Placement and Temporary Agencies for Paralegal Candidates

Many temporary placement agencies do permanent placements, and some permanent agencies have temporary departments. Note the difference, but be aware of the overlapping areas. Many agencies require experience before they will deal with you. In certain major cities though, entry paralegal candidates have been placed by placement agencies. It does not hurt to contact each placement agency in town to see if they will deal with you as a paralegal candidate. Many agencies are now developing "legal departments" to take advantage of the growth of the profession. Temporary paralegal work, which is often litigation-support work, is an excellent way to get you over the entry-level hump. It enhances your resume, makes you money, and gets you into the legal world. An additional benefit is that it forces you to continue your hunt for a full-time paralegal job in an even more conscious and deliberate way; because you are working eight hours a day, your full-time job hunt must be super- efficient.

Temporary assignments can lead to full-time permanent work with litigation support and document management companies - a corporate, nontraditional growth area for paralegals. Litigation support duties, which include document review and coding and data entry, are often open to entry candidates.

Contact all the temporary services in your town and present yourself in the most professional manner you can. Keep your relationship with all agencies at a very high level: Burnt bridges to agencies are very difficult to rebuild. Do not fail to recognize the importance of these services to your career.

Placement department leads

Your school undoubtedly has a job board and a career department of some kind. Stay in touch weekly with them and let them know of your interest and enthusiasm for legal placement assistance. Many graduates develop an "I'm-on-my-own-now" attitude. They let themselves feel cut off from the school after graduation and then do not take advantage of the services available to them.

Graduates, friends, relatives

Once you have logged your names and contacted people, stay in touch with them. A friendly reminder every week or so keeps you in mind and lets them remember again that you need help. Log all of the activity you generate in your Journal of Professional Contacts so that you can keep track of the connections that you discover and the letters that you write.

Newspaper ads

The synergistic job search is based upon the concept of connectedness. Read the entire newspaper and all of its ads. Business articles often foretell legal activity. Newly created legal job descriptions often emerge without the word "legal" in the title. Do not miss a week (or a day, for that matter) while you are in "search mode" When paralegals ask, "What should I look for?" the answer is, 'Took for legal in other guises." The following list of job titles was garnered from a survey of paralegal graduates by a renowned institute. When you search through the Classified Ads, keep your eyes open to all kinds of possibilities.

• Account Service Representative
• Adjuster
• Assistant Division Clerk
• Associate Consultant
• Bankruptcy Clerk
• Case Manager
• Closer
• Closing Assistant
• Compliance Administrator
• Compliance Investigator
• Contract Administrator
• Contract Negotiator
• Contract Legislative
• Analyst
• Contract Paralegal
• Corporate Practice
• Specialist
• Data Entry Clerk
• Enforcement Specialist
• Executive Trial Assistant
• Franchise Compliance
• Manager
• Law Clerk
• Legal Research Specialist
• Legal Resource Analyst
• Legal Technician
• Legal Nurse Consultant
• Manager of Administrative Services
• Mediator
• Medical Paralegal
• Office Manager
• Patent Administrator
• Policy Audit Technician
• Project Officer
• Residential Closing
• Assistant
• Restitution Officer
• Risk Manager
• Senior Loan Closer
• Title Assistant
• Trust Officer
• Unit Manager

You put yourself in The Hiring Zone by doing everything at once. Of course you will find the lucky examples of people who did little and got work easily, often because they had the right connections. And of course you will see examples of people who work incredibly hard and seem to get nowhere. Neither of these extremes are reasons to not fully engage yourself in an all-out campaign to get a job.

When My Crop Comes In-The Wait for Results

The truth about the job search process is that it takes a little while before you see results. Many job searchers complain that they see little fruit in the first part of the process, then turn around after several weeks and start talking about how three or four things came in on the same day.

There is a lag time in this process. Contacts take time to mature. Openings take time to develop. The most successful and quick job results often consume weeks. Think of the simple analogy of bringing in a crop. There is plowing and digging and fertilizing and sowing and more fertilizer and rain and growth and maturity and hopefully more "rain in due season" and then-the harvest. None of these processes can be hurried. Farmers know that much of the job is doing and waiting and waiting and doing. You can't coax a crop out of the ground.

In the synergistic job search, you sow all kinds of seed as fast as you can in as many places as you can. The harvest comes in variously in different cycles. You do your best to do what you should at every turn (create, follow up, confirm, record, follow up, create, follow through). In all of this, however, there is the waiting. Once you have done all that you can, you have to stand back and let it grow. As much as we might like to, we cannot browbeat people into hiring us. You cannot talk an opening into existence and, most of all; you cannot make up a relationship that is not there in the first place. Remember in Chapter 3 the attitudinal elements to H.U.S.T.L.E.? Stay Cool, Let Things Work, and Expect Good News. These attitudes are as important as your actions. The synergistic job search depends upon understanding that time and effort work together.