Anonymous User wrote:JazzOne wrote:Bosque wrote:I will say though, having it happen the other way around is much worse for your chances at the firm you are on the call back for. Got the call with my offer from a firm while I was traveling from the airport to another firm for a call back. It just completely killed that trip, because I was thinking about the offer firm the whole time. The callback firm rejected me by mail within a few days of me getting back, which means they probably mailed the letter the day after my visit. Harsh.
I know receiving an offer is always a good thing, but if I had wanted the call back firm I can see how it might have screwed thing up for me. However, luckily in this instance I probably would never have gone on the call back if I already had the offer, so I don't really care.
Oh you're definitely correct about that. After I got the rejection letter, I got on the flight, checked into the hotel, and logged onto JDU. I read a particularly scathing post on JDU, and I realized that my whole approach to interviewing had been completely wrong. I stayed up half the night at the hotel researching the firm, reading about interviewing skills, and jotting down answers to possible questions. I also wrote out questions for each of my interviewers. I went into that interview with a particular hunger I haven't experienced in quite some time.
Mind sharing your realizations about interviewing? I'm having serious job-hunt troubles, and I'm wondering if part of it is my interviewing. The main thing I've been trying to fix is being more conversational and chatty rather than "persuasive" in a direct way. I.e. short, conversational responses rather than giving a quick pitch about how X Y Z in my resume show that I can indeed (do whatever they asked about).
I don't mind sharing at all. I will post more about it a little later, but I'm having a beer and watching football, so I'll just give you one quick tip. First, I am pretty socially awkward. I am very sharp, and I'm a hard worker, but that's not enough when you're trying to enter such a client-driven profession.
Someone on JDU gave me the following advice. Basically, he said that there are two types of people in this world: listeners and readers. Listeners are good at small talk, chatting, reading people's emotions, and joking around. Readers are less capable of improvising. So, the advice was to buy a book of interview questions and jot down answers to them. I treated it kind of like test prep. I typed up answers to the questions, and I edited them to cast myself favorably in response to any question. Even if those exact questions were never posed to me, the value was more about thinking over my resume and framing my story in a way that appeals to the needs of the firm. Finally, I looked up all my interviewers and jotted down questions I would like to ask them. I avoided awkward silences by glancing down and bringing up something in that attorney's bio. Honestly, I got some good advice about my law review note just by asking a random question about an attorney's publication. He seemed kind of nostalgic talking about his law review note, and he thanked me for "doing my homework" before coming to the interview.
If you're more of a "listener," then this advice may not apply to you. However, I found it really helpful to plan in advance what I was going to do under some potentially stressful circumstances, and it helped me maneuver without improvising too much.
