Attorney Jobs and Job Search Strategies

When looking for attorney jobs, one of the most difficult decisions that you may face is finding a job that will let you use your skills and abilities.

It may be that you aim to use your law degree to help you progress within your existing organization. In this case, you should update your resume to include your achievements (please click here to visit our legal resumes advice page) and network within your company to find any potential openings.

However, if you have decided that you intend to use your law degree to help you to change job, or you will need a job after studying full time, there are four main approaches that you should take, which are:

Networking
Career Placement Services
Specialist Recruiters
Internet Job sites

These approaches are complementary and you should build all four of them into your overall job search strategy.

1. Networking
Around 75% to 80% of jobs are never advertised, and this is just as true for attorney jobs. These jobs are generally filled through word of mouth or internal appointments. If you are known to be interested in a particular job or organization and a suitable vacancy arises, you are likely to receive a call.

So how do you get yourself known or find these hidden jobs?

One way is through the network of contacts that you will have built with many ambitious and talented individuals and this can prove invaluable when looking for jobs now and in the future.

Another way to make yourself known is to contact recruiters in organizations that interest you. Mention your studies and how you believe you can add value to the organization. Ask about any possible jobs within the company that you may be suited for and remember to leave your contact details in case a vacancy arises in the future.

One word of warning with this approach: make sure that you know enough about the company to speak knowledgeably about it, otherwise you may damage any future chances you could have with that organization.

One way to find hidden attorney jobs is WorkTree a comprehensive job portal, which is updated daily with new jobs, as they become available. WorkTree gives you access from one place to over 35 job sites with attorney job listings.

2. Career Placement Services
When you selected your law school, you will have received details of any career placement services available. Most law schools have active links with businesses and also run jobs fairs. These services are there for your benefit so use them to the full. Speak to your careers office and find out what help they can offer you in your attorney job search.

Click here for help with your legal resume

3. Specialist Recruiters
One strategy is to make your details available to legal recruiters who then attempt to find an attorney job that matches your stipulated requirements.

In the past, the process of sending your resume to legal recruiters took days to complete, but now the whole process can be completed in less than 15 minutes through the use of resume distribution services, which is a vast improvement.

The key objective for you if you decide to use these services is to make sure that your resume is seen by as many targeted recruiters as possible, i.e. those specializing in attorney jobs.

The resume distribution service that will suit you best is dependent upon your own preferences and circumstances. If you are already seeking a job and want something to happen soon, distributing your legal resume to targeted recruiters can offer you a very effective method of accelerating this process.

One of the services worth looking at is the legal resume distribution service offered by Resume Messenger that can send your resume to over 760 legal recruiters that specialize in attorney jobs across the US.

The key aspect that makes this service worthy of consideration is that you can target the resume distribution service by recruiters and geographical location, which greatly increases your chances of finding a suitable job early on in your job search.

4. Internet Job Sites
The commercialization of the Internet can make your job search easier if you know where to look. However, as with many things on the Internet, job sites have now proliferated to the extent that it can be difficult to find what you want.

Thankfully, when organizations decide to advertise, they are likely to identify these as specific attorney jobs, as they need to receive sufficient high quality, targeted, applications to make the advertising cost worthwhile. It is still possible, however, that many of these jobs are buried in the hundreds of job sites that now exist.

The good news is that a recent development in Internet recruitment has been the arrival of "aggregator" job sites, such as:

6FigureJobs If you are looking for a $100k+ position, you can access over 2,000 exclusive job postings from renowned corporate recruiters and executive search firms on the 6figurejobs web site.
WorkTree: Attorney Jobs WorkTree claims to be "The largest job search portal in the world" and provides access to millions of jobs, that are sourced from over 50,000 places on the Internet. You can access over 35 job sites with attorney job listings from one place.

As you can see, there are many different ways to put your skills and qualifications to work for you and you should use all of these methods as part of your overall job search strategy.

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