Tuesday, November 16, 2004

 
The 1L resumes started today. It's like this every year. I know most schools used to have guidelines that say 1Ls can't send anything out until December 1, and I think they still do, but every year the process gets more and more competitive and we start getting them earlier and earlier. It's very hard for a 1L to get a job here. We nominally recruit at our top schools, but mostly to get our name in their minds for when they're 2Ls. We'll interview a few students, and have perhaps one or two 1Ls in the summer class, if we're blown away by anyone. It's all a game. The difference between taking one 1L and taking zero is that if we take one, people think they have a chance, and put us on their list, and pay attention to us. If we take zero, no one knows we exist when we come back the next fall for the 2Ls. But the worst part are the phone calls from 1Ls who've never looked for a job before, and they call every two weeks to follow up on their resume, like I remember whether I've read it or not. If I remember someone's name from having already called once, the second time they call without any reason, I throw away the resume. No exceptions. It's more to make myself feel better than anything else. If I haven't called you and you have to call me, it means as a 1L you're not getting the job. So it doesn't matter if I throw the resume away or not. Every fall I also get calls from students at some schools "updating their firm contact information," which, as far as I've been able to tell, involves the creation of mail merge spreadsheets that let students apply to hundreds of firms without nearly enough trouble. I assume they are better at mail merge than I am. I wondered how they found students to call the firms. And then one of them told me that what they do is dangle the promise of access. "You'll be on the phone with the recruiting coordinators, and sometimes even the hiring partners. So if they're hiring anyone, if you make a good impression, they'll remember your name and you'll have a foot in the door." This is baloney. They think this helps them. It doesn't. If anything, it makes you look weak in my eyes. You thought you needed to telemarket in order to have a chance? You must be useless. Sometimes we give them mercy interviews if we think it'll hurt our reputation on campus if we don't. That means we invite them down here, but we know they won't be getting an offer. They don't know. It makes those interviews a bit more fun than most.

Comments:
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This post rings such a familiar bell, AL. Sometimes over-zealousness just gets on people's nerves, don't they?

A lot of loonies (no offense intented, a term of endearment in my books, warped as it may be...) also do not understand what the phrase "we will be in touch if you are shortlisted' means, and they call you up umpteen times to follow up. Or they will call you and their first opening statement, without first identifying themselves, is, ' do you remember me? We spoke last week?'or ' I wrote you an email / you wrote me an email last week'. Like that jolts my failing memory a lot. I don't even remember who I spoke with yesterday, not to mention the emails (automatically-generated ones included) I send out and receive by the hundreds every week. At least, identify yourself properly and clearly explain the purpose of your call. And if we need you to call us to follow up on something, we will let you know, without fail.
 
Awesome...
 
I think I speak for more than a few people when asking this question - how exactly does the "recruiting" process work in general? What is the exact process when a resume is received to a hiring partner/recruiting coordinator? Do they put in order of highest grade/rank, by school, etc? Just curious to know how the whole process and selection goes.
 
Here's how the recruiting process works.

Take the US News rank of your school.
Take your GPA.

Divide the first by the second number. If you get below 1, go "help out" at the public defender's office.
 
Thanks AL for reminding me just how humiliating it was to search for a job as a law student. And thanks too for the PTSD flare-up.
 
Perhaps I am confused or don't know something about law school grading.

Take your school rank: lets say 50. Divide by GPA. Let's say 3.

16 plus change.
say the 100th best school. 2 gpa. 50.
200th best school. 1 gpa. 200.

1st law school. 4.0 gpa. .25
Harvard grads are supposed to be paralegals in public defenders offices?

What am I missing? Did you reverse the numbers? Just trying to be cute? What?
 
9:53, the only thing you are missing is that 9:03 is a moron.
 
Also, Harvard is tied for #3 with Stanford.
 
Pllllleeeease, 1:46, I hardly think that was 9:53's point. Don't be lame.
 
1:46, I hate to break it to you, but Harvard is NOT tied with your school for #3:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law/brief/lawrank_brief.php
#1 Yale
#2 Harvard
#3 Stanford
Sorry.
 
I'm going to disagree with 2:52 and say that 1:46 is from Yale, or at least not Stanford. If 1:46 was from Stanford, (s)he would not have said Harvard was tied for #3. (S)he would have said it was tied for #2.
 
If I weren't lame, I wouldn't be a true AL poster. Sincerely, 1:56.
 
Here's my formula to calculate the value of a post:

debating your law school ranking + thinking it's important = gay post.
 
Wow. All this time, I didn't even realize that posts had genders, let alone sexual orientations. So I assume a "gay" post is one that likes to have sex with other posts of the same gender? What exactly is involved in posts having sex?
 


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