Addressing What’s Important To The Other Side During An Interview

A common flaw in the interview process is focusing primarily on what you want, which applies to both the interviewer and the interviewee. Intuitively, you would expect the person interviewing for a job approach to “sell” the potential employer on why they should be hired, but the conversation can often center more on what can they do for me. Likewise, it is more common for an employer to focus almost entirely on whether this candidate is the right person for the position. Either way, you may miss an opportunity because you don’t address what’s important to the other side.

A critical component to a successful interview is to do your homework on the what the other party desires before-hand, if possible. This is undoubtedly easier for the interviewee if there is a job description, but both sides can and should explore what the other side desires in the interview and try to address those areas. For an interviewer, this may be simply asking why the person is interested in the opportunity and then specifically address the components of the job that would appeal to the interviewee. For the interviewee, there may be a template for the job in the form of a position description, but undoubtedly there are some areas that may matter more, and it often does not cover more subjective topics like working relationships, management style, etc.

The relatively simple step of addressing what is important to the other side can really payoff in landing the ideal candidate or the perfect job.

What Is Your Objective?

Can we talk for a minute about the objective statements that we are seeing on more and more legal resumes? Your resume is supposed to tell a potential employer how you can solve THEIR problems. The firm/company is hiring because they have a need or some other problem that needs to be solved. A resume, legal or otherwise, should be able to answer the question of how you can meet those needs.

An objective statement does the opposite and states what YOU want from the employer. By definition, it can’t effectively convey to an employer that you can help them, but can only tell an employer how they can help you. Sure, it can show that your interests are aligned with the firm, but that is what an interview is for. To put a finer point on this, in over 20 years of legal recruiting, we have not seen an effective objective statement.

To make matters worse, the objective statement is often placed at the very top of the first page of a resume. That’s valuable real estate and a spot where it can immediately frustrate a busy reader who is not going to spend much time reading your resume.

Telling a potential employer that you would like to be given an opportunity because it fits within your career goals is unnecessary and obvious. Instead, use the resume to demonstrate that you have the ability to do the work and your chances of landing that position will increase.

'Tis the Season

This time of year often calls for personal and professional reflection. It is a good time, and often beneficial exercise, to re-evaluate your employment situation. Of course, in this day and age, we should be grateful for gainful employment, but that does not mean you should not consider ways to advance your career.

Loyalty is certainly an admirable trait, but if you are not willing to at least consider other jobs, you might be missing a real chance for career advancement. Of course, the grass is not always greener elsewhere, but you will never know unless you are willing explore other options from time to time. And there may not be such thing as the absolute perfect job, but you might be able to improve certain aspects of your career that are particularly important to you. So go ahead and test the waters – maybe you will realize that you have it pretty darn good already or you might just find a better path to achieving your career objectives.

Forest vs. The Trees

Sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the trees. My family used to throw that phrase around a bit when I was younger, but I never fully understood what they meant (although that didn’t stop me from using the phrase, too). When searching for a better explanation of the phrase, I often was pointed to the parable about the three blind men being asked to describe an elephant based on the part that they could touch. This story was interesting and a little bit humorous, but our family never said “you can’t see the elephant by only looking at its tail”. Giving it more thought, there is no sense going beyond the reference to someone who gets lost in the details of a situation and who is unable to see the full situation that they are in.

Once place where this is evident is when I talk to attorneys seeking new jobs and they only focus on one portion of the compensation component of an offer they received. Yes, base compensation is important. There is no doubt that there should be some threshold number by which you won’t work for a firm/company if the base salary is below that number. But there are lots of other factors, too, all of which must be considered. Bonus opportunities, billable hours, retirement contributions, health insurance and other benefits, paid time off, stock options or equity are among a myriad of factors that should be considered as part of the package.

Many of these factors are negotiable. In addition to salary, bonuses, PTO and billable hours may be negotiable. On the contrary, when you are eligible to participate in the company retirement plan is governed by a plan document that is immovable and your request to be able to participate outside of the terms will fall on deaf ears.

When examining a compensation package, only you know what will work for you and your family. When making the calculus of what the opportunity is worth to you, it is a fatal flaw to not think about the package as a whole, but rather focus on only one piece of the package!

Ready...Fire....Aim.

Wow – that looks like a good opportunity….I’ll send my resume there. And there. And there. Oooh, and there, too.

What is happening above is potentially a bad strategy. Sending resumes out without giving thought about the opportunity can be a roadmap for failure. Too often we hear of attorneys who will blindly send their resume out to a list of firms without think about the potential fit and the possible consequences. It’s best to not only be aware of WHERE you send your resume, but WHY you are sending it.

What that means is that before you send out a resume – and I mean each and every time – take some time to think about the firm you are contacting. What are their strengths and weaknesses? Who are their clients? What is their reputation? How would you fit in? What can I contribute to their firm that they couldn’t get from another candidate? Now take this information and make the case as to why you are a good fit for the firm. If you can’t convince yourself (or your spouse…or your mom) then you aren’t going to convince the firm. And let’s face it – not everyone is right for every job.

How can you tell if you might fit in with a firm? Do your homework. Read the local legal blogs and trade publications, work with a legal recruiter, talk to your friends, read the firm’s NALP form, look at the firm’s website or see how they present themselves on social media. These are great resources that can help you decide whether you would be a fit.

If you graduated at the bottom of your class and your experience isn’t on point, don’t waste your time sending in a resume to an AmLaw 100 firm that requires a top-of-the-class academic pedigree and spot-on experience. They aren’t going to change their standards just for you.

On the other hand, if you are on the cusp with your experience and you can make a strong case about how you would slot into their firm culture/clients/etc. and that your experience or contacts would add to their practice then you should pursue that opportunity.

Choose your battles wisely, though. Another reason that blanketing a market with your resume could be a bad strategy is that you might be shooting yourself in the foot for future positions. Every rejection letter ever written by a law firm has the obligatory phrase “we will keep your resume on file for future opportunities….” While I think that might be true at some firms, it’s baloney at a great majority of the firms. If you are rejected for a position that you weren’t qualified for, you are now in their system as a candidate who was reviewed and rejected. You just made it very easy to overlook your resume if you send in your resume again in 6 months for a position that you are PREFECT for.

So remember to aim before you shoot. I’m sure you will hit your target with greater frequency.

The Best Part of Our Job

One of the most exciting parts of our job as recruiters is helping people move from a place of feeling “stuck” to a place where they can enjoy their career again. So many attorneys that we meet feel like something has stagnated in their career. Maybe they aren’t advancing in their current position as quickly as they had hoped (or at all). Maybe the current employer has changed to the point of being a toxic environment. Maybe a key client is no longer compatible with the firm. Maybe the attorney is just looking for a change.

No matter the reason, helping attorneys find the next step on their journey is truly the most satisfying part of our jobs. Obviously, we can’t help everyone; but it is so energizing to hear from attorneys that we have placed that their career trajectory has been restored. So often we hear how their career feels revitalized and they have a new enthusiasm for the practice of law again!

Are you feeling stuck? Is it time for a change? If so, we’d be happy to speak with you about the current legal market and see if we can help you, too!

Summertime Opportunities

It's a common job search myth that summertime is a bad time to search for a job. Sure, there are a lot of scheduling conflicts with interviews. The decision-makers are sure to be out of town or on vacation right when you are supposed to meet with them. These interview headaches are unavoidable in the warmer months (especially when you live here in Minnesota where we get so precious few nice days).

But I'd ask you to consider a few things:

1. The timing may be right. A job search in summer may make sense because the golden handcuffs of future-bonuses may not be too tight. The longer you wait, the more that the siren song of the potential bonus will dissuade you from exploring your options.

2. The market may be strong. Wit a couple of quarters under their belt, law firms and corporate in-house legal departments start to make assessments about their needs for the rest of the year and how they are going to spend their recruiting dollars. Many firms put off hiring in the first few quarters to focus on building a strong base of billable and really don't start to think about recruiting until they are deep in the second quarter.

3. The pool is smaller. Just because YOU know that the warmer months aren't a bad time to look for a new opportunity, doesn't mean that others aren't going to be dissuaded by season. That creates a smaller candidate pool which you can use to your advantage.

If you are interested in exploring your options this summer, please reach out to one of the knowledgeable attorney recruiters at Sand Search and let them help you make sense of the current legal market!

A New Age For Resumes? A Discussion.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m a dinosaur when it comes to technology. I’m rarely on any social media and when I think of “new technology” I actually think of using the brand new Apple IIe computer in my elementary school to play the DOS version of Oregon Trail (man, that was cool)!

I recently saw a social media post about the demise of resumes. The post argued that because Chat GPT and other artificial intelligence apps can draft resumes for you, no one should ever have to worry about drafting their own resume again. Not only are these computer generated documents specifically tailored to a position, they are drafted using the actual job description (which you feed into the computer algorithm).

After playing around a bit on one of the websites, I’m not sure what to think. The technology looks impressive, but the initial results are extremely raw and MUST be revised heavily by HUMAN eyes. Additionally, the results put the resume into a format that is better suited for the business community, NOT a legal resume. As we’ve discussed, legal resumes are nuanced and different from a traditional resume. The formats they suggest are far too flashy and contain sections in a resume that have no place in a legal resume (I’m looking at you, objective section and emojis in the headings). That said, it is just a matter of time before the AI learns about legal resumes and hones in on the appropriate format.

The other thing that is nagging at me is that the resume serves as your first writing sample to a potential legal employer. It is an example of your work. Sure, it can (and should,) be reviewed by others to get it as close to perfect as possible, but that dinosaur in me is uneasy with presenting a resume that was entirely drafted by someone else (or “something else” as it relates to artificial intelligence).

I can imagine a scenario where law firms are going to have to ask the question “was this resume drafted by you” as a gateway question. I wonder if the writing samples attorneys provide will be under the same scrutiny.

Certainly, not all employers will care about how the resume was generated. If it is accurate and is an honest reflection of an attorney’s work history and summary of their skills, it may not matter. Some employers may applaud the creativity of using AI to draft a legal resume, just as many firms are exploring how AI can be used to draft legal briefs.

But others will care. And this rift in the market will be one more area where communication between an employer, a candidate and a recruiter will be important.

We will be keeping a close eye on the trend to have resumes drafted by a computer. Will they stick, or will they go the way of the DOS-based computer game and fade from memory? Time will tell.

Are You Being Paid Your True Market Value?

Compensation for attorneys can be determined by a number of objective and subjective factors including tenure, quality of work product, profitability, and information gathered from salary studies. You may know how your compensation stacks up to others at your firm or even what people make at other firms, but do know if it is comparable to what you would make in the open market?

A lot of attorneys have no idea if their compensation measures up to their true market value. By true market value, I am referring to how much you could expect to earn if you decided to explore other options in the legal market – not what a typical attorney makes after so many years of experience. Some people are actually making more than they would in the open market because they are currently being rewarded for factors that are not given the same consideration by prospective employers. Yes, loyalty and teamwork is valued by all employers, but it is often measurable attributes such as business generation and working receipts that carry the most weight in the open market.

If you are working hard to generate business and starting to see real revenue growth as a result, you should ask yourself how much of your potential income is going to others who are not as productive (especially those who make no effort). There may be other factors that make your current work experience so positive that the potential of lost income is okay, but if you could have a similar experience and make considerably more money elsewhere it might be worth your time to explore your true market value.

Uncertainty

Wherever there is change, and wherever there is uncertainty, there is opportunity. -Mark Cuban

The market is shifting. You feel it in your current position. You hear it time and time again on the news. A looming recession. Inflation. Layoffs. Chilling business news. Political chaos. International standoffs. And yet, we get a booming jobs report and all is forgotten. The whiplash you feel is real. What can you do to prepare for (potentially) rough seas ahead?

The bottom line is this – no one knows what the legal market is going to look like tomorrow, several months, or a year down the road. The best thing you can do is prepare for a volatile market now.

1. Brush off your resume and be ready to make a move. With all change and uncertainty comes opportunity. Be ready for it. If your current firm is struggling, another firm may be booming. Be ready to make a move when the right opportunity is presented to you (or better yet, go seek it out).
2. Get as much experience as you can! If you have experience gaps in your resume, work hard to fill them now. If you haven’t taken a deposition, work to get that skill. If you haven’t been client-facing in your practice, work to get in front of clients!
3. Start networking. You shouldn’t wait until you need your network to start networking. Use your lunches, coffees and cocktails wisely to stay top-of-mind with your peers.
4. Stay calm. This too shall pass. We are coming off one of the biggest boom cycles in the legal market. Any market correction will quickly pass.

Holidays Are Great Times to Prepare for A Job Search

As 2022 draws to a close, our thoughts turn to the upcoming year. If a new position is in your future, now is a great time to lay the groundwork for that search. The best thing you can do is work on your resume (note I didn’t say CV – in the legal arena we use resumes).

Think about all the things you accomplished in the past year and jot them down. You won’t necessarily use all of those things in your resume, but those notes will help you remember things when it comes time to draft a resume that is tailored to each and every position you apply.

Think about the things that made you stand out in your current position. Having a cookie-cutter resume that simply recites the position description from when you were hired is not a great way to get noticed. If you resume just screams “yeah, I did that” without also saying “I did that thing well and here is where I stood out doing that thing” then you are missing an opportunity to rise to the top of the resume pile.

Once the new year starts, you will notice a strong uptick in open positions, so thinking about your accomplishments and how you will tweak your resume NOW will pay dividends LATER!

Happy holidays from Sand Search!

The Market Is Shifting

While we still believe that the legal market is strong, we are no longer in the hiring boom that we saw for the past year or so. This has the potential to be good for those who are looking to make a move. As counterintuitive as that is, now may be a good time to look for your next opportunity.

For much of 2021 and 2022, the demand for corporate, M&A and real estate transactional attorneys put a lot of strain on the legal job market. Firms and corporations alike used an all-hands-on-deck method of recruiting these attorneys. To a great degree, those efforts were at the expense of making efforts to shore up other practice groups. Now that the hiring has become less frenzied, firms have more time to focus on their needs in other areas. We are seeing a fair amount of movement in the non-transactional disciplines and law firms have started to shift to hiring across their other practice groups.

For a lot of attorneys who either held on to their current position because they were too busy to move or because they weren’t in the “hot” practice groups, NOW is a great time to make a move. Most firms understand that attorneys may need to wait until the end of year for their bonuses, but interviews for those 2023 moves are happening now!

If now is a good time for you to make a move, then exploring your options sooner rather than later is best. Make sure your resume is up to date and talk to an experienced legal recruiter to see if they can help you!

The Dog Days of Summer

The dog days of summer are a perfect time of year to assess your current employment situation. For many, late summer offers a chance to take a breathe from a hectic work year - whether you find yourself with some free time in the office or are out vacationing. Yes, loyalty is an admirable trait but if you are not willing to at least consider other jobs, you might be missing a real chance for career advancement.

Of course the grass is not always greener elsewhere, but you will never know unless you are willing explore other options from time to time. There may not be such thing as the absolute perfect job, but you might be able to improve certain aspects of your career that are particularly important to you.

So after some self-reflection, ask yourself if you are content with your current job or is it less than what you had hoped at this point in your career? If you hoped for more, now is an excellent time to consider a change because you may actually have time to update your resume, start networking, and perhaps test the market. Even if you are waiting for a year-end bonus, it is not too soon to start the process.

Remote "Virtual" Attorney Work Creates Opportunities in the Market

According to a recent study, 57% of the AMLAW 200 law firms that were studied are now hiring fully-remote “virtual” attorneys from other geographic markets. Nearly 20% more firms were considering hiring virtual, remote attorneys in other markets.

While the sample size of the study is small (they only surveys 30 of the firms in the AMLAW 200,) the message is very powerful. Remote work is here, and geographic boundaries are far less important than they once were.

While compensation for these virtual, remote workers is far from consistent, there are some firms who are offering full salaries based on the firm’s location – not the candidate’s location. In Minneapolis, we are seeing attorneys work for New York firms and being paid New York rates (and getting New York-sized signing bonuses) while working here in Minnesota.

How this affects the market long-term remains to be seen. With a possible economic downturn on the horizon, we will see if this remote work is a house of cards or if it can withstand a little uncertainty.

At the very least, this recruiting from outside of the market has created a situation where opportunities are very fluid – both for attorney positions with firms in the area and for firms looking for “virtual” attorneys. If you want to be ready to capitalize on this fluidity, having a resume ready and talking to a recruiter makes a lot of sense!

JUNIOR ATTORNEYS: SET A GOAL AND CREATE A PATH FOR SUCCESS

Starting a career as a lawyer is complicated. First, having no real practical experience, it is difficult to know what area of law will appeal to you. This also does not take into account your long-term career opportunities, and if there are even positions available in that area at the present time.

A good starting point is to think about what you want to do long-term and the necessary steps to achieve that goal. Some junior attorneys are fortunate and are able to slide into a job (whether a law firm or in-house) and it just happens naturally through hard work with that one employer. For most, it requires multiple steps to get there. For example, if your desire is to work at a top law firm, but the opportunity did not exist for you upon graduation, it is important to plan what steps you should take to get there. In particular, start working at smaller firm and try to develop the experience that will be coveted for career advancement. The work itself is important, but also focus on business generation (start small but make the effort). It’s also important to understand that it may take several moves to ultimately get to where you want to be (i.e. small firm to medium firm to your desired large firm). The same is true of making the move in-house. Most need to build a base (typically doing transactional work) at a law firm before making the move to a company. Of course, this may also require moving up the chain with law firms in order to maximize in-house opportunities.

Career planning can seem a bit overwhelming when you’re just starting out as a lawyer, but it can really make the difference in achieving your goals. Unfortunately, in the practice of law it can be very difficult to make a detour if you are going down the wrong path, so it’s best to plan ahead and think strategically about your career progression.

Make Sure Your Resume Provides Enough Detail

We see a lot of resumes. The vast majority look like your typical resume: job history, education, bar admissions and maybe a section on interests and activities. Oftentimes, this is all condensed to fit on one page – the way we were taught in college. While the format is generally okay, the biggest problem with most resumes is a lack of detail. Some people intentionally hold back, thinking they will provide more detail in the interview. The problem with this strategy is you may never get to the interview without demonstrating enough pertinent experience in the resume.

The key when drafting your resume is to view this as means to “market” yourself – not just a reverse chronological list of job history. It is rare that we tell someone that they have too much information so long as it conveyed correctly (meaning clearly and concisely). There are two ways to accomplish this: with a detailed resume or with a general resume supplemented with a detailed practice addendum. The addendum is often broken down by skills (securities, M&A, commercial agreement, etc.) with short/bullet point examples listed underneath.

The benefit of using an addendum is that you can shift the order of skills dependent upon the job to highlight the pertinent areas and just use the same general resume. Otherwise, you want different versions of your resume if providing all the detail in just that document. Whatever method you use, just make sure you are providing enough detail to fully demonstrate why you are the right candidate for the position.

Legal Market Update

It seems like we have the worst of COVID behind us (fingers crossed), but there is still an air of uncertainty in the market. Some of it stems from return-to-work decisions faced by law firms and companies, but this is also true of non-legal businesses. It seems like the larger firms and companies are going to a hybrid model where people can work from home or the office, although some require at least a few days in the office. Feedback that we have received from attorneys has varied as well. Most would prefer the option to work from home, but also like to know they have an office when desired.

The market for attorneys has remained robust but has shifted to new practices areas. Last year was all about the M&A associate. Firms from this market and others were targeting M&A associates like never before. The demand led to significant pay raises and often increased billable hours requirements. Although interest remains for M&A, it’s at a slightly more senior level. The real push has been for commercial real estate and finance attorneys. While demand is up in these two practice areas, the supply is really limited in this market, which has made it extremely competitive.

Because increased compensation in the law firm market, companies are struggling to compete for attorneys who might consider a move in-house. Historically, private practice attorneys do not expect big financial gains when making the move in-house but would prefer not to take a step back either. Companies now must bridge the gap, which might add another $25-50K to what they were paying a few years ago. Needless the say, it’s been a bitter pill to swallow for companies, but they really have no choice if they want to continue to attract top talent.

Is It Time To End The Stigma Of “Resume Gaps” In The Legal Profession?

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a pandemic and a lot of turbulence in the legal market. Some sectors (I’m looking at you, M&A attorneys) saw a boom. Other sectors (most litigation practices) slowed down. Sadly, many attorneys lost their jobs or chose to stay home for personal reasons.

A question we often get is how to deal with gaps on the resume. It’s been a difficult thing to discuss. Perhaps it’s about to get a bit easier.

LinkedIn, the business social network, just released a feature that will allow people to add a “career break” to their LinkedIn profiles. It will give users a chance to write a blurb about what the circumstances were around the break. You can state that you were focusing on your family, travelling, etc.

While this clearly won’t break the stigma around having gaps in your resume, it will allow for your online resume (because that’s truly what LinkedIn is) to provide some context for gaps. Additionally, just the name “career break” is subtle signaling that it should be more tolerated to take a break. It’s not a gap, but a break…. a pause….a chance to catch your breath.

LinkedIn conducted a survey and found that women have more career breaks than men. This isn’t surprising as many women are forced to take breaks to start a family. According to LinkedIn, 64% of women have taken a career break and 70% of those women who took breaks say that the break helped them gain perspective on their career and figure out how they wanted to move forward in their career.

That number is staggering. A full 70% of those who took breaks said it was positive for them and their career. Maybe it’s time that we dropped the stigma of taking a break?

We are under no delusion that the larger firms will be anything but very slow adopters to change on those that take a career break. But maybe this small change will usher in an age where lawyers can actually take a breather from their career and not have it be frowned upon.

One can hope.

Until then, you should still tread lightly on having gaps in your resume.

HOW TO: To add a career break to your LinkedIn profile, click on the “add section” option located under your profile picture followed by “add career break.” From there, you can add the type of career break that makes sense for you and draft a description like you would add any other jobs.

Utilizing Your Network

You may not realize it, but you have a network. This could be colleagues, friends, former law school classmates, etc. Whether you choose to utilize that network is up to you.

As recruiters, we engage our network in sharing information about the changing legal market, job opportunities and other information that is pertinent to the legal profession. Much information and insight can also be gained through members of your network, so it might be a good time to consider who is in your network and how to get the most of out it.

For example, finding the right job opportunity can be greatly enhanced through your network. Recruiters often mention jobs to people within their network to generate interest not only from those individuals, but also people within their own networks. Considering many job opportunities never make the want ads or are essentially filled when they do, it is important to stay on top of what is happening in the market. Likewise, people in your network may be your best resource in promoting you as a candidate for a particular job or opportunities in general.

Now is a perfect time to take stock of your network and determine if you are truly taking advantage of its potential. It does not take much time or effort to cultivate your network – especially considering how much you could gain from it.