Robin Wagner is a 2L who attended the August 2012 Lavender Law Career Fair hosted by the National LGBT Bar Association. Here's her guest blog post entry to help you prepare for your next job fair, such as Cook County Bar Association, Equal Justice Works, MPILCC, or IMPACT.Thanks Robyn for sharing your insights and experience!
So, you're planning to attend a legal job fair? I recently attended a big job fair and wanted to share a few insights I gained from the experience. The Lavender Law Career Fair hosted by the National LGBT Bar Association featured 160 employers, including government employers like the Department of Justice (Civil and Civil Rights Divisions) and the Cook County State's Attorney, non-profits like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and then the who's who of the big law firms throughout the U.S.
I was impressed by the list, excited by the opportunity, and COMPLETELY OVERWHELMED by the prospect of trying to make the most of my six hours on the floor with all of these possible employers.
Here, in no particular order, are some of the key lessons I learned that I hope might be helpful to folks planning to attend a law fair.
1. Don't let your nerves or your worries about whether any of the employers is the "right one" for you dissuade you from going. My misgivings disappeared within the first few minutes I was there.
2. This is NOT like a job fair you might recall from college. Not in the slightest. Think of this like a day full of real interviews (even at "table talks"). Don't treat it like a casual glance-and-learn event, even if it looks like it. When my turn came, I sat down across from 2 or 3 people who then asked me all about myself, my interest in their firm or organization, and my substantive legal experience (like describing research I did for my summer internship).
3. The employers are SERIOUS, and they are truly SCOUTING for TALENT. They each were doing a rating system on each candidate -- you could see them huddle up between candidates -- and I learned informally and formally that every employer there was charged with identifying a specific number of candidates to recommend for further consideration.
4. The first thing I did was DEVELOP A PLAN. Once I realized that the career fair was really going to be like a long day of back-to-back job interviews, I needed to have a strategy. After all, I couldn't meet with every employer there.
a. I whittled down the list of employers to the 5 or so "Must-See" employers there. I researched them extensively. For the law firms, that mean the NALP Directory, Vault.com, and their websites to make sure I really knew where their offices were, what kind of law they did, and big/recent famous cases or news about them, and where they ranked nationally on matters important to me -- LGBT and general diversity, women-friendliness, pro bono policies, and potential to do work related to China. I wanted to be as sharp as I could be with these must-see employers and demonstrate to them that I was genuinely interested in them.
b. Then I had another 10-15 employers that I wanted to meet and talk with, but perhaps were less of a fit for me or I had more doubts about the fit. For these, I looked them up in the NAPL Directory and on Vault.com if they were law firms, or looked at their websites if they were non-profits, but didn't go as extensively into the research.
5. Have NOTES! As I was learning about the employers and figuring out which I wanted to meet and why, I jotted down some simple notes as reminders: where their offices were, key features that interested me and I wanted to mention, etc. Before I sat down with an employer I made sure to do a quickly check of these notes to make sure I remembered why I was sitting down with them.
6. GRAB a MAP of the room and do some last-minute planning. I did not jump right into the room when the career fair opened. Instead, I got a map of where the employers were, and then found a quiet spot where I could mark out my target employers on the map. That way, when I got to the room, I could refer to my map and if one employer had a line, I could quickly figure out where the others were and not lose track of my plan.
7. FOLLOW UP IS ESSENTIAL! After each chat with an employer, I found a spot at the side of the room or in the hallway to take some notes about my interview. I made sure I had business cards or names and emails for each person and that I made note of any interesting points raised in our discussion. Then, I made sure to have written personal thank you notes to each person I met within 24 hours of the career fair.
And those notes paid off! I got nice notes back from many of them, and that extra level of responsiveness on my part helped confirm for them that I was serious and would welcome a call-back interview.
8. ENJOY! It's overwhelming and exhausting, but it's also a truly interesting opportunity -- you get to learn about tons of different employers all in one place and at one time. I learned so much about what opportunities there are for me in law and gained important insights about what these different employers are looking for.
