So I initially had intended to just not post anything in December, because of the holidays and short trips and over-eating and all… and then it just sorta stretched out a bit longer. Mostly due to varying bouts of depression and manic energy to effectively spam as many job applications with my resume as humanly possible. January has most definitely been my most prolific application month to date. If you had a legal job damn near anywhere in the country, you have my resume sitting somewhere in the applications.
I also broke down and threw my lot back into the pit that is document review, if for no other reason than to pay for food and other such inconsequentials. It has been going about as well as you might expect if you have read anything I have written about the topic. In January I was called for 4 doc review positions. One started out sounding quite promising, more a project attorney… and then the employing corporation decided that they no longer needed a small team to do the job and instead hired one person. The second one just died, big rush by the recruiter to get in all the paperwork at the behest of the firm, and then the whole project was canceled. The third was purported to be a big project that would last a few months, and after the initial phone call getting all the reviewers on board, it turned out the firm hadn’t expected the doc review company to be able to pull it all together so fast and they weren’t ready to proceed (that was 3 weeks ago). The fourth one is actually 2 projects by one firm, so here’s hoping one actually goes through if for no other reason so I can make some gas money.
In my forays across the myriad applications I’ve been filling out, I ran across a few gems.
- This vacancy is limited to the first 200 applications and will close early at midnight on the day we receive the 200th application. (so now, applying to a job becomes almost like a lottery system… maybe you’ll find the job posting in time… maybe you won’t.)
- In a similar vein – **Applications will be accepted from all qualified individuals until the scheduled closing date of 05/06/2013 or until 50 applicants have been received, whichever comes first. (this one closed on the first day it was posted, before the end of the day.. you think they hired the person they had picked for the position before they posted it?)
- This one is an actual job posting and I’ve seen the sentiment repeated over and over again. It drives me insane. I guess it wants you to be both entry level and experienced at the same time?
Recently I had another interview. It was with a small firm and it was actually one of the better interviews I’ve had. The downside is that if I actually get an offer from them I would have to move a fair distance for a middling job with no possibility of upward movement. I have been weighing what would happen should I actually get a call back. Quite literally, I would be moving a very long distance just so I could have a halfway decently paying job for a few years that I could put on my resume as experience so that I can get a real job at a later point. The interview started off a bit rocky. I had applied to a blind posting and gotten a call back for the interview wherein they gave me the particulars of the position and the firm. I researched the firm and its attorneys online and had generally come to the conclusion that had it not been a blind posting, I probably would have passed over applying to it. I’ve become gun-shy of the little 3 person law firms because invariably they are offering no money you can live on, and every interview I’ve been to with a small firm has been very strange. Usually meeting the attorneys in person explains why they are working in solo / small self-managed firms. (I am sure there are normal people out there who work in small / solo firms, but I have not met you. Much like unicorns, I won’t believe you exist until I see you myself.)
Anyway, although it was still small, they had not updated their website since they had put it online (I guess not very technically minded). The firm is supposedly twice the size it stated on its website, putting it closer to a regional mid-sized firm (or so claimed the interviewer). I think I ended up putting the interviewer on the defensive a bit, especially since I had initially written the job off. This strangely may have been a positive. I ended up asking pointed questions about the cash flow of the firm since I knew that the consumer side of their purported business is cutthroat and the small guys can not survive. Which resulted in a much more detailed conversation with the interviewer about the position and legal market in general than I think I’ve had in any interview to date. Food for thought for future interviews.