Career Center: Ready, Set, Interview -- Researching Your Way Into a Job Offer
In this week’s Career Center Tips Series, Lateral Link’s Frank Kimball, an expert recruiter and former Biglaw hiring partner, discusses the importance of research prior to on-campus interviewing.
View the interview as an athletic contest that requires energy, preparation, and constant flexibility. You will turn the tables and impress the employer with your knowledge of her firm. Even the toughest question (about bad grades and the like) can be handled with aplomb. The lawyer who projects an image of relaxed self-confidence will carry the day. Think for a moment about the differences between nervous, high energy politicians (George Bush “41″ and Michael Dukakis) and relaxed and self confident politicians (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). In politics, law, or medicine, a good bedside manner is critical to care for citizens, clients and patients.
You have begun a multi-decade career as a lawyer after investing three years and a small fortune. Just as the first year of law school was a demanding mélange of information, chaos, rumor, fact, stress, and progress, so too will be the process of finding the right place to continue your career. From the beginning of the process through the final decision, the student who understands the prospective employer will compete more effectively.
How can you become better prepared for an interview? Read on, after the jump….
In 31 years interviewing more than 9,500 law students and laterals, I have found that less than 10% were fully prepared for the interview. Many put the process on “auto-pilot” and go through the motions of an interview asking routine questions and plodding through the process. While those with a 4.0 and who edit the Law Review may not need to do more, the rest of us must.
An hour preparing for an on-campus interview and two preparing for an in-office interview is a small investment. And, it is far more than your peers will do. You need not memorize all data about a firm. But you should know, all of the following in a general sense: office locations, departments, relative growth trends, offer ratios for the summer program, major clients, prominent cases and matters, themes emphasized in promotional materials, and recent hiring at your law school.
Click here to read more on interview preparations as well as some of the research tools you should add to your arsenal. For additional career and interviewing insights, as well as profiles of individual law firms, check out the Career Center.
