Does Anyone Know How to Get Over Law School Butt Hurt? Forum

[proleteriate]

For the record I'm also a 2L at SMU and don't know of anyone who had 24 screeners. It's also nearly implossible not to be able to find a small firm in DFW willing to take you on part time during the year/summer because there are so many <10 man/woman shops around. We've had tons of symplicity postings and it's easy to fire off emails to firms around. Either OP is hugely exaggerating or flame.

OP here, i got the small firm thing going, but there is a huge difference in salary. (3X!)

No flame, as we have established here, I just pretty much suck. Did Houston and Dallas OCI. Look around campus for the giant ball of suck in your classes, that's me!

I'm in the anon you replied to. Most people have been talking about cultural differences here, etc. but you need to get over this self pity bullshit. I know your situation sucks, because I struck out at OCI as well. I have bad days to. But "the giant ball of suck" is too far. You're not defined by OCI or your pay. Grow up and just start (keep?) grinding. Keep mailing. Kill it at your small firm. See what firms are doing OCI again for 3L's in August. Apply everywhere again in August. Wallowing in this isn't going to help. This is your problem, nothing cultural or social. I'm sure this started to show after a few screeners and I'd be willing to bet that's what you struck out on the rest.

While this is good advice, maybe i'd have worded it better. OP is already down, and you don't need to kick him. And from what I can tell, he's continued to hustle. He might need to switch up his hustle a bit and attack in a different direction , but he hasn't shown signs that he's given up. We're frustrated law students, that's why we post here. We're suppose to help eachother vent, and be a community of brethren who help eachother fighting this metaphorical war called starting a career. Remember, often times people don't have the support network that u may have, and they have to turn to internet strangers for that little bit of compassion. Yes, we're not defined by our OCI and pay, but we all just dedicated 3 years of hard work for this career, and idk how one can see the fruit of their labor pale in comparison to others all around them and not feel deflated.

Tl;dr: have some compassion, don't just attack someone when they're down. We're all in this together, either be a little more congenial and empathetic, or GTFO and go yell the N word at 13 year old boys on Call of Duty.

[A. Nony Mouse]

It is one of the most depressing natural laws of interviewing that the more desperately you want/need a job the worse you interview (without a lot of work at getting past it).

[proleteriate]

It is one of the most depressing natural laws of interviewing that the more desperately you want/need a job the worse you interview (without a lot of work at getting past it).

kind of like the dude who hasn't gotten laid in 18 months is the worst at dating.

(let's face it, interviewing is dating, and trying to get a job is essentially the same as trying to smash. You know the other party wants someone, there's a bunch of dudes competing for a small available slot, ur out if ur unqualified in anyway, desperation equals elimination, and URMs welcomed for diversity purposes but don't expect to move past entry level positions).

[Anonymous User]

For the record I'm also a 2L at SMU and don't know of anyone who had 24 screeners. It's also nearly implossible not to be able to find a small firm in DFW willing to take you on part time during the year/summer because there are so many <10 man/woman shops around. We've had tons of symplicity postings and it's easy to fire off emails to firms around. Either OP is hugely exaggerating or flame.

OP here, i got the small firm thing going, but there is a huge difference in salary. (3X!)

No flame, as we have established here, I just pretty much suck. Did Houston and Dallas OCI. Look around campus for the giant ball of suck in your classes, that's me!

I'm in the anon you replied to. Most people have been talking about cultural differences here, etc. but you need to get over this self pity bullshit. I know your situation sucks, because I struck out at OCI as well. I have bad days to. But "the giant ball of suck" is too far. You're not defined by OCI or your pay. Grow up and just start (keep?) grinding. Keep mailing. Kill it at your small firm. See what firms are doing OCI again for 3L's in August. Apply everywhere again in August. Wallowing in this isn't going to help. This is your problem, nothing cultural or social. I'm sure this started to show after a few screeners and I'd be willing to bet that's what you struck out on the rest.

While this is good advice, maybe i'd have worded it better. OP is already down, and you don't need to kick him. And from what I can tell, he's continued to hustle. He might need to switch up his hustle a bit and attack in a different direction , but he hasn't shown signs that he's given up. We're frustrated law students, that's why we post here. We're suppose to help eachother vent, and be a community of brethren who help eachother fighting this metaphorical war called starting a career. Remember, often times people don't have the support network that u may have, and they have to turn to internet strangers for that little bit of compassion. Yes, we're not defined by our OCI and pay, but we all just dedicated 3 years of hard work for this career, and idk how one can see the fruit of their labor pale in comparison to others all around them and not feel deflated.

Tl;dr: have some compassion, don't just attack someone when they're down. We're all in this together, either be a little more congenial and empathetic, or GTFO and go yell the N word at 13 year old boys on Call of Duty.

Yeah, I probably came off a little strong. My bad. The giant ball of suck comment struck me as pretty severe and I probably took farther than they intended. I struck out at OCI too, I get it. And I'm glad they seem to have kept on it and have something lined up. Sorry that didn't come across.

[proleteriate]

For the record I'm also a 2L at SMU and don't know of anyone who had 24 screeners. It's also nearly implossible not to be able to find a small firm in DFW willing to take you on part time during the year/summer because there are so many <10 man/woman shops around. We've had tons of symplicity postings and it's easy to fire off emails to firms around. Either OP is hugely exaggerating or flame.

OP here, i got the small firm thing going, but there is a huge difference in salary. (3X!)

No flame, as we have established here, I just pretty much suck. Did Houston and Dallas OCI. Look around campus for the giant ball of suck in your classes, that's me!

I'm in the anon you replied to. Most people have been talking about cultural differences here, etc. but you need to get over this self pity bullshit. I know your situation sucks, because I struck out at OCI as well. I have bad days to. But "the giant ball of suck" is too far. You're not defined by OCI or your pay. Grow up and just start (keep?) grinding. Keep mailing. Kill it at your small firm. See what firms are doing OCI again for 3L's in August. Apply everywhere again in August. Wallowing in this isn't going to help. This is your problem, nothing cultural or social. I'm sure this started to show after a few screeners and I'd be willing to bet that's what you struck out on the rest.

While this is good advice, maybe i'd have worded it better. OP is already down, and you don't need to kick him. And from what I can tell, he's continued to hustle. He might need to switch up his hustle a bit and attack in a different direction , but he hasn't shown signs that he's given up. We're frustrated law students, that's why we post here. We're suppose to help eachother vent, and be a community of brethren who help eachother fighting this metaphorical war called starting a career. Remember, often times people don't have the support network that u may have, and they have to turn to internet strangers for that little bit of compassion. Yes, we're not defined by our OCI and pay, but we all just dedicated 3 years of hard work for this career, and idk how one can see the fruit of their labor pale in comparison to others all around them and not feel deflated.

Tl;dr: have some compassion, don't just attack someone when they're down. We're all in this together, either be a little more congenial and empathetic, or GTFO and go yell the N word at 13 year old boys on Call of Duty.

Yeah, I probably came off a little strong. My bad. The giant ball of suck comment struck me as pretty severe and I probably took farther than they intended. I struck out at OCI too, I get it. And I'm glad they seem to have kept on it and have something lined up. Sorry that didn't come across.

I feel u brother, the angst is real for those of us outside the T14. Just gotta watch out for the comrades cuz we're in a precarious position where almost no one else fully understand the frustration. https://media.giphy.com/media/3oGRFC3Gd ... /giphy.gif

[Phil Brooks]

This is a really interesting conversation. I'll just weigh in anecdotally and say that I did really well at OCI and I would 100% say that class played a role in that. I mean, I've done well academically and I go to Berkeley so I won't dismiss those as insignificant, but in my experience the interviews were much less about academic performance and much more about me making the interviewer feel comfortable/happy/interested in me, and that's something that I was good at because I've essentially been doing it my whole life -- these were people who could very easily have been my or my parents' friends. Moreover, I've been fortunate to have done a lot of things in life, including having a really interesting (and low-paying) job before law school and going on cool trips/participating in cool hobbies, that 1) were ultimately accessible only because of family money; 2) were interesting to my interviewers; and 3) I KNEW they would be interesting to my interviewers and I knew how to emphasize them on my resume and during the interview because it's basically what I've been doing my whole life at cocktail/holiday parties.

This is not to say that you need these things to be successful in getting a biglaw job out of law school since there are certainly things you can do and ways you can frame your story if you're coming from a less privileged background that would be just - if not more - effective, but if you're a bit younger and you haven't had prior exposure to help you understand what an interviewer might be looking for, I would imagine that it would be a lot more work and a lot more stressful.

My firm had an OCI event last summer during my stint as a summer associate, and they sent us all the resumes from the students attending. I read through them and circled the things that caught my attention, which were mostly prior jobs and things in the "interests" section. I then sought out the people whose resumes I had marked. I hope these weren't exclusively kids from the upper middle class, but a lot of these things likely could not have been done without some financial support from their parents - for example, I was more likely to want to talk to the kid who had developed the documentary about orphans in South Korea after undergrad than the kid who had worked at Enterprise for two years. Having read this thread, I hope to be more aware in the future, but I will also say to OP and others worried who haven't yet done OCI that having something slightly unexpected or interesting on your resume (or just ready to share in an interview) would likely be helpful. This doesn't have to be that cycling trip you took through Europe after graduation -- it can be an academic interest that you're pursuing with a faculty member, or a student group that you're helping to start, or volunteer work you're doing. You just need to be ready to talk about it and make it interesting -- show that you're passionate and capture the interviewer's attention so that they want to ask more questions. And actually know what you're talking about -- I had one interview where it came up that I was doing research for this one faculty member (along with a number of other students in my class), and the interviewer asked me to explain the research topic. I did, and the interviewer told me that he had interviewed a few other people who were also doing research for this faculty member and I was the first person who was actually able to explain the research. Not good.

tl;dr: OP may have a legitimate grievance w/r/t the role that class plays in the interview process, at least from looking at my own experience. My advice would be to focus on having something interesting on your resume that stands out from the crowd, which gives the interviewer something to ask about, which will lead to a longer conversation where the interviewer gets the opportunity to be impressed by your passion/intelligence/verbal ferocity and hopefully result in a more successful outcome.

Wow. Respectfully, the fact you recruited people without having an awareness for this stuff makes you a huge part of the problem. There is no shortage of books and editorials that have been written even only about the legal profession that argue that any credential, qualification, or experience that is the result of family wealth should not be considered, at all.

Reading your post made me do a complete 180 and I now sympathize with the OP. I'm sorry that the poor kid who had to work a normal job was too boring for you. He should have been smarter and chosen to have been born into a wealthier family so that he could make documentaries in his ample free time and have a more interesting resume.

[jchiles]

Whether it's a class thing or not people are going to be more inclined to talk to/interview someone with an interesting resume, and you can definitely spin your resume in an interesting way even if you don't do fancy stuff.

[Finch123]

Wow. Respectfully, the fact you recruited people without having an awareness for this stuff makes you a huge part of the problem. There is no shortage of books and editorials that have been written even only about the legal profession that argue that any credential, qualification, or experience that is the result of family wealth should not be considered, at all.

Reading your post made me do a complete 180 and I now sympathize with the OP. I'm sorry that the poor kid who had to work a normal job was too boring for you. He should have been smarter and chosen to have been born into a wealthier family so that he could make documentaries in his ample free time and have a more interesting resume.

This seems unnecessarily hostile. 1) I wasn't involved in anything beyond simply being present at a single event to answer questions about the firm and my experience as an SA. I wasn't involved in selecting individuals for interviews or in determining who got offers (which I think is typical with summer associates). I would expect that anyone who gets involved in the actual interviewing/offering process would receive training w/r/t what the firm is looking for, etc. 2) Every credential, qualification, or experience by a person from a family with money is arguably the result of that money, just because they are able to do some things (e.g. make a documentary after college) because they DIDN'T have to do other things (e.g. get a job at Enterprise after college) (Note also that plenty of people without access to lots of family money do interesting things after college so this is not meant to imply otherwise). So, refusing to consider anything that a person may have done because they had access to funding that others may not have had would make it a bit difficult to consider anything, ever.

I'm not saying it's fair; I'm saying that inevitably people like seeing interesting things on peoples' resumes, and that money can help access opportunities to do interesting things.

3) My entire post was written for the purpose of pointing out the ways that family wealth can impact the recruitment process in non-obvious ways, and further saying that this is unfair, so the snark is unnecessary. We're on the same side here.

[Tiny Rick!]

Evidently law school butt hurt never goes away.

[PeanutsNJam]

Wow. Respectfully, the fact you recruited people without having an awareness for this stuff makes you a huge part of the problem. There is no shortage of books and editorials that have been written even only about the legal profession that argue that any credential, qualification, or experience that is the result of family wealth should not be considered, at all.

Reading your post made me do a complete 180 and I now sympathize with the OP. I'm sorry that the poor kid who had to work a normal job was too boring for you. He should have been smarter and chosen to have been born into a wealthier family so that he could make documentaries in his ample free time and have a more interesting resume.

This seems unnecessarily hostile. 1) I wasn't involved in anything beyond simply being present at a single event to answer questions about the firm and my experience as an SA. I wasn't involved in selecting individuals for interviews or in determining who got offers (which I think is typical with summer associates). I would expect that anyone who gets involved in the actual interviewing/offering process would receive training w/r/t what the firm is looking for, etc. 2) Every credential, qualification, or experience by a person from a family with money is arguably the result of that money, just because they are able to do some things (e.g. make a documentary after college) because they DIDN'T have to do other things (e.g. get a job at Enterprise after college) (Note also that plenty of people without access to lots of family money do interesting things after college so this is not meant to imply otherwise). So, refusing to consider anything that a person may have done because they had access to funding that others may not have had would make it a bit difficult to consider anything, ever.

I'm not saying it's fair; I'm saying that inevitably people like seeing interesting things on peoples' resumes, and that money can help access opportunities to do interesting things.

3) My entire post was written for the purpose of pointing out the ways that family wealth can impact the recruitment process in non-obvious ways, and further saying that this is unfair, so the snark is unnecessary. We're on the same side here.

Right, but at the interview stage, it's largely about how you perform in your interview and no longer about your GPA/resume. Sure, being born into a wealthy family will likely help you get a better GPA in law school (due to your privileged educational background). It'll help you put cool things on your resume. But these are all pre-interview factors. Once you're sitting in front of an attorney who is interviewing you, it's about how you perform in those 20 mins.

Which circles back to the fact that while being in a different class makes "fitting in" hard, so does any difference between the interviewee and interviewer.

If you only get 2 screeners despite good law school credentials, and the only "weakness" on your resume is a lack of "interesting stuff," then yeah I think it's fair to gripe about class discrimination.

[Phil Brooks]

Wow. Respectfully, the fact you recruited people without having an awareness for this stuff makes you a huge part of the problem. There is no shortage of books and editorials that have been written even only about the legal profession that argue that any credential, qualification, or experience that is the result of family wealth should not be considered, at all.

Reading your post made me do a complete 180 and I now sympathize with the OP. I'm sorry that the poor kid who had to work a normal job was too boring for you. He should have been smarter and chosen to have been born into a wealthier family so that he could make documentaries in his ample free time and have a more interesting resume.

This seems unnecessarily hostile. 1) I wasn't involved in anything beyond simply being present at a single event to answer questions about the firm and my experience as an SA. I wasn't involved in selecting individuals for interviews or in determining who got offers (which I think is typical with summer associates). I would expect that anyone who gets involved in the actual interviewing/offering process would receive training w/r/t what the firm is looking for, etc. 2) Every credential, qualification, or experience by a person from a family with money is arguably the result of that money, just because they are able to do some things (e.g. make a documentary after college) because they DIDN'T have to do other things (e.g. get a job at Enterprise after college) (Note also that plenty of people without access to lots of family money do interesting things after college so this is not meant to imply otherwise). So, refusing to consider anything that a person may have done because they had access to funding that others may not have had would make it a bit difficult to consider anything, ever.

I'm not saying it's fair; I'm saying that inevitably people like seeing interesting things on peoples' resumes, and that money can help access opportunities to do interesting things.

3) My entire post was written for the purpose of pointing out the ways that family wealth can impact the recruitment process in non-obvious ways, and further saying that this is unfair, so the snark is unnecessary. We're on the same side here.

Right, but at the interview stage, it's largely about how you perform in your interview and no longer about your GPA/resume. Sure, being born into a wealthy family will likely help you get a better GPA in law school (due to your privileged educational background). It'll help you put cool things on your resume. But these are all pre-interview factors. Once you're sitting in front of an attorney who is interviewing you, it's about how you perform in those 20 mins.

Which circles back to the fact that while being in a different class makes "fitting in" hard, so does any difference between the interviewee and interviewer.

If you only get 2 screeners despite good law school credentials, and the only "weakness" on your resume is a lack of "interesting stuff," then yeah I think it's fair to gripe about class discrimination.

Finch also made the point that during the interview he spoke about the "interesting stuff" he did. You know, like "talking with [his] parents' friends" *vomit*

[A. Nony Mouse]

I think that's a little unfair. He said it was like talking to his parents' friends, not that he talked about talking to his parents' friends.

Also lol at the idea that anyone in law gets trained on how to hire. That's exactly the problem.

[AVBucks4239]

This whole thread reminds me of the Gender Pay Gap, which the DOL found in 2009 was somewhere between 4.8 and 7.1 cents (https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/public-po ... report.pdf). When trying to figure out this discrepancy, they basically threw their hands up and said that there are just too many variables to pin down any one reason to explain the difference.

Similarly here, and as demonstrated by the posts ITT, there are too many variables at play in the hiring process to just think, "well, it must be class."

[A. Nony Mouse]

This whole thread reminds me of the gender pay gap, which the DOL found in 2009 was somewhere between 4.8 and 7.1 cents (https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/public-po ... report.pdf). When trying to figure out this discrepancy, they basically threw their hands up and said that there are just too many variables to pin down any one reason to explain the difference.

Similarly here, and as demonstrated by the posts ITT, there are too many variables at play in the hiring process to just think, "well, it must be class."

But equally we can't say "class plays no part," and I think that's all anyone's claiming.

[dabigchina]

I was more likely to want to talk to the kid who had developed the documentary about orphans in South Korea after undergrad than the kid who had worked at Enterprise for two years.

That's interesting. Bullshit like that on a resume would 100% turn me off and make me question their ability to do real work.

Law firms really shouldn't let summers and juniors have input on who to hire. I guess that's part of the problem

[A. Nony Mouse]

I was more likely to want to talk to the kid who had developed the documentary about orphans in South Korea after undergrad than the kid who had worked at Enterprise for two years.

That's interesting. Bullshit like that on a resume would 100% turn me off and make me question their ability to do real work.

Law firms really shouldn't let summers and juniors have input on who to hire. I guess that's part of the problem

No reason to think the partners are going to be any more objective.

[elendinel]

This is a really interesting conversation. I'll just weigh in anecdotally and say that I did really well at OCI and I would 100% say that class played a role in that. I mean, I've done well academically and I go to Berkeley so I won't dismiss those as insignificant, but in my experience the interviews were much less about academic performance and much more about me making the interviewer feel comfortable/happy/interested in me, and that's something that I was good at because I've essentially been doing it my whole life -- these were people who could very easily have been my or my parents' friends. Moreover, I've been fortunate to have done a lot of things in life, including having a really interesting (and low-paying) job before law school and going on cool trips/participating in cool hobbies, that 1) were ultimately accessible only because of family money; 2) were interesting to my interviewers; and 3) I KNEW they would be interesting to my interviewers and I knew how to emphasize them on my resume and during the interview because it's basically what I've been doing my whole life at cocktail/holiday parties.

This is not to say that you need these things to be successful in getting a biglaw job out of law school since there are certainly things you can do and ways you can frame your story if you're coming from a less privileged background that would be just - if not more - effective, but if you're a bit younger and you haven't had prior exposure to help you understand what an interviewer might be looking for, I would imagine that it would be a lot more work and a lot more stressful.

My firm had an OCI event last summer during my stint as a summer associate, and they sent us all the resumes from the students attending. I read through them and circled the things that caught my attention, which were mostly prior jobs and things in the "interests" section. I then sought out the people whose resumes I had marked. I hope these weren't exclusively kids from the upper middle class, but a lot of these things likely could not have been done without some financial support from their parents - for example, I was more likely to want to talk to the kid who had developed the documentary about orphans in South Korea after undergrad than the kid who had worked at Enterprise for two years. Having read this thread, I hope to be more aware in the future, but I will also say to OP and others worried who haven't yet done OCI that having something slightly unexpected or interesting on your resume (or just ready to share in an interview) would likely be helpful. This doesn't have to be that cycling trip you took through Europe after graduation -- it can be an academic interest that you're pursuing with a faculty member, or a student group that you're helping to start, or volunteer work you're doing. You just need to be ready to talk about it and make it interesting -- show that you're passionate and capture the interviewer's attention so that they want to ask more questions. And actually know what you're talking about -- I had one interview where it came up that I was doing research for this one faculty member (along with a number of other students in my class), and the interviewer asked me to explain the research topic. I did, and the interviewer told me that he had interviewed a few other people who were also doing research for this faculty member and I was the first person who was actually able to explain the research. Not good.

tl;dr: OP may have a legitimate grievance w/r/t the role that class plays in the interview process, at least from looking at my own experience. My advice would be to focus on having something interesting on your resume that stands out from the crowd, which gives the interviewer something to ask about, which will lead to a longer conversation where the interviewer gets the opportunity to be impressed by your passion/intelligence/verbal ferocity and hopefully result in a more successful outcome.

Wow. Respectfully, the fact you recruited people without having an awareness for this stuff makes you a huge part of the problem. There is no shortage of books and editorials that have been written even only about the legal profession that argue that any credential, qualification, or experience that is the result of family wealth should not be considered, at all.

Reading your post made me do a complete 180 and I now sympathize with the OP. I'm sorry that the poor kid who had to work a normal job was too boring for you. He should have been smarter and chosen to have been born into a wealthier family so that he could make documentaries in his ample free time and have a more interesting resume.

It should surprise no one that people do this, either, so isn't it almost as bad to automatically assume it isn't a factor as it is to admit you used as a factor in social settings? At what point is doing a thing really that much worse than denying the thing happens with regularity?

I also read Finch's post as admitting that this thread helped open his/her eyes to things (s)he's doing wrong; not an argument that it was an optimal way to operate. Which is a good thing.

[dabigchina]

I was more likely to want to talk to the kid who had developed the documentary about orphans in South Korea after undergrad than the kid who had worked at Enterprise for two years.

That's interesting. Bullshit like that on a resume would 100% turn me off and make me question their ability to do real work.

Law firms really shouldn't let summers and juniors have input on who to hire. I guess that's part of the problem

No reason to think the partners are going to be any more objective.

fair enough.

[Phil Brooks]

This is a really interesting conversation. I'll just weigh in anecdotally and say that I did really well at OCI and I would 100% say that class played a role in that. I mean, I've done well academically and I go to Berkeley so I won't dismiss those as insignificant, but in my experience the interviews were much less about academic performance and much more about me making the interviewer feel comfortable/happy/interested in me, and that's something that I was good at because I've essentially been doing it my whole life -- these were people who could very easily have been my or my parents' friends. Moreover, I've been fortunate to have done a lot of things in life, including having a really interesting (and low-paying) job before law school and going on cool trips/participating in cool hobbies, that 1) were ultimately accessible only because of family money; 2) were interesting to my interviewers; and 3) I KNEW they would be interesting to my interviewers and I knew how to emphasize them on my resume and during the interview because it's basically what I've been doing my whole life at cocktail/holiday parties.

This is not to say that you need these things to be successful in getting a biglaw job out of law school since there are certainly things you can do and ways you can frame your story if you're coming from a less privileged background that would be just - if not more - effective, but if you're a bit younger and you haven't had prior exposure to help you understand what an interviewer might be looking for, I would imagine that it would be a lot more work and a lot more stressful.

My firm had an OCI event last summer during my stint as a summer associate, and they sent us all the resumes from the students attending. I read through them and circled the things that caught my attention, which were mostly prior jobs and things in the "interests" section. I then sought out the people whose resumes I had marked. I hope these weren't exclusively kids from the upper middle class, but a lot of these things likely could not have been done without some financial support from their parents - for example, I was more likely to want to talk to the kid who had developed the documentary about orphans in South Korea after undergrad than the kid who had worked at Enterprise for two years. Having read this thread, I hope to be more aware in the future, but I will also say to OP and others worried who haven't yet done OCI that having something slightly unexpected or interesting on your resume (or just ready to share in an interview) would likely be helpful. This doesn't have to be that cycling trip you took through Europe after graduation -- it can be an academic interest that you're pursuing with a faculty member, or a student group that you're helping to start, or volunteer work you're doing. You just need to be ready to talk about it and make it interesting -- show that you're passionate and capture the interviewer's attention so that they want to ask more questions. And actually know what you're talking about -- I had one interview where it came up that I was doing research for this one faculty member (along with a number of other students in my class), and the interviewer asked me to explain the research topic. I did, and the interviewer told me that he had interviewed a few other people who were also doing research for this faculty member and I was the first person who was actually able to explain the research. Not good.

tl;dr: OP may have a legitimate grievance w/r/t the role that class plays in the interview process, at least from looking at my own experience. My advice would be to focus on having something interesting on your resume that stands out from the crowd, which gives the interviewer something to ask about, which will lead to a longer conversation where the interviewer gets the opportunity to be impressed by your passion/intelligence/verbal ferocity and hopefully result in a more successful outcome.

Wow. Respectfully, the fact you recruited people without having an awareness for this stuff makes you a huge part of the problem. There is no shortage of books and editorials that have been written even only about the legal profession that argue that any credential, qualification, or experience that is the result of family wealth should not be considered, at all.

Reading your post made me do a complete 180 and I now sympathize with the OP. I'm sorry that the poor kid who had to work a normal job was too boring for you. He should have been smarter and chosen to have been born into a wealthier family so that he could make documentaries in his ample free time and have a more interesting resume.

It should surprise no one that people do this, either, so isn't it almost as bad to automatically assume it isn't a factor as it is to admit you used as a factor in social settings? At what point is doing a thing really that much worse than denying the thing happens with regularity?

I also read Finch's post as admitting that this thread helped open his/her eyes to things (s)he's doing wrong; not an argument that it was an optimal way to operate. Which is a good thing.

Please point me to the part of Finch's post where he says he will change the way he recruits in the future. You can't find one.

In fact, in his reply to me, he laughed off my suggestion that recruiters should not consider any credential that is the result of family wealth.