Job Search Tips Treasure!
Do you remember being a child and finding something wonderful and being on cloud 9 for days? Maybe it was an intact birds’ nest or the perfect skipping stone. Whatever it was, it was a treasure to you, and life was good.
And it's even more wonderful when finding treasure is unexpected. Say that you, like me, were relegated to whatever fielding position in Phys. Ed. class baseball that gets the least action. And that, while you are staring at the ground (whence a baseball rarely originates but that’s another story for another day), you find the four-leaf clover! The more unexpected the treasure is, the more meaningful—and when you were as clueless a baseball player as I was, finding a four-leaf clover was probably more likely than managing to catch the ball and make a successful play.
Stumbling onto treasure hiding in plain sight is a lot harder in our busy, adult, lawyering or studying mode. First, we are very focused on our obligations and our deliverables, so we aren’t keeping a keen eye out for potential distractions, and, even if we see something interesting, we move on because we have things to do and places to go. Adulthood can be overrated!
But this week I stumbled on a gem of an article in an unusual place—my community newsletter. From what I can tell, there are a couple of companies who produce these newsletters featuring local news as well as updates from the community association and elected representatives. Sometimes there are charts showing crime statistics, and if your community newsletter is like mine, there are always ads for realtors and requests for people to please sign up to fill an unfilled executive position on the community association’s board of directors.
Last week, I picked up the community newsletter to peruse quickly before consigning it to the recycling bin, and I found an article about job search strategies. At Assist, we talk to a lot of lawyers and students who are applying for jobs, and we know that it can be a tough market out there, especially for those seeking articling or junior lawyer positions. We don’t know how many applications law firms of all sizes receive for positions but based on what I hear from job seekers, the number is likely quite high. The challenge is to make yourself noticed among all the others—before your resume and cover letter are consigned to the recycling bin.
After I read the article and decided to share its key strategy, I researched the author, who turns out to be a social media and Substack star with tens of thousands of followers. If I had been more hip, I may have stumbled on Nick Kossovan more readily, but to me, his article in my community newsletter was a gem hiding in plain sight, and I was delighted.
These job search suggestions are not geared for the legal market—they are business-focused tips applicable across industries. As lawyers, we tend to think that the way we do things in law is unique (and probably better than what other sectors do), and while this may be true in some respects, employment is employment and job searches are job searches. It is good for us to go back to more general resources from time to time to see if we can make our resumes and cover letters better!
The critical nugget of wisdom from this article is to think from the employer’s perspective. When we are applying for jobs, we want to communicate as much as possible about our qualifications and accomplishments, but we don’t always link about how our qualifications and accomplishments will solve a problem that the employer has. Or we may not understand how we can benefit the employer because we don’t know enough about professional services firms and how they operate as businesses.
But here is the big challenge in law: when Canadian law students are applying for positions, whether in the 1L recruit, the 2L recruit or subsequently, many if not most do not know much about how law is practiced and how law firm operates. How can you try to adopt the employer’s perspective when you haven’t had a chance to learn the business of law yet?
We can apply some general principles to address this knowledge gap. The practice of law is a business, where law firm owners (partners or sole proprietors) receive the net difference between expenses and revenue as compensation. Many lawyers view training articling students as a cost of running a successful law firm, but they expect students to understand that they must work towards financial viability in due course. At some—generally large — firms, students may be told that they are not expected to generate much revenue and that they should docket all time, but at some point, all lawyers and most students will be evaluated based on their revenue over expenses ratio.
Generally, employers are seeking new employees to address a problem and law firms are no exception (except for large law firms who hire cohorts of students each year as part of their pyramid model with more worker bees at the base which must be regularly replenished as lawyers grow in seniority or leave.) Perhaps there has been a surge in new files and the firm realizes it is understaffed. Or perhaps an employee has left, and the firm cannot cover the former employee’s workload. But in either case, the employer has more work than its people can handle and they need to increase capacity. And, in both situations, your application (cover letter and resume) should show the potential employer that you can come on board and handle files with the appropriate level of expertise. Here is the surprising thing: it is about their needs more than about yours.
I encountered this issue a few times, as someone who changed practice areas and career directions more than once. Many years ago, I applied for an unusual position, and I was invited to an interview. The senior person on the interview panel pointed to my job experience and asked how my seven years as a securities lawyer qualified me for this unusual role. I said that it didn’t really, and that it was the work I had done for the next several years that was the basis for my application. I was not offered the position.
I knew at the time that I hadn’t answered that question well. What I should have said was that this experience showed that I was a person who could take on new challenges successfully which would equip me well for the position I was applying for, and that what I learned in this role made me a well-rounded lawyer who understood legal issues from many perspectives. And, yes, I beat myself up over that answer for many years, which is why I remember it so distinctively.
So, this is my take on the advice about thinking from the employer’s perspective: make sure you know why everything on your resume is relevant to the position you are seeking! And be prepared to explain how each item shows you can add value for your employer. And this has implications for how we organize our resumes. Lawyers generally adopt the resume format of listing our job experience in reverse chronological order, but you could also consider arranging your experience by relevance to close the loop for the employer to see why you are the best solution to their problem.
Thinking like an employer can feel difficult at first. If a law firm advertises a position for a student or a junior lawyer, we would generally assume that the firm knows exactly what they want the student or junior lawyer to do to help them, so we focus on the glossiness of our qualifications without necessarily tying our skills to the gap that the law firm is trying to fill. But assumptions are dangerous, so you may still want to be able to show prospective employers how you can solve their problem rather than just being the best candidate in general to enhance your chance of success.
Let’s take an example. A law firm posts a junior lawyer position stating that they are seeking a lawyer with one to three years of experience. Many candidates will submit a resume and cover letter showing their one to three years of experience without closing the loop about how their experience qualifies them to do the type of work the firm does. Let’s say that the firm has a large real estate practice and your experience is in family law: you need to close the loop about how your experience in family law is going to enhance their real estate practice.
So, start by identifying your skills. It’s easy to resort to buzz words like “motivated team player seeking new challenges” but wouldn’t it be better to say, “my experience on high-conflict files has taught me the value of collaboration and addressing disagreements early on with a quick phone call.” This tells the prospective employer that you understand enough about real estate practice to know that little disputes pop up regularly, that you know that a friendly phone call can often preclude escalation, and that you also have experience handling issues that cannot be resolved quickly.
It is therefore important to tell your story in a way that relates to the firm’s practice. This also requires customization of your resume and cover letter—when you mail out the same resume and cover letter to law firms generally, you are more likely to fall through the cracks. Always take the time to learn about the firm you are applying to and connect yourself to the firm, the practice area and the lawyers’ outside interests in a meaningful way.
For example, you may be interested in a firm that encourages pro bono work and let’s say that you saw photos on the firm’s website of the lawyers participating in community activities. Given that the firm has shown a commitment to pro bono work on their website, which statement is more likely to resonate with a potential employer:
- I saw that your firm allows associates to work on pro bono matters and I am interested in doing pro bono work.
- I saw that associates at your firm work on pro bono projects like [insert one name.] I, too, am passionate about [supporting children with disabilities] as my volunteer work with [name of charity] shows. I would welcome the opportunity to work on matters impacting the rights of disabled Canadians generally and ultimately to build a human rights practice.
If you picked #2, you agree with me—you have linked your own experience and interests (not necessarily as a lawyer) to a cause the firm has supported, and you have tied how working on a type of pro bono file could ultimately help you build a paying practice area. The first example is too vague and, even worse, could lead the potential employer to think that you prioritize pro bono work over billable files.
My community newsletter article also makes the point that it is important to show that you understand the prospective employer’s goals. A law firm’s goals may be along the lines of delivering quality legal services to clients in a cost-effective way that results in profit to the firm owner(s) and which enhances the firm’s reputation in the larger community. If you want to highlight your moot court competition success, perhaps focus on outcomes and don’t state “put in 200+ hours developing arguments” when you are applying at a firm that does a high volume of personal injury files—spending 200 hours is a luxury this practice cannot afford.
We often resort to overused buzzwords in our cover letters, like “I am a hard worker who enjoys rising to challenges.” Rather than telling the reader what you think you are, remember that lawyers value evidence over opinion! Can you say something like “While working at ABC Law, I regularly exceeded targets and generated the highest billings in my practice group in three out of my four years of employment while moving from handling small claims court matters to appearing at the Court of Appeal five times in the last year.” And, of course, it goes without saying that you would find a metric that reflects well on you and is accurate and demonstrable.
Don’t worry if you don’t have much legal experience yet. You could say “My resume shows that I started with XYZ Co. as a cashier but rose to the position of shift leader where my responsibilities included scheduling staff, managing absences and troubleshooting common issues.” I made up this example, which may not reflect reality, to show how you can leverage your summer job experience to show something that you may not yet have in your law experience.
If you are an internationally trained lawyer, you have valuable experience working in a law office—but your target audience may not understand this without illustration from you. On one hand, it is accurate to say that you appeared regularly at named courts, but the lawyer in Alberta may not understand the nuances between different courts. Imagine a newcomer to Alberta struggling with what the Court of Justice is as opposed to the Court of King’s Bench—names don’t necessarily tell much!
And if you have leadership experience, toot this horn: “I led a team of eight lawyers on the acquisition of a public company with a market capitalization of $X.” Albertans may not recognize the name of a foreign company, but we understand team leadership and the significance of a transaction involving a high market cap company.
A lawyer in the Assist circle tells of amending her resume style using an interesting process that was based on providing evidence of what she would bring to their organization, and she was successful on her first application using this new format. Perhaps this was the ideal position for this lawyer and her resume and cover letter would have landed at the top of the pile in any event, but here is what she did.
First, she canvassed colleagues and clients about her strengths and then synthesized them into four categories of characteristics based on this feedback. And then she listed examples of her work experience that supported each characteristic—evidence backing up her assertions!
I can’t remember exactly what her categories of characteristics were, so here is a made-up example: “Knowledgeable lawyer with excellent business judgment.” Examples of work could be “structured going private transaction for public company A, designed and implemented transition strategy for family business, led team of lawyers on acquisition of the assets of a telecom company.”
If you follow the conventional chronological style of resume where you list the firm, dates you were there and then cite the three examples of work, the reader will see types of work you have done, but when you relate your skills to these specific project descriptions, you are tying a ribbon around them and helps the reader see how your experience and expertise will deliver value to them.
I would include a mix of both hard legal skills and people or EQ leadership skills—most employers are looking for lawyers with strong technical skills, but they also care about whether you show business judgment, are able to work with others, and have excellent communication skills.
Applying for jobs is hard work, so you want to make sure that you will get the best possible outcome from your efforts. Spend a bit of time up front learning about the firms you are applying to, ideally to learn what they do and what they value, and then review your experience with a view to connecting your experience and skills with their model of practicing law. Customize your cover letter so that you are using their language. Do they describe themselves as litigators or do they emphasize dispute resolution? Do they use plain language because their clients are regular people, or do they use legal terminology because their specialized practice is rooted in referrals from other lawyers? Speak their language and help them see how you will enhance their business goals, and your resume will rise to the top of the pile.
If you are looking for a job—whether as an associate, an articling student, in-house or government -please join us on Monday for Red Mug Coffee Circle where we will talk about job finding strategies. And if you developed your own style of resume and cover letter and want to share it with job seekers, please come, too.
Loraine