By far the most fun and excruciating part of my externship is the fact that I get to play a significant role in hiring my replacement.  It is fun because I get to look at resumes of other students and conduct interview.  It is very different being on the opposite side of the table.  It is also excruciating because there are so many to choose from and they all seem very qualified.  I am getting a lot of resumes from law students and MBA’s.  Some students are very easy to eliminate and it’s usually the MBA students.   Law students are more likely to do targeted cover letters and be explicit about why they are interested in the position whereas MBA students tend to have poor writing skills and one even had a misspelling in an email response to me.   I wish I could take back the interview invitation.  This experience has given me a first-hand look at what it’s like to be the interviewer.  It is a good review for me and has reminded me of the importance of paying close attention to detail and being truthful on my resume. 

I went through all the resumes and ranked the candidates.  Today happened to be the day I interviewed the #1 candidate with significant financial regulatory work experience and an alphabet soup of degrees that included an MBA and JD as well as being close to completing an LLM in securities regulation.  The #1 candidate’s resume listed him as being fluent in three languages and claimed to have the ability to speak four other languages.  It was unlucky for him that I happen to be able to speak one of them.  At the end of our interview when we were having casual conversation I told him that I admired his repertoire of language skills and switched over to one of his claimed languages and asked him “how well do you speak the language?”  He responded in English by saying that “I” speak it well except I asked him how well “he” spoke the language not how well I speak it and his response was in English.  I thought maybe the abrupt switch to another language may have confused him so I asked him one more time and he, again, in English, talked about how he picked up so many various languages.  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Have you ever exaggerated on our resume and gotten caught?

My externship work is going well.  See my post Getting in the Game for more details about my externship site choice.  I am learning a lot and I am in the process of reworking my resume and cover letter to apply for a regulatory position within the organization.  My boss told that me that managers hate to hire lawyers because after getting one or two years of experience they leave the position quickly in pursuit of better things.  

I went straight through undergrad to grad school and then to law school.  I have no professional experience other than working for Big Law firms during the summer.  For the first time, I am working outside of a law firm context with non-attorneys.  It is a whole new world for me.   Here, are a few things that stood out to me.

No administrative assistance other than an office manager. 

At Big Law, you are told to delegate anything and everything that is non-billable to an administrative assistant.  I used my administrative assistant quite often to sent out jobs to the copy center, print and arrange things for me, handle tech issues, make lunch reservations, keep up with my calendar etc… Now I get to do it all.  I miss having an administrative assistant. 

No social land mines & forced socialization. 

I noticed that there aren’t any social events going on.  You know, those social events that are “optional” but not really.  No awkward social events where you try to decipher what you are supposed to wear.  We were all invited last summer for the annual pool party at a senior partner’s house.  Of course, if you did a little research you would find out that it wasn’t an actual pool party and that there was a complex dress code to follow. 

No one sleeps at the office.

It is not uncommon to see couches inside the offices of lawyers rather than actual chairs.  That is how you know who sleeps in their office (usually from the exhaustion of working around the clock.)  Nor is it uncommon to see lawyers with raccoon eyes–a sure sign they were working all night.  Here, no raccoon eyes and no couches. 

A business casual dress code.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wear a suit in the past month.  The law firms I worked at were business casual which meant that you wear everything except for your suit jacket.  Here, the emphasis is more on casual than business.  And people get to wear jeans every Friday!  

These observations may not be very accurate because I work in a small department that is very independent from the rest of the organization and my boss has told me that their department is a very casual environment, unlike many departments at the organization. 

What kind of a work environment do you have?  Do you have people sleeping in your office working around the clock?  Do you get to wear jeans to work every Friday? 

I had to make a decision about which internship to go with.  If I am only thinking about the short-term then the best choice would be internship #1 because it is a legal internship that would relate to the kind of courses I am taking right now.  Internship #1 is a highly desirable experience for a law student.   Internship #2 offeres regulatory work which isn’t strictly legal.  It also offered a smaller department to work in and a director who seemed eager to mentor incoming externs. 

I chose internship #2 and here’s why. 

 Mentoring – I felt that internship #2 had a director who was more focused on mentoring.  As a recipient of really good mentoring from many of my current and former mentors I strongly believe in it.  I need to have an ally or a “true fan” on my corner.   Having a mentor can smooth the road to attaining many goals.   I need to be very careful about that crucial “first job” of my career and I can see myself being part of this organization and growing within in it.    My director knows that I turned down a very sweet legal offer for the chance to work with her.  Coming in to an organization with a favorable impression is golden. 

I mentioned in my last post that I needed to get in the game.   By getting an externship I am on the sidelines watching the game closely.  My goal now is to make a move from the sidelines to the actual field and get in the game.  In other words, I need to land a job here. 

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It’s time to dust myself off and launch a new career strategy. 

Not getting an offer from the firm that I worked for last summer was an absolute blow to my confidence and my skills.  If I ever have been depressed in my life then it would have been from August to November.  Going home for a month allowed me to take a mental break from the big muddle that is my soon-to-be-career.   I am feeling better emotionally and last week I launched a difficult yet strategic move that may help my career. 

 Revised Career Strategy – 2020

Goal: In ten years, become skilled at financial regulatory work and position myself to become a senior associate for a law firm or to obtain a senior position with a financial firm. 

First, get in the game. 

Get a job in the financial regulatory industry to obtain experience. 

 Second, find other good players to model myself after.

Find engaging and skilled mentors with a pay-it-forward attitude. 

 Third, become a really good player.

Build an expectation of excellence and continually deliver on that expectation.  Obtain skills by taking on challenging work.  Take advantage of all educational and training opportunities.  Build and strengthen the personal brand that is Jane. 

Fourth, get true fans. 

Build meaningful relationships not relationships simply for career advancement.  Obtain true fans also through personal branding, networking and mentoring others.  

Fifth,  switch leagues.

Jump ship to become a senior associate for a regional law firm or a senior position with a financial firm.