About 80 unique SJ Quinney students landed interviews during Fall OCI 2012. PDO has already gotten some feedback from employers which may be helpful as the recruiting season progresses. Read below for some tips.
Attire & Grooming
Wear a suit with a jacket. Men, you should wear a tie. It is surprising to see anything less than this unless you were explicitly told not to wear a suit. If you get a callback, follow the dress cues of the attorneys who conducted the first interview.
Wear the best clothes you have to your interview—even if you have to dry clean them and wear them more than once. They should fit well, be conservative and formal, and the best that you have. Don’t wear a mini skirt! If you are concerned about your clothes, see PDO.
Make sure that your hair is well groomed. Bangs should not be in your eyes during the interview. Get a hair cut if this is the case. Ladies, if your hair is kind of wild, consider pulling it back.
Attitude
Act like you actually want to work for the employer with whom you are interviewing. Hopefully that is true—and they need to get a sense that you want it. You don’t need to lie and tell every employer that they are your top choice, but if you fail to convey any interest, you are probably wasting everyone’s time.
Don’t be overly self-deprecating. They have selected you for an interview—they think you are worth their time. Don’t prove them wrong.
Miscellaneous
If there are two interviewers, be sure that you are making eye contact and are engaged with both of them—even if one is monopolizing the questioning. You can begin to respond to one, but also make eye contact with/draw the other one into the conversation.
It is your job to keep the interview going—with questions that show you have done your homework on the employer and the interviewees. You should always be prepared for that interview where the interviewer has very few questions for you—but simply asks you “What do you want to know about us?”
Be cautious about expressing unbending interest in areas of law you are not certain that the employer does A LOT of—unless you are one of those folks whose resume screams just one area of law and it would actually be weird if you didn’t express that interest. Most firms in Salt Lake do not do a ton of international law, for example, so expressing a strong interest in actually doing that type of law might have some risk of hurting you.