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I interviewed with some partners at a boutique firm I really like. They said they really liked me. They said I will have to come in again and meet some more people but it's been weeks since they said that, and I e-mailed and called following up but received no response. What the !@#$. Seriously, I get this "attorney time" vs "student time" thing, but some people are just plain effing assholes. If you didn't intend to hire, don't effing waste my time. Boutique firm.

How many weeks is "weeks"? It's possible they are waiting to hear back from a few people, either on the hiring committee or if they've already offered to another interviewee, then they may be waiting to see if that person turns down the offer so they can come to you with an offer.

JHP wrote:How many weeks is "weeks"? It's possible they are waiting to hear back from a few people, either on the hiring committee or if they've already offered to another interviewee, then they may be waiting to see if that person turns down the offer so they can come to you with an offer.

Seconded. A firm took a month to get back to me, and I later found out it was because they initially extended the offer to somebody else who sat on the offer for two weeks before turning it down. Don't worry OP, if they liked you, they'll remember you and you'll hear eventually.

I have been interviewing on and off for the last year or so, mostly the occasional in house interview with a rare firm mixed in here or there. Welcome to the world of recruiting. Ghosting is very normal.

If you're really interested, I'd just keep emailing the HR contact every couple of weeks, but no more than that. Until they respond, you need to assume you didn't get the job and act accordingly.

Hiring can indeed be incredibly frustrating. Unfortunately, It's hard to know what's going on behind the scenes. Stuff like this happens, and it's mostly out of your control. It's appropriate to ping a company/firm from time to time to let them know you are still there and still interested, but that's about the most you can do.

When I was interviewing for my current job, they went silent for several weeks after my interview. I thought it was a ding. Turned out the hiring manager had a heart attack after the interview - he got back to me with the offer while recovering from surgery. Another example: my company has been hiring recently (non-legal role). An unexpected retirement of the group head meant the management got reshuffled, which meant the hiring manager for the position changed- that meant more time for a new person to get up to speed on candidates. Finally, when it comes to law firms, the authority may get muddled. Someone might say something in good faith, but later get overruled by someone else due to politics. Law firms (especially smaller ones) often do not have a clear chain of command, and things like hiring may get done on an ad-hoc basis.

Anonymous User wrote:I interviewed with some partners at a boutique firm I really like. They said they really liked me. They said I will have to come in again and meet some more people but it's been weeks since they said that, and I e-mailed and called following up but received no response. What the !@#$. Seriously, I get this "attorney time" vs "student time" thing, but some people are just plain effing assholes. If you didn't intend to hire, don't effing waste my time. Boutique firm.

Lighten up.

Recruiting at smaller boutique firms who don't have a streamlined HR process is a huge pain in the ass for everyone at the firm. You get 100s of resumes that you have to sift through, have meetings about the best ones to decide who you're going to interview, have half-a-dozen interviews that have to fit in with 3-6 attorneys' schedules (not easy), follow up with references, have more meetings about who to bring in for second interviews, bring people in for second interviews, etc. So it can takes weeks to conduct just the first round of interviews, then weeks to set up the rest.

Most importantly, all time dedicated to this is unpaid, non-billable time that most attorneys unwillingly get sucked into. Work for their clients comes first 1000 times out of 1000.

The firm I was at usually took 6 months from the time they decided they needed to hire someone to actually hiring someone.

So honestly, if it's a small firm, just lighten up. It's a huge time commitment for them. Go drink a beer and send out more resumes.