Interview 12 & 13

These were thankfully rather normal interviews.

I had the chance to interview for where I had interned. You know that saying “You can never go home again”? Well, it seems that once you leave where you intern, they really don’t want to see you come back. I have obviously been looking for work for awhile, and I have kept in contact at least peripherally with people I worked with at my internship. They knew I was looking for anything, I had made the range of the subtle to the obvious statements relating to working there if anything opened up. I felt confident that if something did open up, they would drop me a line. (You’ll have to trust me that my internship went well and I was well liked while I was there.) Anyway, it was with a bit of surprise that I ran across the job listings from my former internship online on a job board. No one dropped me a note, no mention of it from the multiple people I had known. Maybe it was an oversight… somehow. So I dropped my resume thru their online system. Within a day or two I got a phone call from them.

They passed me thru the first round of interviews and straight to the second, but I had this odd feeling that something was strained and not quite right. I didn’t give it too much thought until later. I had the interview with the senior figure, and I will admit that I may have made one fatal misstep. I acted very familiar. I mean, I had been working with everyone there for 2 years. We had gone for lunch and drinking and to a couple events together. I was friends with people. It’s hard not to act familiar, but I got a bit of a sense that they didn’t want me to be friendly and familiar. After the interview I stopped over and spoke to people I knew in the office. I had a vague impression that it wasn’t an oversight that I hadn’t been contacted, and that I had created an uncomfortable situation they didn’t have an ‘out’ from when I found their job postings.

I question what I would do if offered a position.

 

Job interview 13 was amazing. It was in DC, I drove out and stayed overnight. It was the best interview I have ever done. I was stoked. Federal employment, directly on point with several of my specialties. I was incredibly excited by the prospect of this job. I continued to be excited for the next few weeks. A month out from the interview and my sense of excitement has turned a bit sour as my best interview apparently wasn’t good enough.

Interview 10 & 11

Ah yes.. So the alluded to ‘more’ interviews to talk about mentioned at the end of Interview 9 posting.

Interview 10 was another phone interview. I had a lovely conversation for another analyst position. This one was a real estate analyst. I am actually rather clueless about what I could have done wrong on this one. I had a really good 45 minutes interview where I talked passionately about my interest in real estate (an teeny tiny exaggeration to be sure, but I’ve got the background to be able to pontificate on it at length). The interviewer seemed very interested in me. Not only did they seem interested, she was setting out a schedule for the next round of interviews and wanted to make sure I would be available next week to come in on Tuesday or Thursday once she passed my name on to the interviewer who would call to setup a time. She all but told me who I would be meeting with. I got off the phone stoked. Two more weeks went by before I gave up hope that they were going to call back. I didn’t receive a rejection, nor even an email. Just a big nothing.

The next interview had a remarkably similar feel to the black hole phone interview. It was for a temporary federal position. The caveat was that it was for a position of an actual attorney! I had an in person interview no less. So I show up to this interview round about mid–May. The job had a hard start date of June 1st. First I was congratulated by one of the two interviewers on making it this far in the application process. The gears in the back of my brain suddenly started spinning…. Oh crap… seriously? A very temporary position had generated so much interest that making it to an actual interview was considered noteworthy? Besides the ominous congrats at the beginning, it went quite well. I got on really well with the attorney and the administrator interviewing me. We had a pretty good interview punctuated with a decent amount of friendly conversation. Then they started talking about scheduling, and if I was available to start this day, and would I be available the whole period of time etc. etc. They basically were giving me my work schedule and going over times. I told them I had prior obligations on one day but it was flexible enough that I could reschedule if they needed me to, and the main attorney said it would be no problem to take that day off. We were wrapping up and the attorney asked me if there was anything else before we ended, and here might have been my only misstep; but I will never know. Since so many positions are gotten thru a nepotistic indulgence, I thought I would throw out a name they would know. And I said,” Well, I do have some specialized knowledge about (specialty) law based upon my relationship with Mr. Attorney-Across-the-Street.” (there is no way they couldn’t know him). I explained how I knew him and how I had gotten some knowledge about that legal specialty. It seemed perfect. They acknowledged that they knew him in the casual offhand “oh yeah… of course we know him.” The interview ended well and I left. And I heard nothing more ever from that office. No rejection, no email, no letter. Nothing. The only way I knew I was rejected was June 1 came and went.

So, I seriously wonder if I picked some massively hated individual to use as a reference point in the conversation. I’ll never know. I might ask him the next time I see him if there is any reason why that office might not like him. But the likelihood of getting a straight answer is almost nil.

I apparently just have to content myself with the absence-of-notification to know that I was rejected.

Interview 9

I had a phone interview for a huge corporation for a contract analyst position. It was a standard short phone screening with behavioral interview questions.

Behavioral interviewing is the latest HR fad that business paraprofessionals are forced to use. A decade or so ago it was the impossible question games; “How would you move Mount Fuji 10 feet to the left?” titularly to see how the interviewee responds to difficult situations under pressure. Behavioral interviewing instead poses questions such as “Tell me about a time when you used logic to solve a problem.” Most intelligent people would probably respond with the statement “As opposed to not using logic to solve a problem and instead solving it paradoxically by being irrational and unreasonable?” But interviews are not the place to show that you are a thinking, rational person. Behavioral based interviews are supposed to make you come up with a story about some time in your life that can relay to the interviewer that you are a good prospect for an employee. For those unaware, there is a correct way to answer these questions. Here is an incredibly boring synopsis. Generally the method requires you to come up with half a dozen or so stories (real or semi-fabricated around a past job experience) and have those stories ready to apply to any of these questions.

I seemingly did quite well with the interview. The interviewer even mentioned how it was obvious I had done a fair amount of research on the company and position. Which made it that much more depressing when two days later I got the rejection email. I was trying to figure out where I misstepped, and I could only come up with one possible answer. The experience. But its not quite so simple as just saying I didn’t have enough experience. The job posting was not for an attorney, it was for an analyst. The position requirements wanted a BA, and 3 years experience. The question was posed to me how much contract experience did I have, and I answered about 1 year. Now most places would consider law school to be acceptable in lieu of legal experience gathered with only a BA. But I later asked if there were any licenses or qualifications they were looking for the position, and I was told by the interviewer the only licenses they were looking for was a JD.

So, job posting says BA, but they minimally want a JD. So apparently the answer is that they want an attorney with minimally 3 years experience, that they can pay as if they only have a college degree. Fantastic. The value of being an attorney just keeps falling.

I suppose on the plus side, I have had 3 job interviews this week, so if nothing else I have more to write about on the blog.

We are not alone

Where have the jobs gone?

For awhile I looked around and thought the legal field was singular in its fall from grace as a worthwhile career aspiration. It does not seem to be so. It seems instead a great many higher education degrees are becoming more and more worthless. And the debt incurred in no way compensates you later in life for wasting your time earning a degree which can’t earn you any money. Sometimes you look at someone and ask “how could you not see that what you were doing was worthless?” I wish I could find a clip to link here… There was a comedian who was talking about the unemployment problem. Specifically he referenced a reporter who was going around a university campus talking with various people about how they couldn’t find jobs. One person they interviewed gave the moving story that his friend who had recently graduated with a PhD couldn’t find a job. When asked what his friend had gotten his PhD in, he said English – with a concentration in ghost stories.

I’m beginning to feel that I got a PhD in ghost stories. But, as it turns out… I’m not the only one. And neither is it limited to the questionable value of a JD. There are a growing number of degrees which at one point offered the promise of real employment after graduation, yet now offer only huge student debt and no ability to repay it. A close relative of the JD has fallen as far and as fast it seems; the MBA is now a nearly worthless endeavor. Hell, with that type of worthlessness why not double-down in law school and get a JD/MBA. I recently talked to someone who made that calculated mistake and now works as an E-Dat attorney. That’s right… his dual degree got him all the way into document review.

What about other high student debt value positions? Well it turns out that very selective admission only goes so far as a DVM won’t let you make enough money to eat either. The oft maligned degree in any one of the humanities is now a short ticket to living in your aged parents basement and attempting to figure out how you can get into the military past the enlistment age.

So you don’t feel so sorry for the people who spent 10 years getting a degree in Classical dead languages? What about some of the more practical degrees. You know, the ones you always heard were a sure fire way to get a job without incurring a ridiculous debt load. How about pharmacy… nope. Oh wait.. what about that huge nursing shortage I heard about ad-nauseam. Yeah… turns out there’s nothing left there either. Education has become big business claiming to set up graduates for success in a competitive job environment while merely siphoning money to themselves. It has become a booming business to the point that there is more money to be made in education, that there is in actually being educated. Oh, but I forget… the invaluable and incalculable benefit of actually being intelligent and educated more than makes up for earthly pleasures like… food.

The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma. Even with this new baseline, most graduates can’t find substantive work. Of those who are working, half of them aren’t making enough money to live comfortably. This sounds eerily familiar. The only difference is that in the US, it seems to be happening to everyone even those with advanced degrees. If we are to believe NPR’s report, everyone without a decent degree is being shuffled off onto disability.

Are we becoming the United State’s Lost Generation?

I’m getting off my soapbox now. And taking it with me. Soapboxes are expensive. And at the minimum I can recycle it for some change… Dollar menu here I come.

Placement

As a law student, you never see them. They don’t show up to career fairs, they don’t offer internships, and even if you did send a resume out to them… they wouldn’t bother responding to you because you are an inexperienced proto-lawyer they can’t make any money from. I posted briefly about them previously, but figured it was due a more in depth discussion. They are staffing agencies.

And there are A LOT of them. Chances are you’ve even seen their names circulating. BCG, Dicenzo, Kinney Recruiting, Carpenter, Moses Legal Search, Counsel On Call, GCC Consulting, American Legal Search, JuriStaff, Robert Half Legal, Special Counsel, Hire Counsel, Lumen Legal, and more.. so many, many more. In fact, if you look at the job postings in some markets, it almost seems like they are the only ones hiring. They aren’t. Most don’t hire at all. Some are so classy as to tell new lawyers bluntly to go fuck off. BCG has a special landing page for new graduates telling them they would not be considered for any jobs they applied to; and instead points them in the direction of widely known scam sites such as LawCrossing. Because I am sure another site which attempts to siphon money from an already broke and desperate group of people is a completely sustainable business model. BCG has other problems as well which generally explains a good part of their business acumen. Let me explain a little bit how these multi-level marketing look alike / scam companies work.

At least half of these companies have a tiered workforce. Places like Special Counsel, Hire Counsel, etc. actually do hire attorneys; but they only hire them to do Document Review at low wages. The reason for this is that they make a vast amount more money on a slavish workforce by staffing a project and then billing the law firm who hired them. They will not even try to place entry level people in real jobs. In their view, there is no money in it, and they can make more money on your perpetual servitude in doc review (see previous post on the inflation of doc review billing). Temp companies want laterals to place into jobs for the placement fee. They don’t do it for free… if the staffing agency places an attorney, the company they place them into pays a finders fee to the staffing agency for finding the ‘right candidate’. To give you an idea of what that fee is, if you are working in the slave force for Special Counsel and bring in an attorney that they end up placing in a permanent job, you get a take of the fee to the tune of $2500. Consider what the fee is if that is what they are willing to share with the drones. One of the placement staff told me that in the office I briefly worked for, they had placed a grand total of 2 people last year in permanent jobs. Two… Staffing companies also have all of their temp workers sign contracts barring them from being hired by a company you work for through them, outside of the staffing agency hiring system for a period of a year.

There are 2 sick jokes within this whole situation. The first is that the laterals the staffing agencies are looking so hard to place could easily get the job they are being placed into. In this market, being a lateral means that you have experience and are willing to jump ship at the first sign that someone is willing to pay slightly more for you. This leads to companies who are unwilling to hire entry level people because they think they will end up paying to train them only to have them leave as soon as they are trained for a higher paying job. In the end a self fulfilling propehcy is created because the laterals have already shown they have no alligence to their employer by constantly jumping between higher paying job offers. The second joke of this whole thing is where the staffing companies find these jobs they list everywhere. They do the same as you and me… they look online and find a job posting. Then they copy it and take out any contact info, company names, etc. Switch around a few phrases so that you can’t easily Google the job description back to its source… and Voila! Now it looks like Staffing Company Inc. is hiring an In-house counsel for a dynamic software company. General enough that you can’t use the staffing company posting to find the original company’s job post. There are supposedly some companies that only list through certain staffing companies… but I actually haven’t run across one yet. In fact, what I usually run across are companies stating on their job posting that they will not deal with recruiters or intermediaries. Because they have already figured out they are a scam.

The staffing companies act as intermediaries between you and jobs in theory. In fact, they act as an unnecessary wall preventing you from getting your resume to the jobs you want. If you submit your application to a staffing agency, they will not forward it on to the employer. Instead they decide if it fits the job description and more often than not, reject you themselves with no input from the company offering the job.

Don’t use them. Don’t apply to them. And remember this later in life when you may be in a position to consider hiring people…tell the staffing companies to take a flying fuck and only hire directly.

 

Interview 8

I call this one the ‘Low Rent Interview’.

As I get increasingly desperate for a real legal job, I have ended up applying to everything. Absolutely everything; whether I want to work in that sub-specialty or not, I send out an application if they are looking. Back when I had just graduated, I would apply selectively to the jobs I wanted in the specialties I was most interested. I would maybe send out 2 or 3 applications a week. Most days now I send out at the bare minimum 5 a night. The last ‘entry level job’ that I matched perfectly in terms of skill and interest I ended up receiving a rejection informing me that there had been over 700 applications for the one position offered. I was talking to a friend of mine several states away in Chicago who as it happened also applied and was rejected from the same position. We joked that we were now part of the 700 Club.

But I digress. This interview was garnered from a Craigslist posting looking for an associate attorney. That really was the extent of the ad. No firm name, no salary info. Just firm looking to hire an associate. Okay.. I’m game. I threw out a resume, and the next day I get a callback for an interview. I setup the interview and get the firm name to do the standard pre-interview research on the firm and attorney(s) I’ll be talking with. Its a very small firm and their practice areas seem a bit eclectic, but hey, so is my skillset so maybe it would work. So the night before the interview I am wrapping up my short research on the firm, and I run across a marketing video the firm put out 2 years ago. I start watching it.

“How would you like to work from home as an attorney?” uh oh… The video in a nutshell was the closest thing I’ve seen attempting to create a multi-level marketing / Ponzi scheme out of a law firm. The basics ran like this: you would be given the moniker associate. But there were no partnership tracks. Instead it functioned like an office-share situation wherein you gave the Named Partner a not so insubstantial administrative fee every month, they also took 50% of everything you made from fees. Oh but wait! You get to set your own fees… so long as it was minimally $150 an hour. For all of this wonderful access, you basically setup your own solo firm under this person’s letterhead with no actual training or help from the ‘firm’.

Crap. This looked more like a scam. And I had to drive over an hour to get to this guys office spending the better part of a day going there and wasting gas. I was considering bailing on the interview. On the flip side… I would have an interesting story to share with people if I went… and write this entry for this blog. So of course I went.

The office was in an industrial park. Not a commercial space. No… when I mean industrial park, I mean when I entered the office you could hear the lathe and other machinery in the spaces on either side. I’m also going to sound like a bit of an elitist here… but an attorney’s office is supposed to look professional. I get that solos often don’t have a lot of money, especially starting out. But this guy had apparently been in business for more than 15 years. His office was in the lowest rent area you can put an office. And the entire interior was very obviously put up by him. Drywall, flooring, carpeting and all. And I hope he was a better attorney than handyman, because it was not well put together. Think the skill level of your dad who fancies himself a plumber / carpenter, and now no faucet turns the same direction and no door hangs level in your house. So I sit down and wait. After nearly half an hour I am contemplating leaving. There is no one in the office. The sole secretary has answered 2 phone calls stating that ‘attorney so-and-so is in a meeting.’ There is no meeting, and no one else in the office. Finally, the partner / solo attorney I am supposed to see comes out.

We go back to his office and I note that there is a decided lack of any sort of files anywhere in the office. Now, I know that we all move toward reduction of paperwork and putting everything into a digital format… but even so… lawyers generate paper. Tons of it. Even with the best digital storage system you have paper files and boxes and boxes of papers. I’ve never been to an office which didn’t. Until now. There are no papers, no files, no boxes, no filing cabinets. That seems ominous. So we start talking. He remarks (often) on the breadth of my resume. Everything from IP to Admiralty and all sorts of random specialty law in between. I explain that I feel it best to have a great diversity of training to offer employers, so that I can be used in a wide variety of tasks. And if they are looking for a specialist in one or two things, I likely already have experience in them and can focus on only those they want me to. We start talking about my prior training; courtroom experience and the like. He keeps saying “well that’s where everyone starts”. The problem is, he says it 4 different times… about 4 completely different things. I’m beginning to suspect he doesn’t have some of the supposedly basic training that I do.

He then asks me how I would start my practice there. Wait… what? Start MY practice at HIS firm? I double back and ask the question that is looming large in my mind. Is this a straight salary position? Yes (seemingly conditionally but we never got to that). His expectation was that I would be setup in the office in a practice area in which he didn’t practice, and that I would then go out and act like a solo under his name. So same concept as the video, except with a salary. I explain to him that I don’t have the experience building up my own practice and getting my own clients. And then I added, if I did, why wouldn’t I just hang out my own shingle?

And then he hits the one issue he has been sorta skirting the whole interview. He tells me that he thinks that even if he hired me, I would leave. He seems very intimidated by the fact that I have multiple bars in neighboring states; that I am very well traveled; that I have a very diverse skillset; and in his estimation, no roots to hold me to the city. In his mind, if I wanted to, I could just leave on a moments notice. In other words… he thought I didn’t need him. He was from a 1st tier school. I had looked through the other two ‘associates’ at his firm and they were both from a 4th tier that was recently ranked as pumping out the most unemployed / unemployable lawyers in the country. Compared to his other associates, my skills and prospects are damn near rosy. He wanted to hire attorneys who literally couldn’t leave his firm. Ever. I saw that the interview was over. The decision was made before I walked in the room, technically by both of us. I wouldn’t work there even if offered, and he wouldn’t be offering. The interview wound down through the obligatory pleasantries and I left.

I said it before and I’ll say it again… Are there any normal solos / attorneys who work in small firms? Where are you hiding? Why am I only getting interviews with the mixed nut section of the legal world.

God damnit… Seriously?

I’m not even sure this one counts as an interview. Maybe a spam phone interview.

So I’ve been working at a doc review position recently. Mostly so that I can buy food and whatnot. Anyway, I’m fast approaching the 2K rejections point. So imagine my joy when someone called me up and asked if I was still interested in the job I submitted a resume to. So we made a bit of smalltalk and they told me where it was located; over on the eastern seaboard. Okay so far. I’d have to move but it was definitely doable. Then they tell me they are actually a staffing firm; crap, the hair on the back of my neck pricks up. And then they start explaining what the job is… 6 months potentially extendable yada yada.. and then they say what I was already guessing. Contract work. I’m already assuming they are looking for doc reviewers at this point and they’re trying like hell to make it sound like something more. So I play along, and ask the next obvious question, how much is it paying. $17 an hour. The phone interviewer knew something was wrong from the slightly too long silence.

I calmly explained I am living in one of the more depressed legal markets in the country, and I am making a decent amount more than that already. In a very crappy legal environment. In one of the cheaper places to live in the country. I also mention that I know for a fact the lowest paid interns in the city she mentioned make $15 an hour. Because I happen to know several city prosecutors there… and the city pays their interns at the lowest rate in the city; $15. I also tell her $17 is so far below any livable salary in that particular city, its damn near laughable. So I say, thanks but no thanks. I really don’t need to move to a much more expensive city, to work for a lot less money, and to be paid on par with an intern.

Thanks Fountain Group. Maybe next time you’ll offer me the Asst. manager position of a McDonalds.

Interview 7 redux

So about a month ago I seemed a bit upbeat about a potential job prospect at a very small firm and a telephone interview. I never got a call back, so I guess having a more in depth discussion showing you actually know anything about the business side of a law firm is a no-no. The slightly short version was that the small firm wanted to hire a collections attorney. No description beyond that. So knowing a fair amount about collections, I asked a few pointed questions about what type of collections work they were talking about.

For those who don’t know, Business to Business (B2B) collections is a decent business. But the only way you end up with a B2B collections practice is if you practice another type of law which gets you those business clients, who as it happens also need some collections work done on the side. The bigger the firm, the more business clients you have, the more collections work from those clients you can get. This type of work is often limited to medium to small businesses clients. The big ones go to the big firms that specialize in nothing but collections, and they often already have client accounts with those firms. But a smaller law firm can subsist nicely on B2B collections if they can initially pull in the clients from their other work. Smaller firms can NOT survive doing consumer collections work. Having had conversations with the named partners at the big collections firms, the truth is that the return on most collections cases is tiny for a law firm (single digit percentages). The only way you can make money on that is by doing it in bulk.. A lot of bulk. And to be able to handle that much business you need to have an infrastructure that is expensive. Simplistically speaking, the bar for entry is way to high for the consumer side of collections for any but the larger firms to even consider playing the game. Add to that the FDCPA statutory fines for obscure infractions… it could bankrupt small firms who aren’t prepared.

Anyway, I ended up asking questions relating to the type of collections they were looking at etc etc. Basically I wanted to know that if I was moving for the job, there would still be a job in a few months. It almost seemed like knowing about the industry and where the money would be coming from made the interviewer uneasy. Considering I didn’t even ask the big question relating to one of the partners not-so-distant past bar infractions wherein it looked like he attempted to steal a sizable amount of money from his client account and had been suspended from the practice of law for a bit… and it might be that this job just wasn’t meant to be.

It would have been nice to be employed, but maybe it would be better to be employed elsewhere.

 

In other news, my current count of canceled Doc Review positions is now topping out at 8. Possibly more since I kept getting vague “several irons in the fire” rhetoric. I regret going to law school now more than ever. I am beginning to consider leaving the country to escape my student loans which I have no ability to pay nor seemingly future prospect to be able to do so.

Applications = Free marketing? Really?

This is honestly a new one for me. I thought I had seen most of the shitty things potential employers could do and say to the plebeian applicants who employers deigned to consider for their jobs. But sometimes, even after what has been quite literally thousands of applications and resumes sent out, I can still be surprised.

So… I had applied to Barclay’s Bank, specifically their BarclayCard division (their credit card) for a slightly half legal position of ‘Negotiator’. It didn’t require a law degree, but considering my luck with legal jobs so far, I thought a quasi- legal job would be a nice change from being perpetually broke. Plus, I thought I was a shoe in for the position. I am a lawyer trained in negotiation, and as it happens I am also a certified mediator on top of that. So I was slightly disappointed when I received the rejection from Barclay’s.

But just imagine my delight when I received this in the mail.

Card

Now, I know what you’re thinking… Maybe its a coincidence? I mean, just because some bank that doesn’t have any physical location within several hundred miles of me, that I’ve never done business with, nor had any associations with other than applying to their job, and have literally never received any piece of mail with their name on it prior to this moment, well they could have possibly gotten hold of my name and address… right?

Well, you see, the application asked for references. And as it happened when I was talking to someone on my list of references about how I think BarclayCard used my application to send me unsolicited mail… they thought for a moment, got up and walked over to their desk and produced an identical envelope. That’s right. Barclays didn’t just use MY information to send out unsolicited spam. They used my list of references and also sent out junk mail offers to them too.

Classy.

 

Edit: Turns out Liberty Mutual does this too… I received a bit of spam mail from them as well and they included the Esq. at the end of my name. Never used that anywhere except on job applications.