Legal Resume And Job Searching In A Nutshell
Are you searching for a legal job? To make your legal resume writing and job search process more efficient, follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Determine Your Skills
Determining your skills is of critical importance in the legal job search process. At an interview, you need to sell yourself to a potential employer. In order to do so, keep in mind that too much detail will easily be forgotten. General, objective information about yourself, on the other hand, can facilitate their hiring decision.
Certain aspects about yourself are especially important to point out. Your extracurricular activities, for instance, will let them know something about your character. Discussing your skills either learned through previous work experience or at school, will also be critical. Rather than simply listing your skills, be sure to connect them to your achievements. This will say a lot more about your capabilities.
Finally, be sure to mention how the organization will benefit in the short and long-term by hiring you. In substantiating this proposition, you will need to clearly connect your skills and achievements with the position’s and organization’s goals and objectives. When drafting your legal resume, all of this information, and those connections will need to be included as well.
Step 2: Write a Winning Legal Resume
The brief description of your skills will become the foundation of your legal resume. Your legal resume should be focused in the requirements of the job you are applying to. The first thing you need to do is to write a simple but distinct legal resume. The legal resume should briefly indicate, in a creative and precise manner, the important skills and accomplishments you bring to the position.
Your legal resume should preferably not exceed two-pages. If you are a recent law graduate with less than three years of experience, you should aim to keep your legal resume to one-page. The first page should focus on your skills as they match the position, and your educational background if you have less than ten years of experience. The second page should include your less relevant work history, bar admission details, and other information such as your affiliations, publications, etc.
Step 3: Some Interview Tips
What are employers looking for when they are interviewing you? The want to know whether you can do the job and if you will fit well with the rest of the group. Your legal resume should answer the first question, “can you do the job?” In order to do so, you need to tailor your legal resume to include specific details about what makes you qualified for the position. Whether you “can fit with the group,” is what the interview is for. To pass this test, you will need to do your own research to determine the organization’s culture and makeup, and prepare your answers accordingly.
