See Jane Get Rich

I met an attorney and I told her about how I was on Plan C and she tooked at me and said “you don’t really want a job!” 

“What do you mean?  I want a job.” 

“No, you don’t.  If you really wanted a job then you would have also applied for state clerkships and you would have…”

Jane: “But, I don’t want to do state clerkships.”

“See, you don’t want a job.”

Jane: “No, I don’t want ANY job.”

“I would much rather you be in a position to turn down a job than have nothing.  You are working on plan A, then on plan B, now plan C.  By working on things consecutively, you are setting yourself up for failure.  You gotta have Plan’s A through Z and work on as many of them as possible.  You have to stagger your approach.  You have to do a full force job search none of this oh, I think I will like this.  I need you to spend at least 2 hours a day looking for a job.” 

Jane: “Two hours a day?!”

 ”There’s 168 hours in a week.  What?  You don’t have two hours to spent searching for jobs?” 

Jane: “I can try to find two hours.”

“And, you can’t be egotistical.  This is not the job market for that.  I graduated from a top law school and worked at some of the best firms.  I applied for 150 jobs last month.  Guess how many calls I got?  I got 4 interviews.  In any other market, my resume would have been snatched up but not in this market.” 

And…

I met this attorney on Friday.  Before then, I didn’t think this consecutive job searching was a bad thing although I knew it wasn’t the best way to go about it.  In some ways she is right about the fact that I don’t want a job.  I don’t want any job just to say that I have a job.  I would much rather leave the legal field behind and jump into something else rather than trying to make my way through a dead end profession where even a former Skadden associate like this attorney can’t find a job based on her superb qualifications.   But, I am thankful for this encounter because it did force me to sit down and make a list of A through Z options to pursue after graduation.  And, it did make me start spending 2 hours each day starting yesterday.