A lawyer’s social networking activity to impact getting hired and career advancement
From CNet’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols (@sjvn):
Many people think Klout scores, from the social network reputation measuring service, are nonsense. They’re not. People get hired because of their Klout scores, and now your next promotion may be determined by your Klout score, since Microsoft will be integrating Klout into its Yammer enterprise social network software.
Microsoft is not alone in its use of Kout and Yammer, per Vaughan-Nichols. According to Klout, “…Over 85 percent of the Fortune 500 are deploying Yammer.”
Pavan Tapadia (@ptapadia), Chief Product Officer at Yammer, blogging about the Klout partnership, explained that “Klout’s integration with Yammer is twofold.”
First, as a Yammer user, you can publish your public Klout score and expertise directly on your Yammer profile. If you’re someone who has a lot of influence in the public social sphere, this is a cool way to showcase your Klout score in the workplace. The second aspect of integration allows Yammer admins to turn on a deeper integration with Klout to produce Yammer-specific Klout scores for employees based on their activity within their company’s Yammer network. This is a great opportunity for organizations to identify top contributors and subject matter experts based on their Yammer participation.
Is it off the wall to think that law firms will be looking at the Klout scores of their lawyers and others? Though I’ve laughed Klout off at times, I don’t think so. I blogged two years ago on the impact Klout may have on law firms.
It’s possible law firms could at some point consider a Klout score on a couple fronts. Law firms want to penetrate certain segments of industry. Knowing who the influencers are could be beneficial in knowing who to build relationships with through social networking. It’s also possible that law firms could make hiring decisions based on a lawyer’s Klout in a niche area.
Law firms have always wanted to employ influential lawyers for at least a couple reasons, the quality of their work and their business development value.
Influence based on social networking activity is much the same. Lawyers who network online as a method of professional development, as many do via blogs, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are going to deliver a higher quality work product. Those same lawyers will have built relationships and a word of mouth reputation that will lead to business.
In time, law firms are also going to see the value of being a social organization. Having lawyers and other professionals social networking externally and internally leads to a greater knowledge base as well as knowing where your talent lies. Social technologies stand to unlock from $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in value for businesses per McKinsey Global Institute.
I agree with Vaughan-Nichols:
Like it or lump it, the Yammer/Klout partnership shows that how effectively active you are on social networking will clearly matter more and more, not just in finding work but in moving ahead within your company.
Laugh off Klout and other measures of social influence, but the world is changing. Both in the skills that may be acquired (social networking) and what will be required to advance in your career (influence gained by social networking).