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Should Everyone Be Passive Job Seeking?

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

This was my thought when I opened up the Legal Tech Talent newsletter this morning, not because they were directly suggesting it. Rather, it was because the actions they recommended taking when you are “passive” job-seeking, sounded a lot like just, networking. Here’s a link to the article and you can read it for yourself:

Passive Job Seeking: Keeping Your Legal Tech Career Options Open

The suggestions (you should go read it for more details) were as follows:

Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile:

Attend Industry Conferences:

Engage in Networking Groups:

Volunteer for the Community:

Those are essentially the same steps I would recommend for anyone wanting to network in our industry. Get active in places where Legal Tech folks gather, like LinkedIn, conferences, and networking groups, and volunteer to be a part of some of those same groups. Whether that networking is for career opportunities or just to be connected with people in the field and share tips and information, that’s what I would do.

So, if those actions are what passive job-seeking looks like, we should all be passive job-seeking.

Then I was reminded of what I said last week and repeated in the newsletter earlier this week:

If you’re currently working, especially in tech, start thinking now about saving and what your options will be if you get laid off.

Prepare to get laid off. In the tech world, it’s happening far too often for anyone to feel like they are immune to it. When (Can we even say “if” it happens anymore?) it happens what’s the next thing you’ve got to fall back on? Your network, which you grew and kept active following all of the advice from the article above. I’ve been doing a lot of this stuff. Four of my last five jobs were a result of knowing the hiring manager ahead of time, either from working together previously or meeting them through various activities. That only happens when you keep in touch with your network and being active in various online and offline groups is a great way to do that.

It’s not disloyal to have contingency plans or to be open to new possibilities. Can any of us honestly say that the companies we work for don’t do the same, or that they shouldn’t be prepared for anyone to leave?

Networking can open us up to a variety of opportunities. It can be making friends, learning from each other, and even finding new job opportunities. It might look like passive job-seeking no matter what our intentions are, but in 2023 is passively looking for your next job not a good idea anyway?

As a side note, you can follow this page on LinkedIn now as well as connect with me personally.

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