Law Schools

Striking Out At OCI: What Happens Now?

Striking out during OCI only means that you have to adjust your job search strategy.

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Much of the recent space in this column has been devoted to examining on-campus interviewing — and really the Fall interview cycle, writ large — in great detail. But permeating through those pieces has been a bias that if a student goes through OCI, they will end up with a job offer in hand.  This is true for many students, but sadly, not all. What happens if you strike out and emerge from OCI right back when you started, i.e., without a job?

Rest assured that this does not mean you are destined for a lifetime of destitution.  However, it does mean that you will need to redouble your efforts to find a summer position.

But before diving back into the job hunt, take a moment to try and assess what went wrong during OCI.  Whether during initial interviews or callbacks, something proved to be a stumbling block on your path to an offer. Figuring out what that was will be vital to your ongoing search.

Unfortunately, no one from Career Services can be in the interview room with you or join you on callbacks — though if someone wants to invite me on a callback lunch, I have got a fork in hand.  This means that students are going to have to be introspective and try to discern what happened during their interviews.  Was it something you said?  The way you came off?  Manage to anger the wrong partner?  Be honest in your assessment.  Convincing yourself that you did fine when in reality, you were anything but, does not help anyone, especially you.

And while Career Services cannot be in the interview room with you, many offices have strong relationships with the employers who come to campus, or otherwise interview that school’s students.  If an interview was an unmitigated disaster, that often gets back to those of us on the CSO staff who, in turn, can share it with you as a learning experience.  So if you have been struggling to generate an offer, ask your CSO if employers have said anything about your interview performance.

But while there might be a particularized reason why a student struggled with OCI, they might also have to come to grips with the fact that their candidacy with a particular firm ended before they ever walked into the interview room. Employers can only callback/hire a finite number of students and it could just be that classmates had superior interviews or a better application.  If armed with a 3.1 1L GPA, you met with a firm that only called back students from your school with a 3.5 or higher, your inability to get a callback was likely less to do with the content of your interview than the simple fact that your grades failed to measure up.  This grade-based rationale is more likely limited to the initial interview stage. To be invited for a callback, a student has already met the paper requirements, e.g., grades, so an inability to land an offer after multiple callbacks is likely boiling down to an issue of interviewing.

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Much like with 3Ls who got no offered from their summer employer, once you have a sense of what happened during OCI, it is time to kick your summer search into high gear.  As is often my advice in these pages, it starts with networking. Reach out to everyone you can possibly think of in your personal network and as many law school alumni as you can get a hold of and see if they are hiring, or at least know of anyone who is hiring for the summer.

Your school also likely has a sizable number of job postings already listed on Symplicity (or whichever Career Services Manager your school uses, perhaps 12Twenty) from employers who are interested in candidates from your school, but who did not come on campus. APPLY TO THESE. This does not even require any extra work on your part like networking can, as often times these jobs can be applied to with a couple of clicks.  Though it would probably behoove you to write a cover letter, even if one isn’t explicitly asked for, so you can fully explain your interest in that firm/market.

Students who struck out during OCI should also expand their targets both geographically and in terms of employer type. The geographic portion of that advice is self-explanatory, but with regard to the type of employers, remember that unlike 3Ls, a 2L does not, necessarily, have to be looking for permanent employment.  This gives you the opportunity to look at a range of options such as government or nonprofits while still allowing you to interview with private firms again as a 3L, though this time armed with a more developed résumé.  Also, think about enrolling in an externship during the Spring semester.  Not only will you build up your practical legal skills, but you will also be able to forge connections within the nearby legal community, connections that could prove invaluable during the 3L job search.

The Fall recruiting cycle can be a stressful time which is only compounded if you find yourself lacking any offers while your friends are regaling each other with stories of callbacks and trying to figure out how they will spend their summer associate dollars (to those students who are juggling multiple offers, try not to humblebrag too much in front of your classmates).

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But striking out during OCI only means that you have to adjust your job search strategy.  Conduct some reconnaissance to get a sense as to what might have gone wrong, and then start the summer job search anew.

Nicholas Alexiou is the Director of LL.M. and Alumni Advising as well as the Associate Director of Career Services at Vanderbilt University Law School. He will, hopefully, respond to your emails at [email protected].

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