Hi all,
Long story short. I’ve been applying for attorney jobs, mostly federal, for the past 8 months or so and I have yet to obtain a single interview. Now this could be because of a variety of factors (lack of experience, the school I attended, my general suckiness), but I’ve thought recently that may be my resume (or perhaps, my cover letters, but thats a separate issue).
So I ask you, the people who have actually acquired employment, what have I done wrong? What can be changed in my resume that can at the very least, make a hiring official take notice? The resume I have now was based on what my law school’s career development office suggested, but in retrospect, they didn’t strike me as the swiftest arrows in the quiver.
So have at it. Any help fixing a glaring mistake or just a subtle tweak would be greatly appreciated.
OK, teh internets ate my post, so here’s the summary
Moot Court should be the first thing I see when I glance at the resume, not buried inside an “education” blurb. Some employers will chuck every resume without either Law Review or Moot Court – don’t hide it from them.
You should mention your GPA if it is top 30% or better. By its absence, I assume it’s pretty dire. If that is NOT the case, list your GPA or rank, because otherwise people will assume its pretty dire.
Lead with what is strongest. Here, your experience is stronger than your education. So put that first, leave Education for last.
I’m assuming you didn’t earn a JD in four months in Europe. “Juris Doctor” is an inappropriate heading to your exchange program. It should just be a bullet on Education.
The way it displays for me, its on 2 pages with tons of white space. This is Bad™. The info you have should fit on one page.
Non-lawyer, fellow job seeker, so take the criticism for what it’s worth (very little).
It’s both sparse and crowded. Sparse because the content is mostly education, crowded because of excess words.
The first thing that jumps out is “Bar Membership,” with “admitted to…” on the next line. Why not just start “Member, New Jersey State Bar, 2009–” or whatever format NJ lawyers like.
Leave out the locations of your schools. Either the employers already know where they are or they don’t care.
You use a hyphen for both an en-dash [–] (for between numbers, meaning “to”) and an em-dash [—] (for a long pause). Lawyers are supposed to pay attention to minutiae, ¿no?
The two Juris Doctor degrees seem odd, especially as one was a summertime J.D. in Athens. Perhaps rephrase this somehow, keeping the relevant parts (study abroad in summer 2008) and losing the implied second lightning-quick J.D.
Dates: Why give the full range? They are only going to care about the year of graduation at best.
Again, this is an outsider’s perspective, so feel free to ignore the misplaced critiques, and good luck!
ETA: Oops, I didn’t see the second page, in part because there was so much white space on the first, as per Hello Again above. You should definitely compress this. Try one-inch margins on all sides, which looks better anyway. (The 1.25" default in MS Word is strange.)
Some of these are symptoms of applying to federal jobs and using their suggestions on the format. They want to know the city where the school is located and the dates range or whatever. The admitted to the bar thing is pretty standard phrasing on resumes from what I’ve seen.
I also think the spacing issue is from the particular website I uploaded to. I’m using one inch margins but for whatever reason, its spacing it out weird once its uploaded.
I made some adjustments to the previous version based on Hello Again’s suggestions.
Check your spelling. Preformed => performed (twice).
Also, “formulated rough drafts of motions” -> drafted motions
The dates bullet point under U Miami looks weird… just add the dates to the Summer Abroad bullet.
I’d set up a Legal Experience section and put that first; then an Other Experience section and put the census stuff there, as well as other jobs you’ve had during (and before?) college. In that section, just job titles (and where and when) will suffice - no detail/bullet points needed unless you purposely want to highlight job responsibilities/skills than tie in to the legal work you want to do now.
Ditto to what the others are saying about too much white space - not just the margins, but there are too many extra lines between items, bullet points, etc. Maybe you’re getting distortion when you upload the doc to Scribd - but your original should definitely be tightened up. You can put the dates for each item flush right, on the same line as the item heading. Why waste a line? Same for your college major and minor. Similarly, I’d delete the Bar Membership heading and just leave the next line by itself.
The other 2 things you could add to focus and strengthen the resume are an Objective (which you will need to modify to track with whatever job you’re applying for) and a Skill Summary highlighting your strengths (which you will also need to tweak depending on the job you’re applying for).
Last, make sure your cover letter is strong, focused, concise, and free of typos/errors.
Good luck - it’s tough going in the job market these days.
Thanks for pointing out those typos. That’s embarrassing. I made some changes and tried to tighten up as best I could, but Scribd is adding 3/4 of a page just with its random spacing. In Word, my resume is only a page and a half long as opposed to whats showing up on Scribd.
Ok. I got it down to a little over a page (pay no attention to the length on the website. All the unnecessary white spaces are gone in my Word version.) Any suggestions on what else should go, from the most recent update?
I would have the order be education, legal experience, other experience. Your story is that you just graduated law school and haven’t found a legal job yet (recession, no big whoop), but the legal experience shows that other folks have hired you to do legalish stuff, and the other experience shows you haven’t just sat on your ass since graduating (except for the year after graduating law school–any way to fill in that gap? if not, hey, recession, no big whoop).
Also, you sure seemed to “form” a lot of stuff at Jacob and Chiarello. I’d re-phrase all of that, it sounds weird.
I’ve never reviewed law-related resumes, only resumes in my industry (financial services), but if you’re only trying to get rid of a few lines to get on to one page, I’d say something like:
can put phone and e-mail on one line if they’re not already (they’re two on that doc).
I’d put the undergrad major and minor on the same line, then kill the two lines about the Councils.
five lines seems a bit much for something you’ve been doing for four months; I understand that you want to have it there, since it’s what you’re currently employed doing, but if that was a mid-career entry of that length it might not even make the document.
Ultimately I like to think of it this way: if I were reviewing your resume, what would each piece of information on this page tell me? Unless you’re desperate for filler, make every line count - and it looks like you’ve got enough things to tell me about your clerkship work and legal education that you aren’t desperate for filler.
Thanks for pointing that out. I do tend to fall in love with actiony verbs like that. I’ll definitely rephrase. Not too much I can do to fill in the gap in the work history. I was admitted to the bar in December and got the Census job in April (I’ve only really been sending out resumes since December, because I thought I was gonna get into a LLM program starting in January, but alas, twas not to be.)
So you would put education first, then legal experience?
Good points on the major and minor thing and the phone/email.
I mainly wanted to put a bit more on the Census stuff because it is a supervisory position of sorts and it is a federal job( so they say) and I kind of thought that might look good to any federal agencies I did apply to. I’m really grasping at straws there, but what else can I do at this point. I can definitely cut back on that when I apply to jobs with private companies and the like.
Ok…got down to under a page on Word and changed the phrasing on some of the stuff. I still have to switch up the education and experience parts. Anybody have any other thoughts on what should come first?
Thanks for everyone’s help. I really appreciate everyone taking the time for me on this.
Yeah, because you are a dude with a law degree looking for his first job. The stuff on there besides the JD is just there for the reasons discussed in my previous post.