{"id":1829,"date":"2016-04-08T07:07:07","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T07:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/?p=1829"},"modified":"2016-05-27T08:45:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T08:45:14","slug":"interview-35-the-red-carpet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/?p=1829","title":{"rendered":"Interview #35 &#8211; The Red Carpet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So this partially explains my hiatus. And at the same time, continues on \u00a0with more interview stories.<\/p>\n<p>So I became gainfully employed earlier this year, shortly before the posts stopped. In point of fact, I was hired on <a href=\"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/?p=1677\">here<\/a>\u00a0as a full associate. I said yes because&#8230; well&#8230; the job title was &#8220;Associate&#8221; and I figured if nothing else, I could stick it out for a little bit and then lateral to something more palatable. Plus they were paying real money! Not a fabulous salary to be sure, but it was a damn sight better than the majority of jobs I have been running across of late. I also have this horrible addiction to food and living indoors, which for once, I am able to cover fully on my own! (woo for being an adult!)<\/p>\n<p>Well, sticking it out has gotten very difficult. I will be posting a bunch of stories about the weird as hell (and ultimately ethically bankrupt) stories garnered from working at a huge Personal Injury firm. After working there only a little while, I realized I needed to get the hell out, and fast. I talked to several attorney friends of mine, and before I even got to some of the good stories, I was told by every one that I was ethically obliged to quit the job due to Professional Responsibility reasons. These stories are going to appear once I am safely away from this place. But until then&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>__________________________________________<\/p>\n<p>Only a few months in I am now worried for my license if I don&#8217;t get out. So, I started up the application process once again. It wasn&#8217;t nearly so difficult, mostly because all my jobhunting bookmarks were still fresh enough and I never actually unsubscribed from Indeed.com&#8217;s job alerts I had setup forever ago.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time ever, I got a hit off of a LinkedIn job posting for a small to mid size law firm. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever gotten a call back from a LinkedIn application, so this was a novelty at the minimum. Maybe having the &#8216;Associate&#8217; title actually did grant me a little bit of cache as I was hoping.<\/p>\n<p>I showed up at the office in a small mid-rise building in one of the nicer areas of town. Mind you, it wasn&#8217;t in <em>the<\/em> expensive area&#8230; it was more like it was a few blocks down the street from <em>the<\/em> expensive area. Enough so that rent was lower, but you could still claim your office was in the right neighborhood to clients.<\/p>\n<p>I walked into one of the larger, and nicer lobbies for a smallish law firm that I have seen. Besides the significant use of glass walls, the first thing you had to notice was the wall-to-wall plush red carpet. It was just solid, bright red and slightly squishy when you walked on it. I thought it was a little bit of an odd choice for a waiting room, but didn&#8217;t think much more about it. The receptionist brought me into the back offices and I immediately noticed the red carpet continued on throughout the whole of the office. All I could figure was there must have been some super sale on it, because who would put this in their whole office?<\/p>\n<p>I get put into a small, oddly shaped library room \/ closet with (red carpet) a little table. The managing partner came in as the interviewer, which I suppose is the benefit of a somewhat smaller firm. The firm is a general practice and for the first time ever, they thought my resume and background, with all its weird specialties, was a perfect fit. They loved that I had done a whole bunch of different types of law, and they were very interested in several points on my resume which <u>not one single other<\/u> firm has ever asked about. I am hopeful about this one.<\/p>\n<p>I was also told that I was only one of a couple applicants they interviewed, out of a stack about 3 inches thick. So apparently I am gaining mad skillz at resume creation, maybe.<\/p>\n<p>We got down to talking about how much notice I&#8217;d need for my current job and things which sounded very hopeful. I had the same unfortunate moment of most likely low-balling my requested salary, especially as we continued talking, the managing partner dropped the bomb that the firm had its own private jet. This was a new one&#8230; even with some of the big firms I&#8217;ve been to, none had seemingly had their own private jet. Truthfully, that was my big take away from the interview. I am sure there were nuances in our other discussions as well, but &#8220;private jet&#8221; loomed large in my mind walking out the door after the interview.<\/p>\n<p>The interview was thankfully normal, and the managing partner was quite nice, plus the billable requirement was seemingly attainable unlike many other firms. I am hopeful. They&#8217;re supposed to bring back a few for a second interview. I&#8217;m hoping I have to take a sick day to head over to a second interview because I really like the feel of this firm&#8230; minus the squishy red carpet.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>minor addendum:<\/p>\n<p>So even though the firm was talking with me about how soon I could start working for them, they never bothered to get back to me. After 2 weeks, I dropped an email to the interviewer \/ partner. They told me they had gotten really busy and hadn&#8217;t made any decisions as of yet, so not to worry as he was going to get back to me very shortly. That was literally the last I heard from them. I followed up with a thank you card via USPS about another week to two later. Basically said thanks, I would love to work there if they were still looking etc. etc. Nothing came back. Not even a rejection. I mean at least send out a short note to the very very few people you had come in for an interview. Shit&#8230; be human about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So this partially explains my hiatus. And at the same time, continues on \u00a0with more interview stories. So I became gainfully employed earlier this year, shortly before the posts stopped. In point of fact, I was hired on here\u00a0as a full associate. I said yes because&#8230; well&#8230; the job title was &#8220;Associate&#8221; and I figured &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/?p=1829\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Interview #35 &#8211; The Red Carpet&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lawschoollies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cove-haven-resorts-garden-of-eden-apple-suite-tub-1211-700x430.jpg?fit=700%2C430&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2R6Kb-tv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1909,"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions\/1909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawschoollies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}