Transcript
Back in November I had an interview call back. It did go well, and I need to follow up. If a law firm's not responding after an interview, that's typically not great news. It typically means that either they don't have an interest in you they may not have the work anymore,
they may have just been busy over the break. If the recruiter person didn't get back to you, that could just be the recruiter is busy, or it could be that they just don't have any knowledge about that. One of the things I recommend to everybody when you're applying to jobs is that you want to apply to as many places as possible because you can never put your trust in one firm.
You have to realize that all sorts of things can happen. You need to be very aggressive. So you should try to have as much going on as possible. So if you got this interview, you theoretically should be getting a lot more by applying to the similar types of firms, regardless of whether or not they have openings.
The other thing I would recommend is you said you applied through a friend. There're articles on BCG that I've written about that can be a good idea and can be a bad idea. The problem is when you apply for it through a friend, that friend is vouching for you.
Sometimes your friends are competitive and may say negative things about you, or the firm may have a negative opinion of your friend, and you just don't know. And people may think they're great, and so if you came through that person, maybe you're getting ready to let your friend go.
You just have no idea what's going on, so that sometimes can hurt you. If you get an interview through a partner with a ton of business, that's a good thing. But a lot of times, the person that submitted your resume is a person you need to be concerned about. If you haven't heard back, I would just continue applying to places.
I don't think following up is going to do you any good. But you might send a letter just saying how much you liked them and what you liked. One of the things I always like to tell my candidates to do is write "Three things I liked about your firm."
And you can send that to the recruiting person. So it would be something along the lines of, " I wanted to follow up. I enjoyed the firm. These are the things I like about it".
Then you just go from there. And I spoke to this person about this, and I liked what they said about that. So an example would be: " I enjoyed speaking with John Ballantine. Because he spoke about how he takes a personal interest in his clients and likes to get to know them personally.
And when he represents them and always can understand their point of view, that makes his job a lot easier and it makes him much more effective as an attorney. And that's the kind of firm I want to work in". If you say nice things about
the people you spoke with and send that to the recruiting person, three different conversations, three nice things about interviews, and individual people, not just the firm. Then that goes a long way because it makes those people look good. And then it also reminds them of you in a positive way in the conversation. That's something that I like to do with interviews. And I think that can help you. And that may be something you want to sound. But to me, it sounds probably you won't get the job, and I will just apply to as many places as you possibly can. That's the biggest mistake that attorneys make is under marketing themselves.
