Ok, so, let’s talk about social media use while job hunting. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and neither is your need for employment. So, let’s find a way to make them fit together, shall we?

1. Don’t be creepy on LinkedIn. Having a current LinkedIn profile is almost a given in the job market. Everyone has one. And most employers check it. Let’s get one thing straight: LinkedIn is not for making friends, it’s for finding a job, researching a company, and reading articles about those two things. It is for networking. Think someone is cute? Check to see if they have a MySpace (and if they do and it’s active, reconsider). Leave LinkedIn to the searcher and the employer. Take the social out of this network. Keep your photo and content strictly professional.

2. Keep it clean, folks. Guess what? Future employers probably google you. Do you want them to see that photo of you on the mechanical bull circa spring break ’09? No, you don’t. We’ve had Facebook long enough to know this, people.

3. Keep your current work experiences to yourself. Did you fake sick? Keep it off your page. Do you hate your boss? You don’t want your new boss thinking you’re a boss-basher. Just keep that stuff to yourself. You also might want to keep your job hunting on the DL if your employer is still in the dark. You’re always just one mutual friend away from an awkward situation.

4. Make your wall private. “You are what you post” is the new “you are what you eat.” Keep your posts, shares, and friends’ comments private.  Do you want to look like a hot mess? Of course not. At least not in front of your prospective employers.

Happy hunting!

xo The Capitalista

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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

Alexandra Saville

Alexandra Saville is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

The post Is LinkedIn the New MySpace? appeared first on Law Street.

Guess what! We’re doing a very exciting promotion for all of you job hunters out there! Law Street is offering the chance to win a custom designed online portfolio for your job applications along with the opportunity to be featured in an interview in this very blog! Do you want to be featured in Capitalista Careers? YES! Do you want a custom designed online portfolio? OF COURSE YOU DO!

How do you enter, you ask? It. Is. So. Easy! All you have to do is go to our Facebook page, “like” us, then direct message us your wildest job hunting story.

As you can tell, we’re really excited about this. So go ahead and like away! Send us your juiciest stuff!

Happy Hunting! (It will be happier once you have this portfolio! Trust me.)

xo The Capitalista

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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

Alexandra Saville

Alexandra Saville is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

The post #CapitalistaContest appeared first on Law Street.

Job hunting today comes down to a lot of factors. Sometimes it’s who you know. Sometimes it’s mostly luck. With so many applicants, automated responses, and email applications, it’s hard to know how often your resume gets the attention that it deserves.

A big part of job hunting, however, is technical. Your resume is a deal breaker: it can bring you in for an interview, or immediately send you to the “no” pile. Why not put in the time on it? I get it — writing, editing, fixing, analyzing, over analyzing your resume is tedious and feels like a waste of time.

Tedious, yes. A waste of time, no. Here are a few tips to ensure your resume is working for you, not against you.

1. Make sure it tells a story. A few weeks ago, I interviewed Jack Farrell about his tips from a recruitment perspective. He could not stress enough the importance of using your resume to tell the story of your employment history. Prioritize your content. Make sure the best points are properly highlighted.

2. Do your research. Choose the best format and stick to it. There are so many options for how to format your resume in the best way. Make sure you keep it consistent. Brand yourself.

3. Don’t forget the important information. While you’re perfecting the details, don’t forget to include the simple, obvious part: your contact information. Your resume could be perfect, but it won’t do you any good if no one knows how to reach you.

4. Be honest. It’s amazing how many people lie, ahem, stretch the truth in a document that they KNOW they will end up being asked about, and, if hired, having to back up. If you don’t know how to use Photoshop, it’s going to be really awkward answering questions about it in your interview. Just take the time to learn the skills you want to include.

5. Customize. Now, this part absolutely sucks. I know it’s adding additional steps to an already annoying process. It is amazing how much more successful you’ll be if you don’t have a blanket resume for each position. If you specify your resume to the job you’re applying to, you’ll have an edge on your competition. Whether you’re applying for a nonprofit position or moving up the corporate ladder, highlight your experiences and skills relevant to the exact job you want.

Now, how much better do you feel? Confident? Go conquer the job market!

xo, The Capitalista

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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

Alexandra Saville

Alexandra Saville is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

The post Apply Yourself appeared first on Law Street.

Yesterday I brought you the first part of my talk with recruiter Jack Farrell in which we discussed his most valuable interview tips for today’s job market. Today we’re talking about the worst things you can do in an interview. Read on for Farrell’s tips for avoiding rejection due to careless mistakes. 

1. No whining. Nobody wants to hire a whiner. Be careful about how you relay the information from your resume and be sure to spin it positively. Never run down someone you used to work for. Even if it is factual or deserved, the only takeaway for your interviewer is that you might be a problem waiting to happen.

2. Don’t ignore the competition. You need to remember that you’re competing against other qualified candidates. Make a case for yourself. You can’t be complacent. Even if you think the interview will be easy, you have a connection at the company, or feel like the position is yours for the taking, you still need to show enthusiasm and ambition. Don’t be passive.

3. Don’t be shy. Share your work. You might be sending around a resume that you think is wonderful. You might have spent hours or even days perfecting it. But another set of eyes could be the difference. Have a friend or colleague you trust edit for you. Remember that less is always more. Use bullet points and keep it to the point and conversational.

Many thanks to Jack Farrell for his advice this week! Jack Farrell & Associates is a recruitment firm that offers career coaching, resume repair, and interview assistance.

Happy hunting!

xo, The Capitalista

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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

Featured image courtesy of [Alex France via Flickr]

Alexandra Saville

Alexandra Saville is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

The post Interview Tips – Part Two appeared first on Law Street.

Seeing as how I’ve already argued that law schools should put more emphasis on teaching law students how to practice law, it’s only fair that I respond to a certain contrary viewpoint circulating on the interwebs. Above the Law blogger Elie Mystal—whom I’ve seen speak and whose commentary I enjoy—has dismissed as a “myth” the idea that students can graduate ready to practice sure-footedly right out of the law school gates. “I think the pedagogical infighting over ‘theory’ courses versus ‘practical’ courses,” Mystal writes, “is irrelevant when people are graduating from lower-ranked law schools with $100,000 (or more) in student loan debt.” In this critique, Mystal echoes University of Maryland law professor Robert Condlin, who in a recent research paper called the practice-ready concept a “millennialist fantasy.”

As Professor Condlin writes in the abstract to his paper, post-graduate job placement “is a function of a school’s academic reputation, not its curriculum, and the legal labor market will rebound only after the market as a whole has rebounded (and perhaps not then).” It’s the shortage of legal jobs out there that has got current law students and recent graduates (like me) at such a disadvantage, he points out, and “producing more ‘practice ready’ graduates will have no effect on the supply of jobs.” At any rate, “legal practice” itself is a multi-faceted thing, one that cannot be fit into a simple package that law schools can teach to all comers: “There are as many different types of practice as there are levels of readiness for it, and proponents of the proposal do not say which of these various possibilities (and combinations of possibilities) they have in mind.”

The problem with Mr. Mystal’s and Professor Condlin’s position is not its substance, which seems pretty sound to me. Rather, they go wrong in their choice of target: the notion that training law students to have at least some clue of how to practice law is meant to be “a panacea to the problems with legal education,” as Mystal puts it. Now, I’ve done a great deal of (highly worrisome) reading on this and related subjects over the past three-odd years. (Warnings about the follies of law school—including a lot of pretty snarky and entertaining ones—have been circulating widely through media both old and new since at least my 1L year.) In all that time, I’ve never heard or seen anyone suggest that more vocational legal schooling will be a cure-all for the problems in the legal job market.

Perhaps one shouldn’t blame Mystal, Condlin and their sympathizers for thinking otherwise. Many observers calling for law schools to operate more like trade schools don’t make it clear enough that they’re only addressing one particular problem with legal education, not all of its problems. Yet even if correcting this systemic error won’t boost the post-graduation employment rate by itself, that correction is still an inherently worthy goal. I always remember with amusement the early scene in the 1992 blockbuster My Cousin Vinny in which Joe Pesci’s titular character tells his long-suffering fiancée that law school teaches you what the law is, but not how to make use of it in the courtroom. As John Marshall Law School professor Alberto Bernabe has written, “Vinny is terrible at the things we do teach in law school, but very good at the things we don’t…[such as how to] interview clients, to gather facts, to prepare a theory of a case, to negotiate, to know when to ask a question and when to remain quiet, to cross examine a witness forcefully (but with charm) in order to expose the weaknesses in their testimony.”

Without exactly being an expert on the subject myself, I gather that Mystal and Condlin are essentially right on the facts. Common sense alone suggests that no greenhorn can emerge from any school already knowing exactly how to get the job done. At least some experience is a must for success in any position; there’s no reason to think that lawyering would be an exception to that rule. Even professional schools that focus on teaching practical skills can do only so much to prepare their students to hit the ground running after graduation day. As for law specifically, there are also many different kinds of legal practice, and law schools would be logistically hard pressed to teach all of the skills that are needed for work in all of those fields. Moreover, Mystal is right when he caustically points out that “Seton Hall could produce the most ‘practice ready’ graduates in the country, and those students still aren’t going to do as well as Columbia law students.”

Nonetheless, too many students nowadays graduate not really knowing how to be lawyers—including many who actually get jobs after graduating as well as the ones who don’t. This fact is problematic for overcharged clients and overworked attorneys who need even rookie associates to be able to walk and chew gum. Even if more practice-oriented education won’t magically conjure up a cascade of new law jobs, the legal academy should still adopt a more vocational approach, if only for the sake of productivity. It may not be possible to prepare students to practice with 100% competence when they’re hot and fresh out of the law school kitchen, but they can be made readier than they typically are today. Newly minted lawyers should not be put to shame by a Vincent LaGuardia Gambini.

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Featured image courtesy of [UBC Library Communications via Flickr]

Akil Alleyne

Akil Alleyne, a native of Montreal, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His major areas of study are constitutional and international law, with focus on federalism, foreign policy, separation of powers and property rights. Akil is also a member of Young Voices Advocates, which connects students and young professionals with media outlets worldwide to facilitate youth participation in political and social discourse. Contact Akil at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post So What If Law Schools Can’t Produce “Practice-Ready” Graduates? appeared first on Law Street.

Are you a GYPSY? Am I? According to a recent article by The Huffington Post, if you’re a twenty-something professional either working or job hunting, you probably are. Apparently, I am. The article examines a growing subculture developing among today’s young professionals: the Gen Y Protagonists and Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. This sect has developed over the past few years. They’re millennials. They’re products of technology and social media. And, according to the Huff Post, they’re unhappy.

The theory is that people in their mid-twenties who are entering the job market for the first time are experiencing a sort of depression unknown to previous generations. This is, allegedly, due to the fact that they – actually, I should include myself in this – due to the fact that we were raised by people whose realities exceeded their expectations, and who embedded this self-confidence in their children. They sought stable careers at a time when the economy boomed, so many of them were pleasantly surprised when those careers brought more than just stability. They told their children the familiar mantra of you can do whatever you put your mind to.  We were told we were special as individuals. That if we played the game correctly, our lives would be whatever we dreamed. And we did dream. We imagined having it all figured out by our mid-twenties, and being gainfully and happily employed thereafter. This is a nice concept, but it might not adequately prepare us for the trials, tribulations, and heartache in the current job market. It’s the modern day romantic comedy…never as easy as it seems like it should be with a happily ever after becoming increasingly unattainable.

Twenty-somethings are finding themselves torn. Jobs are more difficult to come by than they were for their parents. Competition is fierce. You need to jump through hoops before the actual interview. You need to show humor, education, cooperation, and intelligence…all in a cover letter. And all that for an average, not-so-special position. If you do get a decent paying gig, it doesn’t measure up to The Great Story that you had written in pen. Our parents desired stability. We desire stability plus some. So, when we end up with less than that, disappointment sets in. The excitement is lost.

Let’s examine this. Is this innate discomfort that comes with doing something mundane and passion-less really a negative? I mean, it doesn’t facilitate security by the same age that our parents found it, but there might be a silver lining. It is this type of person, this eager beaver who craves more, this professional looking for the next best thing, who ends up doing more that clocking in and clocking out. They create. They build. They are the reason things like crowdfunding and The JOBs Act exist. Without this anxiety, some of the greatest companies wouldn’t have been turned into the empires that are household names today. Without delving into the legalities that are still being hemmed and hawed over, it’s great that there are options out there for those who want to explore and create other options for themselves.

So, the conclusion here is that there is nothing wrong with the ambition for personal and professional greatness, but write The Great Story in pencil. However, while keeping their eyes towards the horizons, it would do “GYPSYs” well to keep their feet on the ground, and to see every job – even if it’s not THE job – as a learning experience and opportunity.

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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

Featured image courtesy of [Garry Knight via Flickr]

Alexandra Saville

Alexandra Saville is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

The post Why So Serious, Gen Y? appeared first on Law Street.

Once you’ve made the decision to look for a new career, you’re halfway there. Well, not really…but it is a pretty big step. Once you’ve made the decision what do you do? Immediately start applying? Probably not. Take some time and follow a few steps before you dive into the deep end.

1.     Think about why you’re looking for a new job. Unless you’re straight out of the dorm rooms, you’re probably making the switch because you aren’t fully satisfied at your current position. Think about the things that aren’t fitting, how you can improve, and what you need from an employer in order to do so.

2.     What came first? Is it the company you’re working for or the industry that you’re in that’s the problem? A lot of people get so stuck on the hamster wheel of doing whatever is closest to their college degree or in the same field as their first job. Maybe it’s time to shake it up.

3.     Think about the next five, ten, fifteen years. Think about further than that. What do you want it to say on your business card when you retire? What skills will help you with that? Even if you take a job that isn’t 100% what you want, consider whether it might provide you with the tools for later.

4.     What are the most important things? This isn’t the same for everyone. For some people it’s the salary, for some the commute matters the most, the hours, the work environment, etc. Give some thought to which one or two aspects are your top priorities. Even if you don’t get everything, it will make the search easier if you know where your priorities are.

5.     Take breaks. Searching the countless job sites is exhausting and frustrating. Don’t just sit at your computer hitting the refresh key after you’ve applied for hours. Dedicate time to this, but take some time away and take a step back.

Happy hunting!

xo, The Capitalista

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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

Featured image courtesy of [kate hiscock via Flickr]

Alexandra Saville

Alexandra Saville is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

The post Beginning the Search appeared first on Law Street.