Top Tips for On-Campus Recruiting
On-campus recruiting can be an incredibly stressful time for many students, making it no different than any other day in law school.
Ed. note: Please welcome our newest columnist, M.G. Aaron. M.G.’s weekly column will bring a satirical edge to the latest happenings in the legal industry. Enjoy!
On-campus recruiting can be an incredibly stressful time for many students, making it no different than any other day in law school. But showing up prepared can make all the difference in an interview. Review these tips for the best interview experience!
Before the interview:
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✓ Use the waiting time between interviews to get your blood flowing. Power poses have been clinically proven to increase testosterone, increase confidence, and increase discomfort for those in the hallway around you.
✓ Firms reward 5 extra bonus points for tripping the student leaving the room before you.
✓ After you knock on the door for your interview, attorneys will often ask, “Mind waiting 2 minutes while I finish up?” Answer, “yes” to establish dominance.
Follow-up: should the attorney express surprise at your response, explain that a 2-minute delay actually reduces interview time by 10%. Attorneys fear numbers.
Highlight the firm’s strengths:
✓ It’s important to be familiar with and highlight a firm’s fortes during your interview. Touch on important strengths such as their culture, their impressive clients, and their requirement that all associates be able to bench 225 before they will even be considered for partnership.
Talk about a practice group you like:
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✓ When asked which practice group appeals to you, the correct answer is “Capital Markets.”
✓ Should the attorney respond that the firm does not actually have a Capital Markets group, just smoothly explain that you would like to establish it.
Many firms ask you to explain your geographic preference.
✓ Don’t be fooled by this trick question. It falsely assumes you will ever be outside of the firm during daylight hours. You will not.
Describe your greatest weakness:
✓ Attorneys might ask what your greatest weakness is. However, the interviewer is actually looking for a relatively innocuous weakness that you have already taken steps to fix.
Potential answers:
Weakness: Need for sleep
Solution: You have already enrolled in an experimental human-testing drug-trial at the medical school.
Weakness: Desire for meaningful, human contact
Solution: Go back in time and choose to do something different with your life.
Weakness: Too hard-working
Solution: Stop being such a gunner, Brad.
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Come Prepared with Questions for the Interviewer:
✓ Potential questions include:
○Can I use the in-suite bathroom?
○Do you think this suit is better with or without the pocket square?
○Can you describe your firm’s approach to work/life balance?
These questions are definitely interview-appropriate and would, in no way, backfire on you.
After the interview:
✓ You can expect to receive your personalized ding letter from Cravath no more than 5 minutes after the interviewers finish wiping tears of laughter from their eyes after they’ve finished reviewing your transcript.
✓ On the first day of September, find the first 1L to enter the law school building. If the 1L sees his shadow, there will be 6 more weeks of uncomfortable firm lunches*.
✓ Don’t forget to stop by the hospitality suites to pick up free swag. Every year Paul Weiss will actually put a rolled-up offer letter inside a Tide To Go Pen for one lucky 2L.
✓ When you call to schedule your callback interview, press 0 to immediately connect to the hiring partner.
At the end of the day, just remember to be yourself! Someone who has accrued staggeringly large amounts of debt to receive highly specialized training for a small job market that is notoriously susceptible to market downturns.
*Please note should you receive a summer offer, this will continue.
M.G. Aaron is a current 3L at a T9 law school. Originally coming to law school to save the world through public interest, the work-life balance of Biglaw persuaded M.G. to use the finely-crafted skills from three dedicated years of study to pursue the nobler cause of helping corporations (the other people). Feel free to email M.G. at: [email protected].
