- Interviewing for an in-house counsel role
is often very different from a standard law firm interview.
And with the strategies I'm going to share with you today,
you will be well prepped and well ahead
of all the other candidates.
Welcome back,
and if you're new to this channel, I'm Annie Little.
I'm an ICF Certified Career Coach and a former lawyer.
I created this channel for lawyers
who are looking for practical guidance
on how to land, lead and succeed
in the legal profession and beyond.
The first thing I want you to do
when you're preparing for an in-house interview
is to research the organization.
Employers want to feel like you understand them
and you know what they're about.
So their website is the obvious low-hanging fruit.
So hit there first and check out their mission statement,
their organizational values, any hints about their culture.
But you really need to go beyond the website.
You need to dig a lot deeper to demonstrate
that you really understand this organization
and that you're able to ask some really deep
and interesting questions during your interview.
If you're interviewing with a public company
or a nonprofit organization,
you will be able to find their financial statements.
And the info in there is going to really show them
that you've done some serious due diligence.
You should also check out their social media accounts
to see if they have them or what they're saying on them.
Also look for recent press articles, and by recent,
I mean, think about the last couple of years even.
Also, being the good lawyer that you are,
you should check to see if there are court filings
filed out there on behalf of or against this organization.
And last but not least, Google is your friend.
Do not be afraid to use Google in a non-creepy way
to learn more about this organization.
The next strategy I have for you
is about preparing for behavioral interview questions.
You know how law firm interviews,
especially like big law interviews,
are pretty perfunctory and it's mostly chit-chat
and some like cursory information is exchanged.
That is not the case with in-house interviews.
They're going to want to know how you have handled
specific scenarios in the past.
And they do this by asking you questions or having you,
they'll say to you, tell me about a time when,
and they're going to fill in a scenario
and they want to hear how you handled it.
Along those same lines,
rather than asking what you've done,
they may also ask you some hypothetical situations
and give you a scenario and say, how would you address this?
How would you solve this problem?
How would you deal with this team member?
And they do that so that they can see your thought process
as you're solving a problem.
Also, you should definitely be prepared for a question
that asks about one of your weaknesses.
This comes up like almost 100% of the time
for in-house interviews.
And there are two keys here.
You need to give a real weakness,
nothing like perfectionism
or I work too hard or anything like that,
like really think about what a weakness is
and here's something that's going to help too
because when you talk about a weakness,
you don't just want to leave it out there as a weakness.
You want to talk about something
that may have been a weakness for you
or might still be a weakness,
but you want to talk about
how you've been able to mitigate that weakness ideally
by talking about your strengths
and how your strengths compensate for that weakness.
Bottom line, you need to compile a bunch of examples
of projects that you've completed,
problems that you've solved
and describe how you got these results,
how you did these things
by talking about your soft skills in the process.
Third tip for you is to know what you want from a job.
You are expected to ask questions
about whether this organization
is going to be a fit for you.
And in order to do that most effectively,
you need to actually know what it is that you want.
And when we're talking about
what it is that you want in a job,
this goes beyond like the features and the benefits.
This is more about how you're going to fit in
and succeed there.
So these are things for you to consider like
how do you work best?
What types of people do you gel with
and really get along with well?
When do you feel most supported?
What type of work do you want to be doing?
A big one is how do you prefer to receive feedback
and even give feedback?
Here's a hot tip for you on how to get this information
when you're in an interview.
So a really effective way to do this is to say,
I have learned that blank, like I work best,
whatever it is you're trying to learn.
I've learned that I work best in blank situation.
Can you tell me what that would look like here?
And that little template,
that will work for pretty much anything
that you're trying to figure out
because it prevents the employer
from giving a very generic type of answer.
And if they still give you a generic answer
to that type of question, especially if you follow-up,
that might be a red flag.
And if you're looking to ace your next in-house interview
and to get really clear on what it is
that you want out of a particular job,
check out my career coaching program,
Make Your Next Move.
I've put a special link just for you
in the description below.
Inside the program,
you will use my proven framework alongside group
and one-on-one coaching to figure out
what your ideal job is and then actually go land it.
And if you liked this video, make sure you subscribe
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