privacy issues on Facebook. The hilarious part is that you have to go to Facebook and allow access to your profile to even take the quiz.

Law schools and judicial clerkships

This handy chart from the always questionable US News shows the rankings for law schools placing students in judicial clerkships after they graduate. My law school is doing a poor job, placing less than 10% of students. Meanwhile, the University of North Dakota is kicking ass, placing right behind Yale with 28% of students in clerkships. Wow!

I wonder what they are doing that my school isn't? Oh yeah, probably providing decent mentorship of students, and assisting them beyond a one-hour "hey, clerkships are good, try and get one" class.

The interesting part of this is that my career services counselor said that only the top 10% or so of our students could get these positions. Yet, 28% of those at UND are doing it. And of those people, that can't be the top 28% of the class. (Some of those grads have to be taking jobs in law firms or public interest orgs) Therefore, it seems that, yet again, the view of our career counselors is skewed by their own experiences, rather than what actually happens.

Ouch!

I feel like I am becoming a prime example of why we need health care reform in this country. I lost my health insurance (the one that cost me about $150 a month from the university) in mid-August.

Now I have noticed that when I jog or go for a long (over a half hour) walk, pain radiates around my right foot. That's the same foot that I dropped a box on a month ago when we were moving. But the toe itself doesn't hurt, it just looks a little swollen.

I have also had a mystery abdominal pain today. I am assuming it's because I ate some bad fish or something, but the thought of not being able to get any of this checked out unless I suffer a bureaucratic nightmare with the public assistance office bugs me. So I have pretty much put off looking into that. But I am going to have to, on Tuesday.

It's probably psychological, but these little mystery ailments are annoying me. So is the fact that so many selfish people in this country would rather see others suffer than pay an extra penny of tax money. Even though their own health care could improve, and they might not ever have to pay more for it. I just think that people who are comfortable and who have money forget what it's like to not have much, or never have experienced that at all.

A former classmate of mine indicated in a facebook post that people were doing "risk assessment" to decide whether the risk of having a health problem was worth paying for health insurance. However, his equation is based on his own experience as the child of an attorney, who has never been impoverished or without insurance in his whole life. And future leaders like my classmates are the ones that could be setting policy in this country in the years to come. And that scares me more than pain in my foot or tummy ever could.

Hello....Hello Hello is there anybody out there?

Sometimes, I use my blog like a diary, then remember that other people can and sometimes do read this thing. It's difficult to worry about what I write when I am not even sure anyone is reading it.

I sometimes wish that I had a whole bunch of readers so that I would be inspired to actually carefully consider what I write, and maybe even edit stuff before I post it. I think I am going to try at least for now, to marginally increase my readership by commenting on some other law student/law grad blogs. I could use the company.