Page 27 - FDCC - You're Hired!

You’re Hired! Job Hunting Advice For Law Students and Young Lawyers
Not Relying on Contacts
Many folks feel uncomfortable, embarrassed or shy about asking their contacts for job leads. Get over it. Your best chance of landing a good job is through a friend or through a friend of a friend. The good jobs often aren’t posted or shared or pushed out into the open job market. They’re generally filled quickly and often filled with lawyers whom someone knew or learned about from a colleague. When you look for a job, work your contacts. E-mail, call, text or message them. Ask them if their firms are looking.
Ask them if they know of firms that are looking. Ask them if they can reach out on your behalf to their contacts. Will some folks you reach out ignore you? Sure. Will some be annoyed? Yes. But we’re talking about your career. We’re talking about you putting food on the table and paying your utilities.
If you send innocuous, pleasant e-mails to your friends and colleagues and some are annoyed you’re asking them for help, that’s on them, not you. That speaks volumes about them, not you.
Generic E-mails, Cover Letters, and Resumes
Generic e-mails, cover letters and resumes are easy to prepare and send out. They are also immensely ineffective. An e-mail to a firm should be geared toward that firm. A cover letter to
a firm should address how you meet that specific firm’s needs. A resume should be tweaked
to highlight the accomplishments and skills best suited for a given firm. Firms receive so many cover letters and e-mails and resumes, and so many are discarded. To avoid being thrown in the round file, draft your communications so they connect you and the reader and make the reader feel you are writing directly to her.
©2020 Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel
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SECTION 04 JOB SEARCH MISTAKES