To reduce any perception of bias, I’ll start by saying that I’m one of the lucky ones who got a job through the 2012 fall recruitment process. I say “lucky” because it really is just luck. There’s little merit behind the current interviewing process that exists at most law firms. It doesn’t work for either the firms or the candidates. It is bullshit and arbitrary.
Let’s look at it from the perspectives of the firms first. How do they decide who to hire? Essentially, it comes down to who the interviewers like; the interviews have no substantive questions or even questions designed to test traits needed for the job. So, is there a chance for bias when hiring who you like? Of course, since you are more likely to like people who are similar to you. Thus, there’s an obvious chance of an ethnic and gender bias, given that most firms are run by old white guys. Some firms have realized that the systemic bias exists within the current process and are moving toward behavioural interviews – namely, McCarthy Tetrault and McMillan (the only two I am aware of that use such an interview style for part of their interviews) – in an attempt to use fairer hiring practices.
And in what context does a firm decide whether they like you? A 10 to 20 minute interview filled with nonsense questions like “How do you like law school?” and “Tell me something about you not on your resume.” Sure, there’s the argument that law is a service industry so firms gauge how well you would be able to interact with and bring in clients based on how good you are at interviewing (i.e. how good you are at repeating canned answers and pre-rehearsed anecdotes). Fine, that might work in weeding in/out the 20 to 25% of applicants who are extremely charming and friendly and those who are not. But for the 75 to 80% of applicants in the middle who are all fairly likeable, conversational, and friendly, it doesn’t make sense. When it comes to distinguishing between those people, it will come down to completely arbitrary metrics like a similar sense of humour, similar interests, cheerfulness, enthusiasm, etc… There’s no standard metric because it changes based on every interviewer’s biases. Case in point: many of us have had that OCI we thought went really well and yet we didn’t get an in-firm (or an OCI that we thought went poorly and yet we got the in-firm). Why is that? The choice is arbitrary; what one interviewer might think is a great interview, another will think was a bad one.
Next, let’s look at it from the perspective of the students. In the last issue of UV and over the past couple of months, I read and have heard comments to the effect of “the process really works, after the first day or two you really do find out which firm is for you.” Don’t get me wrong, I said that same bullshit answer to interviewers who asked me how the process was working but let’s be real, the process doesn’t work.
Yes, during the process, you will probably get a feeling about whether you like the people who are interviewing you or not – though, like for interviewers, it will be difficult to distinguish most people, they will seem likeable enough. Does this mean the process works? Not really. You maybe met 10 people over the 3 days of interviewing, are they necessarily reflective of everyone that works at the firm? Or the people you will work most closely with at the firm? Or the firm culture as a whole? Not really. Just like you are trying to sell the firm on hiring you, they are trying to sell you on working for them – they will try to put their friendliest and most charming people up front and those people will try to be as friendly or charming as they possibly can. Nobody at an in-firm interview will tell you about the times they had to stay until 3am or come in on the weekend to finish an assignment or how their schedules aren’t 100% certain enough to firmly commit to attending parties or their kid’s soccer game. You’re using an awful sampling technique if you extrapolate 10 short 20 minute interviews and a meal with people who are trying to sell you something to be the personality of a firm of 50 to 3800 people. It’s roughly equivalent to chatting up a stranger at a party and then deciding you’d be great friends with all of their friends.
I’m certainly not blaming students for extrapolating in the ridiculous ways stated above because the process is so flawed, it’s one of our only ways to judge. But let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s not a good way to judge. Picking a place to work for possibly your entire career based on whether the people who interviewed you were funny or friendly, could keep good conversation, were interesting and engaging, seemed happy, had similar interests to you, or spoke highly of the firm culture is a pretty awful way to do it. And none of this is to say that you won’t end up working at a place where you like the people and the firm culture but that likely has more to do with almost all firms having similar cultures and likeable people than your firm-picking ability.
I would suggest a new way of doing things now that I’ve highlighted the flaws with the current interviewing process but, given space constraints, I’ll leave that as the subject of another article. Until then, the firms need to have an honest conversation amongst themselves about the method in which they choose their future colleagues and whether it’s really working for anyone.