I know what you're thinking.

"But Kenny! Didn't you say you were never going to interview with a law firm ever again?"

Well, I never actually said that (I said I was relieved I wouldn't be interviewing this semester!), but have no fear--this entry is not about me! Rather, our Career Services Office sent out some "feedback" from our fall on-campus interviews that really made me chuckle. I couldn't resist the opportunity to poke some fun... at everyone involved. Also, I couldn't resist the opportunity to talk about something other than the bailout.

I should note that, ostensibly, the CSO exists to help students get jobs. They work hard on our behalf and that's great; any feedback they pass along to us is not directly attributable to them. On the other hand, I think a lot of this should have been filtered through the lens of rationality...

We have received some feedback from the employers about the fall recruiting season, here are some things we feel we need to pass along.

1) Please do not have parents, or spouses call the employers to ask questions or negotiate through the interview process. If I am hiring an attorney to make million dollar deals or help someone through a divorce, I surely won't take someone seriously that has mom, dad or their spouse call to ask questions or negotiate on their behalf.

I admit I had to read through this one twice. I have a hard time believing that is the whole story--I mean, who just says to their dad, "Can you call up this guy at Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe for me?" But I can see a hypersensitive recruiter getting a friendly call from someone's parent or spouse who is also a lawyer. After all, don't they pound "networking" into our heads from day one? My father (who is not an attorney) successfully arranged a couple of interviews for me in Phoenix when I was a 1L.

On the other hand, maybe this really is the whole story. In which case... wild. So you think that someone who engages in this kind of behavior is going to listen to any of the advice you're giving?

2) Save all "what's in it for me" questions, until AFTER your receive the offer. Don't ask about salary, or billable hours, time off, etc, before you have the offer in your hand.

This, I think, is unfair. NALP firms make all of this information quite public, so there's no need to ask. But if I'm interviewing with a small local firm, I need to know if they pay less than the local McDonald's. Interviews are, and ought to be, a two-way street. Yes, there is clearly an imbalance of power, especially in rough economic times, that favors the potential employer. I would prefer the CSO tell the interviewers: "Expect to have compensation questions asked of you, and be prepared to answer them. We are negotiating employment, not selling wage-slaves."

3) Watch the "off the cuff" jokes and be on guard at all times. Anything edgy, crass or even slightly offensive can cost you an offer. Employers are looking for someone with good judgement that they can trust with clients. Edgy, crass or offensive means I can't trust you with clients: you might embarrass the firm. I can tell you story and after story of otherwise well-qualified students that lost offers or return offers from SLIGHTLY off color jokes or comments.

Another one I have a hard time believing isn't attributable to an over-sensitive interviewer. Who tells off-color jokes in an interview? This one is sound advice no matter your profession, but supposedly this feedback is from actual interviews conducted on BYU campus in the past month.

4) Watch the cover letters: there are two spaces after a period and before the next sentence.

Here's where I flew into a fiery rage and decided to write this blog entry. Anyone so inclined should feel free to count--in my posts, there are two spaces after every period. That's good MLA style writing! Even so, CMS calls for one space, and CMS is what we use in law school (not to mention many law firms). This should have been cast right back in the interviewer's teeth as a stupid, nitpicking, irrelevant thing to demand. If that interviewer passed up any candidates based on the spaces after their periods in a cover letter, he or she should be fired for plain old stupidity.

On the other hand, I have to wonder if this is the sort of feedback an interviewer gives when they're caught with nothing to say. "Uh... two spaces after a period in cover letters? I dunno, everything seemed fine!"

5) If you have submitted a writing sample to an employer as part of your application package, be sure to review it, and be able to discuss it in depth.

Well, sure. Not that anyone ever bothered to read my writing samples when I was doing interviews. Maybe it's a good thing! I might have been stuck with a job. d^_~b

6) If you and your family have a blog or a website, make sure to cleanse it of inappropriate content, or anything specific that might allow an employer to believe you aren't completely committed to them (i.e., stating in the blog that you are interested/excited in 4 particular locations, and one of the cities you are interviewing in is not included). This goes for voicemails and email names as well. Get rid of the huggybunny[ gmail address] and delete Darth Vader from your voicemail.

I refer you to this entry's second paragraph. Welcome to the Information Age. You can live in constant fear of future employers, or you can express yourself and find yourself employed only by those who you actually want to be working for. I recognize that this is a revolutionary and wholly novel idea.

But I would submit that none of the above really had any impact on anyone's employment, the CSO and interviewers' protests to the contrary. I see who gets job offers, and breaking any of the above rules is going to make or break only the slim minority whose candidacy is already "on the edge."

To all of this I would add that job interviewing generally has become a farce. I'm not sure whether to blame HR flunkies or MBAs or who, but interviewing is in bad shape. When I conducted interviews, I visited with each viable candidate, tested their competency with a few questions, and made my decision based on whichever candidate was both competent and seemed like a decent person to work with. Sometimes their resumes were sloppy, sometimes they weren't; even the high school graduates knew better than to tell off-color jokes though. I wasn't looking for excuses to not hire them, which seems to be the contemporary focus. Hiring via process of elimination. But under that approach, the best candidate might get eliminated because he used the wrong font on his resume, while the person hired is just so unexceptional that nothing about them stood out.

So, carry on, brave CSO. Find jobs for my classmates! But do us all a favor and take these interviewers down a peg. They're far too impressed with themselves.