Post
by JCougar » Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:54 pm
There is a slot to put any advanced degrees you have (MS, PhD, etc.), but there is no slot to say what that degree was in. Since my advanced degree is relevant to both my work experience and the type of law I want to practice, it's kind of worthless to me to only be able to enter "MS" without any further description.
Also, the "class rank" drop down menu is extremely granular. Is there a way to simply enter your GPA? It's a step between uploading your full transcript and being uselessly vague. If you are just below one of the GPA cutoffs, it really hurts you. "Top 25-50%" really covers a lot of ground recruiting-wise.
Thirdly, the "areas of interest" list only lists a very limited area of practice areas, and some practice areas are grouped with ones that aren't always grouped together, such as "Labor" and "Employee Benefits." I am just a lowly rising 2L, but from what I've gathered, employee benefits is more of a tax/finance-focused practice area, and "Labor" is more working with administrative agencies and negotiations. And there is no option with just "employment law."
My advanced degree, work experience, and desired practice area are all very important parts of my pitch to firms, yet the way the site is set up, I find it virtually impossible to make that pitch: I can't say what field my advanced degree was in, there's no fast, quick, and easy way for law firms to find candidates with certain work experience, and my choice area of practice simply is not on your drop-down menu, even though it is a major practice area (Employment Law). Also, my large undergarduate institution is not on your list.
I know that starting up a new business is very challenging, as my father was an entrepeneur himself that worked many 100-hour weeks working out kinks in his product, etc., but there seems to be a TON of major kinks on the site. Without trying to sound snotty, I would reccomend hiring a quality consultant or someone else to check these things out. Either that, or communicate the fact that your site is still in "beta" mode.
I appreciate the long-term mission of your endeavor, and think it has the potential to be very successful in 1) combating school-based nepotism in hiring, 2) creating a larger pool of talent from each firm to choose from, 3) creating a large database of applicants that can be quickly sorted through by hiring committes at large firms looking for specific interests/qualifications, 4) creating a system that helps firms figure out who is truly interested in them (at OCI, every candidate probably says the firm they are interviewing with is their top firm), and 5) creating a system that has a future that can potentailly and easily build value into the recruiting process by adding factors that actually have predictive value over an employee's job success other than just law exam scores (which, from everything I've read, have a pretty weak correlation with performance and retention).
I think adding a section that allows you to enter in work experience would be great, too, including number of years of experience and the type of work you are doing. Basically letting students break down their resume into easily sortable categories so that firms can search for specific traits instead of weeding through thousands of resumes. Firms like Skadden, if the site goes well, are going to have thousands of people interested in them. If you could allow students to enter in more information and make it quantifiable and sortable, you could REALLY add value to the recruitment process.
