Failing to seal the deal (callback to offer) Forum

[Anonymous User]

I did pretty well at OCI: six callbacks (five in NYC, one in secondary market). This makes me think that I am not a terrible interviewee. However, it has been at least a week since all my callback interviews and thus far only the callback in the secondary market has resulted in an offer. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to have the one offer, but I am also wondering what I am doing wrong with the other callbacks. Are the callbacks such a different animal from the screeners that a person who was fairly successful at screeners should be struggling at callback interviews?

Or am I panicking prematurely? (I have only had one formal post-CB ding.)

[cdelgado]

I am grateful to have the one offer

[Icculus]

Why is it so hard for people to accept that for the vast majority of people one offer is going to be it and that it doesn't mean they failed. As long as you have one offer you have made it and hit the BigLaw jackpot that most people are going for. Just be happy about that.

ETA: You did not fail to seal the deal. You got an offer. Congrats.

[Danger Zone]

Ugh.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not the OP, but I'd love an answer to his question. I got eight callbacks from OCI. I've done 4 so far and have gotten 2 rejections and silence from the others.

[TooOld4This]

OCIis a very artificial environment in comparison to most hiring. Large firms (and law students) know that they have approximately 8 weeks to complete their hiring. It becomes a numbers game. When you are hiring under normal circumstances, you don't callback "maybes." In OCI, you have to. Some firms do more leg work on the front end and callback fewer (lowering the ratio of callbacks to offers). Some firms know they have low yields, so they make more offers (also narrowing the gap between callbacks and offers).

When you go from screener to callback, the competition is tougher. The definite No candidates have been culled. If you are at a lottery school, this can often mean the screener to callback bar isn't that tough -- bad/incoherent bidding will drop a decent number out. If you are at a preselect school, your resume is probably at a disadvantage when dumped in with all the other callbacks. If you were a "maybe" callback, either you need to out perform expectations in callbacks, or have top choices underperform, or have a combination of both.

TLDR: it is entirely possible to get all of your callbacks as a "maybe" candidate and not have your ranking change enough after callbacks to get an offer.

[Gorki]

Great fucking humblebrag w/that title OP.

Law school is either the breadline/better-off-dead or BIGLAW; you got fucking BIGLAW. You can try for 3L OCI after next summer if you so see fit. Or you could keep trying to mass mail. . . I do not have any idea why you would.

But to treat your post seriously: Callbacks are like actual job interviews that a company would give, whereas the screener is the equivalent of them reading your resume the first time (lottery) or having a phone interview (preselect). In that regard, is it clearer to you why expecting multiple job offers from 6 job interviews is expecting way too much?

[hephaestus]

Ugh.

[rad lulz]

.

[A. Nony Mouse]

The thing to remember is that firms bring in multiple people for CBs for each slot they expect to fill. So nothing is a given - it's always down to you and against someone else. You can interview brilliantly, but the other person/people may have been better that given day, may have slightly better qualifications, may go to the same school as the person most influential in hiring, may be related to a partner or a major client, all kinds of things. There's no mathematical formula that says X screeners -> Y call backs -> Z offers. Doing well at OCI does not guarantee any number of offers and not getting more offers does not mean you interviewed poorly. It's just all much less scientific than that.

[thesealocust]

Also, a week is still early for paranoia. Labor day weekend means lots of folks in the working world on long vacations, so it can be hard for hiring committees to get their shit together.