OCi (and general) Interview Tips

[InterviewTipsGuy]

Hello good folks. I'm a law school career advisor. I wanted to share one of my biggest tips and am experimenting with broadening the audience by posting here. Depending on feedback, I may or may not return/reply. I hope this is helpful!

OCI interviews begin soon. Often students worry about how much research they should do about employers, but I find what most students need help with is not research. Instead, students should work on delivering their own talking points:

Put together several 1-3 minute stories about each of your positions. Write them down so you have a strong ability to recall them. They are talking points like arrows in a quiver, ready for action when called upon.

Each story should introduce a problem and how you solved it. It should illustrate your ability to practice some aspect of law. This includes:
(a) responding to a client upset with you or your work. Did an angry Starbucks customer yell at you? Did you drop the ball on a project that was late? Did you make a mistake on a research paper? How did you fix it and what made you come out of it better?
(b) conducting research that your client appreciates. What was the problem? Why were you uniquely the best person for it? What was the feedback you received? How was the research used? The feedback should be positive and the research used for a demonstrable purpose.
(c) solving a problem for your client. What was at stake? How many people, or how much money, or what rights were affected? How deeply were the people affected? What was the feedback? It should be glowing!
(d) leading a team to achieve a goal. What was the team comprised of? How important was the goal? How did you lead them? What was the biggest barrier/problem and how did you solve it?
(e) working repetitive, tedious tasks with a workmanlike attitude resulting in accolades. That's right, this is likely what you will be doing when you join the club.
(f) and so on.

Present the story with a sense of pride that you accomplished something good. Ideally, taking tips from Disney, there is a villain and you are the hero. You aren't saving the world, but the higher the stakes, the better.

When the story is done, sit quietly - no filler, no need to continue. Like the Prime Minister answering questions from the media, stick to your talking points and be satisfied your point is made.

 

Edited September 19, 2022 by InterviewTipsGuy
changed title

[123]

2 hours ago, InterviewTipsGuy said:

Ideally, taking tips from Disney, there is a villain and you are the hero. You aren't saving the world, but the higher the stakes, the better.

I'm not totally sure what this would sound like, but I would find someone who presents themselves as a disney-esque hero off-putting during a law interview.

2 hours ago, InterviewTipsGuy said:

Like the Prime Minister answering questions from the media, stick to your talking points and be satisfied your point is made.

I wouldn't hire a student who sounded like a politician sticking to their talking points. I agree that interviewees should be confident and to the point, but politicians are not good models of what I'd be looking for. MPs and candidates tend to be non-responsive to the question, and the answers are often designed to say nothing, so as to avoid controversy. That wouldn't make for a very good law interview.

Edited September 19, 2022 by realpseudonym

[KOMODO]

I agree with @realpseudonym- these sound like tips for how to be annoying in an interview. Yes, you need to be confident and enthusiastic enough, but if it comes across like you think that a Starbucks customer yelling at you could be made into a feature film, that's overly dramatic.

2 hours ago, InterviewTipsGuy said:

....

(e) working repetitive, tedious tasks with a workmanlike attitude resulting in accolades. That's right, this is likely what you will be doing when you join the club.
...

 

This made me laugh. Is this what people think it's like to be a lawyer? That is not my experience. This sounds like employee of the month at a widget factory or something.

[CleanHands]

2 hours ago, InterviewTipsGuy said:

Depending on feedback, I may or may not return/reply.

Narrator: "He did not return/reply."

[KOMODO]

2 hours ago, InterviewTipsGuy said:

 Depending on feedback, I may or may not return/reply. I hope this is helpful!

Also this. Like do you mean that if we don't agree with your tips, you'll take your ball and leave? Sorry if I'm feeling overly snarky today but hedging your first post with the idea that you won't come back if you don't like the response seems odd

Just now, CleanHands said:

Narrator: "He did not return/reply."

Haha submitted just as yours came in, I should have just waited

[Cool_name]

I’m pretty sure I more or less followed ops advice during OCIs…my conversion ratio from ocis to in firms was absolutely terrible. 

[SlytherinLLP]

2 hours ago, InterviewTipsGuy said:

When the story is done, sit quietly - no filler, no need to continue. Like the Prime Minister answering questions from the media, stick to your talking points and be satisfied your point is made.

 

Huh? Successful interviews/OCIs run as conversations - not robotic exchanges of pre-prepared remarks. 

Do no sit quietly, engage with your interviewer, demonstrating interest, fit and emotional intelligence.

[InterviewTipsGuy]

I'm encouraged by the likes and trophies. Keep'm coming students! Some comments:

 

- It's the litigator in me that likes story-themes like heroes and villains. Having a theme behind the story is helpful. This goes as far back as Aristotle's Rhetoric which he calls "pathos", and modern examples abound. there are many themes, and I chose this one in particular because I have heard students put themselves in a bad position by painting themselves as uninterested, low-stakes, not appreciating the moment, etc.

-The tedium of law. While everyone has unique experiences, law recruiters would likely tell you they look for students who are resilient and can, for example, plow through many manuscripts, contracts, etc., without complaint, to find this and that. Same for drafting statements of claims, contracts, etc. It echoes my own experience and is more often typically not the most exciting work. We have exciting moments, but it's easy to get excited for those.

I'd love to make this a constructive thread where people post about what works for them.

Edited September 19, 2022 by InterviewTipsGuy
correct typo

[QueensDenning]

I think this is pretty good advice.

Obviously you don't want to come off as totally pre-prepared/trying to act like a politician. But there's an art to weaving those stories into the conversation without sounding like a politician. Talking points might not be the phrase I'd use, but having a few stories or anecdotes that are interesting and maybe have some humour to them for each thing that you put on your resume is definitely solid advice. I don't see how that's controversial. 

[Ryn]

I think the advice is generally good, with the exception of the repetitive tasks comment and sitting quietly. Having done biglaw hiring, being able to do repetitive tasks is not a selling point. Students of course will have to do some of it, but I don’t think that’s something that needs to be highlighted in an interview. I’d be way more interested in the other points (being faced with challenges and overcoming them, dealing with people, researching a difficult problem) than the assembly line work. Also an interview should absolutely be a conversation. Constantly pivoting to your talking points like a politician or sitting mutely after you worked your way through them is going to turn me off of hiring you. Have some points in your back pocket that you can go to if needed. But otherwise just have a chat. Be you. I’m going to be working with you for like a year, sometimes for many long hours on many files. I want to know who’s going to be there with me at 11pm on a Friday slogging through the latest comments on a purchase agreement that needs to go out before Monday. 

Anyway, just my take on it. 

[Dream Machine]

2 hours ago, KOMODO said:

I agree with @realpseudonym- these sound like tips for how to be annoying in an interview. Yes, you need to be confident and enthusiastic enough, but if it comes across like you think that a Starbucks customer yelling at you could be made into a feature film, that's overly dramatic.

This made me laugh. Is this what people think it's like to be a lawyer? That is not my experience. This sounds like employee of the month at a widget factory or something.

Definitely a large part (although certainly not the entirety) of my experience being a lawyer. I think it partially depends on one's standards. 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Dream Machine