Legal Recruitment Blog

You may be able to judge from the above title that we are slightly biased on this point, but having just read through my 30th CV for the day and getting ready to throw the monitor out of the window and bang my head on the desk repeatedly, I have to ask the following question: Which idiot told careers advisers that employers like to see skills in the profile section of a CV? Anyone want to own up? I can't see any logical reason for including them. Let me give you some examples from the CVs I have been reading today.   An enthusiastic and ambitious graduate with broad work experience and focused on building a career in the legal profession. This candidate is in fact a highly experienced property fee earner, but my first reaction having read this would be to delete the email and CV.   An experienced and highly competent civil commercial litigation solicitor who works well under pressure to consistently meet strict deadlines. Fluent and effective communicator with s...

Getting Feedback from Interviews – Is it Worth It?   This week I have coached a junior lawyer who came to see me for interview practice following a series of interviews where she had been rejected. She had been given feedback on one occasion and the feedback had been that she was too timid and appeared to lack confidence.   After interviewing her for 30 minutes, albeit in a practice scenario, it was pretty clear that this was not someone who was timid or lacked confidence and in fact a very able interviewee.   She was clear, lucid, able to answer complicated questions immediately without pause, come up with examples for competency based interview scenarios (e.g. describe a situation when …) and was not fazed by any rude or negative questions.   In fact, in terms of the standard she was at I would say she was more than competent as an interviewee and certainly did not lack confidence or was timid. However, she was a very slight woman, fairly short and ...