Interview #17

I have good feelings about this one. I will say, it is damned expensive to apply to a job out of state and show up for the interviews when they show interest.

So as stated in the previous post, I am done and leaving the city I had been living in. It was a pit, and the legal community was jealously closed to anyone not already ‘in’, and rabidly protectionist. All you have to do is read thru a handful of my accounts dealing with them to understand. So, before I show up in a new city, I took all of my accumulated job finding skills and went to work. I sent out directed letters, unsolicited cold-calls, applications, resumes… everything. I was setting up lunches with people to feel out the area and network so someone could hopefully pass me off to a friend of a friend who would hire me. I was doing everything but hooking on the streetcorners to find a legal position. (I wonder if that would work…)

A random cold-call resume I sent to a firm came back hot. The concept of a cold resume is that you send it to the company / firm and hope that your timing is just right wherein they were considering hiring someone, but they haven’t yet posted the job. If you have incredibly lucky timing, they may very well choose to forgo the job search and dealing with the slew of resumes and applications if you happen to mostly fit what they are looking for.  Out of the myriad of resumes I sent out, I got some mild interest back from a few places, but one mid-sized firm seemed very interested.

They did liability work. And it appeared they were doing quite well for themselves. I got an interview with the managing partner and lead administrator. So I flew across the country to go talk face to face with someone on the off chance they might hire me.

The interview went great. The partner thought my diverse background was fantastic and a perfect fit for the firm. The firm administrator was incredibly nice and we talked about everything under the sun. It was the most comfortable interview I’ve ever had, the three of us just seemed to click. The partner told me right there that he wanted me back for the next interview, but that it was really just a formality to make sure that I could get along with the rest of the team I would be working with. The only moment where I made a mistake was when they asked me what my salary requirement was. I told them and when I said the number, there was the briefest of smiles that played across the partners face. I had quite obviously undervalued myself in his opinion.

We had a very interesting conversation regarding the legal industry. The partner made a statement roughly along the lines that a great number of people drop out of the legal industry over time, and to a certain extent, when you are trying to break into the industry it is like a game of ‘last-man-standing’. The real question is what did you do with your time while you were waiting to be the last man standing. Not really the most comforting concept that to actually be able to work in law, you have to wait for everyone around you to give up and drop out.

For the first time in forever I am honestly excited. I got invited back for a second interview. This is likely going to turn out to be the most expensive rejection I have ever gotten, or potentially I may have hit the elusive job jackpot.

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