OCI interviewer taking some questions Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi all.

As an OCI interviewer, I wanted to offer to answer a few questions. I'm at a V25 firm, non-NY office, and screen for all offices at one or more of YHSCCN. I may not be able to answer some questions for privacy reasons but will try to add any value I can.

I also wanted to share a few things I've learned as an interviewer that might be useful.

1. Especially if your desired practice is more niche than corporate or litigation, you need to diligence whether your desired firm/office both does that work and is actually seeking a summer in that area. Some dings happen because people show up and request, say, entertainment law in Chicago (to take a silly, fictionalized example) where the website shows one Chicago partner doing some entertainment work, but the firm is not trying to grow that practice group in the office, resulting in an autoding. Don't rely solely on the websites.

2. Many firms have strict grade cutoffs even at the top schools, and those can be top 20-30 percent or stricter. Unless you are at the very top of your class, "no CB" can reflect a failure to meet these standards rather than poor interviewing. Sometimes, even an OCI interviewer's recommendation to override a grade cutoff won't be accepted. This risk is greater in smaller offices or niche practice groups. If they only need 1-2 summers, it is easier to hold out for people with the academic profile the group wants.

3. On that note, if you thought you had great rapport with your interviewer and then didn't get a callback, don't assume the interviewer dinged you. Especially if your school interviews late in the process, some offices and groups might already be full or closed to full. As students earlier in the process complete callbacks and accept offers, firms can become more selective about which further callbacks to extend - especially since each callback comes with a cost to the firm (in terms of attorney time to interview, and to some lesser extent travel costs). For this reason as well as grade cutoffs, your interviewer's recommendation to call you back may not always be greenlighted.

Just a few observations that weren't obvious to me as a law student but are now. If people have questions, feel free to post them and I'll answer what I can.

[soft blue]

I'll bite, with three I'm curious about:

1.) Do you have to bring back a fixed number / do you have a hard cap on how many you can call back? (i.e. "We need 5 kids, so bring back 5" regardless of if you get only 2 good interviews or you get 7 all stars)

2.) For grades, do they particularly matter once you're above the cutoff? i.e. does LR + top 10% do better than top 20%, or is the interview all that matters past the floor?

3.) Does your review matter at the offer stage, or do you just get to decide who comes back and who doesn't? (i.e. did it matter if I killed the screener or did just enough to get the CB?)

[Anonymous User]

1.) Do you have to bring back a fixed number / do you have a hard cap on how many you can call back? (i.e. "We need 5 kids, so bring back 5" regardless of if you get only 2 good interviews or you get 7 all stars)

We have overall hiring goals for different offices and groups, but no OCI interviewer has to call back a fixed number. Keep in mind that each interviewer is interviewing for multiple offices and practice groups, and at YHSCCN, there is often more than one interviewer per firm. Even if the goal were "five Yale students" (which is not how any firm I know sets its hiring targets - firms are generally focused on filling practice group slots rather than getting X number of students from Y school), it wouldn't make sense to tell a particular interviewer to shoot for issuing five callbacks if the firm has three interviewers on campus. One interviewer may get five students who warrant callbacks, while another may only get one or two.

We do not have a hard cap on callbacks, but will be more selective about extending callbacks for a practice group and office that has enough outstanding and accepted offers that they are very close to their hiring goal.

2.) For grades, do they particularly matter once you're above the cutoff? i.e. does LR + top 10% do better than top 20%, or is the interview all that matters past the floor?

Academic superstar is always better than just above the hiring target; the former will come off as "very compelling," while the latter will come off as a "possible option." But that distinction is not dispositive, and of course an academic superstar can interview poorly and get dinged, while the person just above the cutoff can shine during the interview and become a much more compelling candidate.

3.) Does your review matter at the offer stage, or do you just get to decide who comes back and who doesn't? (i.e. did it matter if I killed the screener or did just enough to get the CB?)

Screener reviews matter relatively little at the offer stage unless the screening partner is in the same office + practice group, or at least practice group. If a New York private equity partner recommends calling back a DC litigation candidate, then obviously reviews from the DC partners and associates who would be working directly with the candidate and have screened for practice group/subject matter-specific fit will count for more in deciding whether to extend an offer. On the other hand, if the NY PE partner recommends calling back a summer in his or her own group/office, that review would have more continuing significance at the offer stage.

- OP

[Anonymous User]

Not sure if you can answer this, but do grade cutoffs matter once you get to a callback? Let’s say a firm’s cutoff is top 15% and you’re in the top 25% and you still get a callback after the screener, do they still care about the gpa cutoff at the callback stage to get an offer?

[Anonymous User]

Thanks for doing this OP. Was curious about how your firm treats candidates from HYS vs CCN. Obviously the former category is better all things equal. But I’m curious about the extent of the advantage when it comes to recruiting for your firm and others in your peer group. Hearing from friends at H, their recruiting experience seemed to mirror mine at CCN fairly well but that’s purely anecdotal.

[notinbiglaw]

More concretely, do you mind sharing the cutoffs you guys use (or just what you’ve heard) for HYS vs CCN vs a lower T14? Approximate ranges are cool.

[Platopus]

Do firms have candidates that they recruit harder than others, or after the firm makes an offers do they recruit all candidates with the same intensity?