It’s All About the Interview

As a recruiter, my main focus is all about getting candidates to one place: the interview. This means speaking about their needs, assisting with their resumes, drafting a compelling cover letter on their behalf, advocating to the places to which we’ve submitted them and then fully preparing them with a mock interview. After that point, most of my job is done. After all, I can’t go into the interview and answer the questions for them! (Although sometimes I wish I could)

Yes, there are some things I do after an interview to help a candidate land their dream job, but so much of the decision rests upon a candidate’s shoulders once it gets to that phase. I recently had a friend link to an article that Forbes did about the interview process and it proposes that there are really just three key interview questions:

1. Can you do the job?
2. Will you love the job?
3. Can we tolerate working with you?

Overall, I’d have to agree with this summary. A prospective employer already has your resume and can see a basic picture of what you’ve done in the past. They’ve also likely seen your transcript and gotten personal feedback from your recruiter, if you are working with one. So, if they ask you in for an interview, they generally know that there is a high likelihood they’d like to hire you.

As you prepare for an interview, keep those three questions in mind and try to incorporate them into your answers to other questions. Obviously, most employers won’t ask any of those three questions outright, so it’s up to you to convince them that you can do the job even though you’re technically answering a question about your biggest weakness (everyone’s favorite interview question). And follow it up with reassuring them how much they’ll love working with you as you are smiling broadly and capturing their attention with an appropriate humorous story or two.

What it really comes down to is simple: they want someone who can do the work well, who will do it without complaint (and, gasp, maybe even an occasional smile), and who they don’t mind being stuck in the office with on a Saturday afternoon. Use this information to your advantage and lock down an offer every time you interview! Read the full article from Forbes here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-executive-recruiters-agree-there-are-only-three-key-job-interview-questions/.

Understanding Social Media and Using it to Boost Your Career

In today’s world of modern technology, even our social interactions and presence has crossed over to the digital world. Instead of calling someone to wish them a happy birthday, or even more outlandish, sending them a birthday card via the U.S. Postal Service, we now post a happy birthday message on their Facebook wall. And old colleagues we may have once been too intimidated by to even say hello in the hallway are now approachable as we send them a “connect” request through LinkedIn. As Drew Barrymore’s character in “He’s Just Not That Into You” lamented, there are so many social media outlets available now that just keeping up with your different accounts is nearly impossible! As you begin your job search, or just aim to keep yourself on an upward trajectory with your current employer, there are some rules of the game to play by with regard to your social media accounts.

To read the rest of the article, please visit: http://www.bcgsearch.com/article/61436/Understanding-Social-Media-and-Using-it-to-Boost-Your-Career/

The Importance of Keeping an Interview

I recently have had candidates ask me etiquette questions about going to a previously scheduled interview after new circumstances arise. The issue can be anything from no longer being interested in the firm to having a busy week at work to having received an offer from another firm. In ninety percent of the circumstances, my advice remains the same: keep the interview, show up, be your usual charming self and try to get an offer! There are several reasons for this advice, but let me at least expand upon a few.

1.            The legal community is smaller than you think. You never know where your career will take you, which partner will join your current firm, who you’ll need a favor from in the future, who opposing counsel may be, etc. You want everyone in that small legal community to have the most favorable impression of you possible and not think that you are flaky or uncommitted or a litany of other potentially false impressions.

2.            You never know what you may find. Though you may initially think a certain firm isn’t the best fit for you because of something you heard, or something you read, or for some other reason, you really never know how you will mesh with a specific group of people in a particular office. You owe it to yourself to show up, check it out and see how it works for you.

3.            You have to look out for yourself. Even if you went on an interview at another firm and even received an offer, you don’t know if something will arise during your conflict check or if some other unforeseen circumstance will result in you not actually working for that firm. In the meantime, you should continue to interview and get offers from the firms that you are interested in so that you have a choice to make and can make it after getting first-person experience at each firm.

Those are just a few reasons why it’s important to keep an interview after you’ve accepted it, but every situation is different. If you have concerns or a circumstance arises, call your recruiter and discuss the situation so they can fill you in on all of your choices and their thoughts and experience with the issue. At the end of the day, you are both trying to find you the best job possible so work together as a team!

Listen up Ladies: Evaluating and Rethinking What’s Important to You

I recently read an article on Forbes about the tendency for professional women of my generation to burn out of their careers by age 30. Seeing as how attorneys spend three years getting their JD and typically don’t receive that degree any earlier than age 25, that only leaves five years of practice before burning out! I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a very good return on investment to me. As a recruiter, the most common reason candidates contact me is because they don’t like their current job and they want to find a job that they will like, which makes perfect sense to me. Everyone should like their job, given how much of their time and identity it consumes. But, for women especially, career goals and aspirations can change with time as your life at 35 is likely different than it was at 25.

As you consider whether you need to look elsewhere for career satisfaction, make sure you take both an objective and subjective approach to evaluating new opportunities. Though this advice can be helpful for both men and women, the aforementioned article got me thinking about how a woman in her early to mid-years of law practice should think about her career.

1. What do you enjoy the most about your practice? What do you enjoy the least? Is there a way to maximize what you like and minimize what you dislike by joining a more widely or narrowly defined practice group?
2. Do you prefer working for several different people or having one main point of contact? If it’s only one point of contact, is there a particular gender or work style you respond best to?
3. At this point, is compensation or lifestyle more important? What do you think your answer will be in five years? Try to create a hypothetical sliding scale of how many hours you’d be willing to sacrifice per week/month for a corresponding amount of money.
4. Does your current employer have women in power/leadership positions? Have these women been able to work flexible schedules or taken time off after having children? If so, are these women able to serve as mentors to you?

Of course, these are just a few questions to get you started as you consider whether you should change jobs before you reach that burn-out level. Regardless, it’s important to be proactive in your assessment of your current career and where you would like to it go in the future, so start taking stock now!

The original article I referenced can be found here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2011/11/11/why-millennial-women-are-burning-out-at-work-by-30/