Parsing the No

I was recently asked by a law student to explain what a firm means by the language that they choose to use in a rejection letter or e-mail. While this student is doing beautifully in her on-campus interviews generally speaking, she is (like many of her contemporaries) collecting her fair share of rejections.

There is “we are unable to offer you a position at this time…” and there is “while we find your credentials outstanding, our class of 2010 is filled. We will contact you if anything changes…” There is “your background does not suit our needs.” Does one bit of prose suggest there is more hope for the future than the other? What can we read into this “no” that gives us more insight? Can you tell me what they mean?

I, Carey Bertolet, regret to inform you that while your question is quite reasonable, and while acknowledging that hope springs eternal, I must at this time inform you that the answer is in the negative.

While some language in one letter may be more promising, or gentle, than the next, I have never found that any real meaning should be ascribed to any of it. Feedback, to the extent one can get it, isn’t going to be between the lines. An honest assessment of your resume and presentation to a firm will be far more effective in figuring out why you got a no than poring over a letter. And, in an economy where everybody has their fair share of rejection, don’t dwell too much on the opportunities that won’t pan out now–stay focused on those that will.

Dependents’ Day

It is ironic to me that just days after we celebrated our nation’s independence, I got a call from the parent of a young lawyer. Sadly, this isn’t unusual, it happens more often than you might imagine. I’m really terribly ambivalent about telephone calls that start “my son/daughter just graduated from law school and….” I’m ambivalent because who can criticize a well-meaning parent who is genuinely hoping to help their kid by gathering career advice? On the other hand, for those of us on the receiving end of the phone call, it can really undermine your child’s credibility. Er, I mean, your adult son or daughter’s credibility.

Also, it’s unprofessional.

On a cranky day, my instinct is just to say “tell them to call me directly” and hang up the phone. I’ve never been cranky enough to do it. I just try as best I can to answer their (the parents’) questions and send them in the right direction. I usually point out that it would *really* be better if their son or daughter was doing this work on their own behalf. I hear two responses. First I hear “oh well he or she is sooo busy.” Second, I hear that the parent is just trying to give them a kick in the pants to push them forward in their career. Neither of these excuses dull the absurdity, in my opinion. It certainly highlights the possibility that if your parents are doing the work of managing your legal career, you have more significant issues to overcome than time management.

Form Over Function

Technically, this is resume writing advice, but I hope that you take this advice as something much deeper in terms of how lawyers view their skills and value.

The questions I get so often are whether someone’s formatting is right, whether they are using the right terms of art, whether their language is similar to the language other candidate’s use to describe their practice. Those are valid questions, to be sure, but it occurs to me that the fact that these are the most frequently asked questions indicates that there is a lot more form than substance.

The most important thing about your resume is what it SAYS. I’m a stickler for resumes that have perfect form–no misspellings, no distracting formatting, no unnecessary information. Having an impeccable LOOKING resume is vital. But it’s not the point of your resume. I get the question “what do I say about myself?” but I can’t answer that question on anyone’s behalf.

That’s where you should start with your resume. Write down all of those things that only you know about the extent of your background.

Every attorney should be thinking critically about what they do and every single transaction, deal, negotiation and case that has made up their experience. Obviously, it is never appropriate to inflate your experience, but if you are content to just touch on the major points of your experience, you are doing yourself a disservice. I recommend to my candidates that the first step is to ignore page lengths, font, and format. Simply get on paper all of those things that you do–all of those things that would be relevant to a potential employers.

Have you taken the lead on a transaction or file?
Have you originated clients?
Are you published?
Have you handled a novel issue?
What industries are your clients in?

These are just a few places to start.

Your resume not only reflects what you can do — it reflects your enthusiasm for what you do. Think about that carefully. Does “write and research memorandum regarding various issues” sound like someone who loves what they do? Have you proven that you can articulate sophisticated issues of law or define complex transactions? If you can’t soundly answer those questions with a yes, start over again.

Sit down in a moment when you can think and review your experience carefully. Bring energy to the project, and be detailed. Let the formatting and tightening go, just focus on your individual experience and what drives you professionally. It will be worth it.

You know I love you, right?

I’ll just start with that, because I hate to be harsh.

I’ve ranted about this before, but nothing drives me crazier than an unprofessional presentation during a job search.  Most people would be surprised if they saw what I’ve been seeing–when the economy goes downhill, so does the work product of the resumes and cover letters I see.  I have lots of unscientific theories about why, but that’s not really the point of this particular post.

This post is about your e-mail address.  If your e-mail address is some version of your proper name (and only your proper name), you can stop reading.  For those out there with e-mail addresses on the creative, side, this is for you.  It’s tough enough in today’s economy–there is no reason to make it harder by using a ridiculous e-mail address.

You don’t have to pay for an e-mail address anymore.  So even if you love the SurfChick@whatever address you’ve been using for 10 years, get a new one.  CoolLawyer@address, go ahead and change yours as well.  The personal e-mail address you list for correspondence pertaining to your job search should be personal (i.e. not your work e-mail), but it shouldn’t be personal, know what I’m saying?  If your e-mail address references your hobbies (BakingManiac@…), your pet’s name (Fluffy’sMom@…), or whether you are attractive (CuteAtty@…), please do not put it on your resume.  Today I saw ANOTHER e-mail address with some cheeky innuendo.  Why are you harpooning your job search efforts?

There are times to show a little flair and a little individuality.  I love a good sense of humor.  But some of these e-mail addresses I’ve been seeing–they are distracting the heck out of me, and not in a good way.  You want someone to pay attention to your resume–but not negative attention.  Your e-mail address is your contact information–plain and simple.

I know you are funny, I know you are interesting.  I promise I am excited to review the details of your professional background.  Your e-mail address, however, should bore me to tears.

Fine tuning the resume in the electronic age

I will see a resume that sets off a red flag for me, from time to time.  Maybe it’s a confusing chronology, or some gaps in employment, and I start to feel like something that I’m missing.  Worse yet, like something is being obscured.  I can sometimes compare a resume I received some time in the past from a particular lawyer and find inconsistencies between it and their current copy.  When my internal alarm bell rings, I also go to LinkedIn.  Today, LinkedIn was kind enough to tell me that a lawyer who seemed to have too many employment moves in their career failed to include FOUR OTHER LAW FIRM employers on the resume that I saw.  I was concerned, but it didn’t take me long to discover that I didn’t have half of the story.

This particular resume wasn’t untruthful–there were no falsehoods that I could tell.  But this lawyer did choose to drop off over 5 years of post-admission legal experience.  I think it’s unlikely that a future employer won’t go through the same process I did in filling in the gaps.  I was never a fan of creative resume writing–I think that all your employers should be front and center.  Now the online world reinforces my view that there is likely no getting away from all of the particulars of your employment history.  In my opinion, you are always much better off controlling the delivery of how your job history is discovered by having a detailed chronology.  The alternative is leaving a recruiter or potential employer up to their own devices to fill in the gaps.  Most folks prefer getting the information at the outset than searching for it in cyberspace.

Very very temporary?

I recently had a conversation with someone who didn’t want to add a contract position to their resume.  I am of the opinion that all positions, including contract positions, MUST be on the resume.  This lawyer disagreed.  She felt that because the position was brief, she hated it, and the work was so unlikely to create a future conflict it was unnecessary to put it on the resume.

I get what she’s saying–especially because a firm may view contract positions negatively, a short contract position seems like a likely candidate to fall off the resume.  Even so, I think it absolutely has to be on CV.  The truth is that partners and administrators at law firms will view it differently, but there are plenty of folks who will view the omission of ANY job, no matter how brief, as lying on one’s resume.  Certainly this is one side of the spectrum, but that’s the side I think it’s prudent to cater to.  If, during an interview, your conversation gets derailed explaining that you worked somewhere and then why you didn’t include it on the resume, I think it’s unlikely that the meeting will end on a positive note.  You’ve just caused a distraction–a distraction from the firm thinking about anything other than what a good job you’d do if they hired you.

I know it’s boring and conservative, this 100% disclosure and writing a resume to appeal to the most meticulous of hiring professional.  As time consuming as a job search can be, I promise it’s more time consuming to back-track over your rationale for omitting a job from your resume–and potentially will completely derail your efforts.

What’s wrong with me?

I suppose it’s possible that I haven’t had enough caffeine today, and it’s making me cranky, but after I read this story about the e-mail flame sent by an NYU B-school professor, I found myself siding with the professor.

http://deadspin.com/5477230/nyu-business-school-professor-has-mastered-the-art-of-email-flaming

A student apparently complained to the professor by e-mail–upset that he wasn’t able to attend a class after arriving late–around an hour late.  But, since it was the first class of the semester, and he was visiting all of the course he was considering that met during that time slot, he should have been allowed to sit in on the balance of the first class.

The professor responded by e-mail.  “…get your s**t together.”  The professor challenged his assumptions about whether it was appropriate (even on the first day of classes) to walk in an hour late.  The professor suggested that just because the student couldn’t have known the professor’s policy regarding lateness, he was still expected to conduct himself according to certain standards.  The professor pointed out that though he has no stated policies with respect to urinating on desks, for instance, there is still no tolerance for it.

I sort of hate to admit I come out pro-professor on this one.  His response e-mail was a little harsh–but also right on, in my opinion.  I hate to be such a stickler for decorum, but the professor is right–professionals should be responsible for their behavior and shouldn’t complain about the lack of consideration when they were–admittedly–terribly late.

I received 9 e-mails from lawyers on Saturday asking to be considered for jobs.  Well, 9 resumes attached to e-mails.  One included a brief cover letter that addressed me specifically.  That was nice.  Several just had sentence fragments.  Two had no text whatsoever.  I don’t need a fancy cover letter when potential candidates approach me.  Even so, it is nice to see a concise and pleasant greeting.  “Thank you for your consideration” goes a long way.  I don’t ignore resumes from any potential candidate, but the way a person introduces themselves to me does make a difference in my overall evaluation.  To paraphrase our NYU professor, there are lots of things that are hard to manage in a career.  Politeness and decorum isn’t one of them, so it’s important to get that right.

The good news and the bad news

The most frequent question I’ve been getting is:  “are things better out there?”

The answer is mixed.  First, there isn’t yet one easy response that applies to all cities, all practices areas, and all lawyers.  For instance, there is good partner level movement–a tremendous amount in fact.  The associate market is changing–which is fantastic–but not quickly and not across the board.

Second, the beginnings of a recovery in the marketplace doesn’t immediately mean that everyone will instantly get re-absorbed into the workforce.  What we see here in New York is a definite upswing in work, which is fantastic news for lots of folks in the legal market.  For example, a lot of firms are doing a tremendous amount of securities work, both transactional and compliance, and our current needs reflect that trend.  The bad news is that the hiring higher-ups have their pulse on the market, and they suspect that in lateral hiring, they can be particularly choosy.

And they are.

The changes in the marketplace are not so simple as whether the economy is failing or whether it’s in recovery.  We are still in an environment where those with the ability to hire new lawyers are testing the market to see the type of the talent they can get.  How selective a firm can be will change depending on how much competition they have in the market.  As the overall work-flow increases in a particular practice and region, job opportunities will expand more meaningfully.

How Do Women Succeed in Law Firms?

Last week’s Economist (www.economist.com, subscription required) discusses the causes and effects of an every growing female workforce. Women do currently populate equal or greater-than-equal proportions in our universities and workforces at large, and there is much to be said and written about how this apparent equality is changing industry and economy.

From my law firm lens, however, there is still a great deal of progress left to be made, especially among partnership ranks. One of the articles in the Economist stood out. In the opinion piece Womenomics: Feminist Management Theorists are Flirting with some Dangerous Arguments, the author discusses whether women will be more successful running corporations by being like men, or by waiting until corporate culture evolves to recognize those leadership qualities that play more to female strengths (for example, consensus seeking). In the end, the author encourages women to stick to the former. Women are well-advised to take a harder edge, like Margaret Thatcher.

In the law firm setting, it’s easy to point out examples of successful female partners who have risen through the ranks without taking on the traditionally ‘hard edge’ associated with old school male leadership. Having said that, there are a few Margaret Thatchers out there as well. But in order to see more women successful, must we choose one path or the other? I find it depressing to think that the only way we’ll see women in law firm partnerships approaching 50% is for all female lawyers to do their best approximation of a tough-and-tumble men. Is that really what it’s going to take?

Holiday Frustrations and your Job Search

For those who are taking advantage of the end-of-the-year lull to focus on a job search, this can be a difficult time of year. It’s sometimes a good moment to get people on the phone. I myself am enjoying a quiet moment of catch-up in the office and am able to connect with folks without a lot of distraction. Having said that, tomorrow I’ll be in full holiday mode, and not so easy to reach. For those job-seekers out there who are working hard, they may not be able to see much response or movement until after the holiday season. That can be incredibly frustrating.

If you want to take this time to look for something new, by all means. But manage your expectations about how soon you’ll be hearing back from people. One way to combat the frustration of sending out queries without response is to spend some time also just reconnecting with folks. It’s a logical time of the year to reach out to past colleagues and just wish them a happy holiday season and a nice New Year. I’ve gotten several warm notes from folks just saying hello–I’m sure those are the people that will be at the top of my list when the new year starts to hit its stride.

Focus for the remainder of the year on what you are sending out, and don’t worry about what comes back in, at least for now. Enjoy the holidays, and wish someone else a happy holiday season.