(Not Just About) Resumes Part 1

[MUSIC] Welcome back to Navigating Law School Admissions with Miriam and Christie. In this episode, we are going to tackle resumes. This is kind of an interesting part of your law school application because I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, this is the only component that is not created solely for the law school application process. By the end of this episode, we hope you will feel like resume experts. We will also use this as an opportunity to give you some of our top career tips. I am particularly excited about this episode because it brings me back to my days as a career counselor at NYU Law School, which was a truly wonderful job with amazing colleagues. And we are thrilled to be joined by Van and Booey. Our first non-admissions guest star, Van and currently consults for wireless, including for our career development office, and previously ran SEO's Law Fellowship Program. And Anne, both Christie and I are incredibly thrilled that you were joining us. And thank you are perfectly positioned to share advice about resumes and legal careers. Can you please take a minute to introduce yourself? >> Christie, Miriam, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to get to have this conversation with you. Okay, so what can I tell you? I guess I'll start by saying, I didn't have any lawyers in my family growing up. So when I applied to law school and started my first job as a corporate attorney, I felt like a fish out of water. I very quickly developed relationships with the number of mentors. Not really because I set out to find mentors, I don't think I realized the significance of mentorship at the time, but because I had a lot of questions and simply needed answers. As I grew in my time at the law firm, I realized that many other law students and young attorneys had similar questions. And over time, I found myself in a place of being able to support them. So I left the firm and led SCO's law division, helping students obtain access to and navigate careers in corporate law. And now I'm excited to get to advice students at YLS who are interested in private sector careers do the same. >> As I am pretty sure Van Nose, we start every episode with a game. So to keep with the theme of today's episode, I thought that it might be fun to ask each other some job interview questions. Specifically, the worst job interview questions we can think of. We all know what those are like. The interview is going along just swimmingly. And then you get one of those bombs thrown at you, which has really no good answer at all. All right, Kristi, why don't you hit us up first? >> Okay, the absolute worst question I can think of is actually more of a prompt. Ready? Tell me about yourself. Where are you supposed to even take that worst? >> The worst. >> Mary, let's see where you take that open-ended nothing burger of a question prompt. >> All right, so I'll say, that's, thank you so much for the great question. >> Hello. >> Hello. >> What a great prompt. >> You know, so a little bit about myself, you know, I graduated from Dartmouth in 2001 and went off to Yale Law School right after that. After I graduated, I clerked for the Supreme Court of Canada. I'm actually Canadian, so it was really nice for me to go home for a year. And then after that, I came back to the U.S. And I did a whole bunch of different things. I worked at law firms for a number of years, both big and medium-sized, all as a litigator. And then I decided that I wanted to transition to public service work. I worked at a wonderful nonprofit called Children's Rights, where I did class action reform cases on behalf of kids in foster care. And after that, I made another big transition. I moved to higher ed, and I worked at NYU in a number of roles there. And finally, made the big switch to Yale Law School to my current job as dean of admissions and financial aid. How did I do, ladies? That was a fantastic response. All right. If it answers, it was good. I know it was good. I think if you get a prompt like that, going with a bit of a chronological approach that hits the high marks without incessant detail is probably the way to go. I think it depends a lot on the job, too. Right? If I was applying for a public service nonprofit job, I would have spent a lot more time talking about public service-y stuff. If I was in higher ed, it would have emphasized more of the end, where I have higher ed experience. But since this was totally context-less, I just went kind of vague and general on all the things. All right. But now you can't get off the hooker. Now it's your turn. All right. Okay. Tell us about yourself, inan. Miraniam Chrissy, I'm in Ian. I am. I can't believe you guys are putting out this topic. See, this is what I think makes this prompt so hard is because you don't necessarily know if the interviewer is looking for an overview of your professional experience or if they're kind of angling more personal. Right. Right. And also, have they read your resume? Did they read your cover letter? Have redundant you have to be? I mean, poor fan, I literally just introduced herself, so I feel like I'm being making her do it again. I think one thing that candidates can do here is like Miriam did is use it as an opportunity to be able to shape what they want to say, how they want the interview to go. And what are the key highlights that they want to bring to the conversation. So, as Miriam mentioned, if you're applying for a public service type of role, centering that conversation that tell me about yourself on your public sector experience would be more ideal than say any kind of private sector experience that you might have had previously. So that's a really good opportunity to be able to share the relevant kinds of experience as that you have in the conversation as well. Okay. We'll let you swirl out of just this one, only because you introduced yourself and only because we love you. Kristi, now it's your turn. Next time. Next guest star episode. Okay. So, I would probably say something like, I am a higher ed professional with experience across K-12 education, law and judicial settings with a passion for matching candidates with amazing opportunities and helping to mentor and advise early career professionals through those opportunities. I love it. Yeah. I'm copying it. It's kind of the truth. I'm taking your truth and making it mine. All right. And we'll let you ask us the next hard one. Okay. So, one of my least favorite interview question types, I should say, are questions that are totally irrelevant for the for the job at hand. So, the first thing that I can think of is, and I've heard this, something like, how many skittles or golf balls can fit into a jar? Wait. I have no idea how. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I would just give a number. I'd be like seven hundred and eighty six. Have either of you ever interviewed for management consulting jobs? No. I almost did. I never have. I never did. But isn't this the classic like management consulting? And they actually don't care about you coming to the right answer is my understanding. They just want to hear you talk out loud, like, well, I remember that pie is somehow involved in that equation. So, they wouldn't like seven hundred and eighty six, I would be to qualify right on the spot. Even if it was right, just there were actually seven hundred and eighty six skittles in that jar. That's a horrifying question. I'm going to use it for our interview pilot program beyond alert. I'm just kidding. I would never do that. Okay. I'm going to actually make both of you answer my question. This was the one that my students at NYU always dreaded, frankly, everyone dreads this one. So, Van Ann, what is your biggest weakness? So, Miriam, I guess, you know, I have to be too much of a perfectionist. Don't do it. That's the worst answer. That was probably the number one response I've heard in that question. Yes. It's a terrible response. What is a good response? It can't be something that's actually a secret strength. Did you just, that's just like note to all listeners. But with that, I think about this question is actually coming from a place of authenticity. I don't actually don't like the term a weakness. I usually use the term area of improvement because I think we all have them. And so, if you think about what are some areas of improvement that you have, speaking really from, you know, authentically from your heart, I still what you think are some of your areas of improvement. And then, turning it into a point of strength or a lesson learned in terms of what you've done to try to address those areas of improvement and how far you've come, since you've started working on that. I think that's a really good way to handle this type of question. Well, what is your area for improvement, Van Ann? You can't scroll out again, I'm not letting you. The authentic. You know, I would say one of my areas of improvement that I have worked on over the past few years is learning how to more effectively manage just people, manage, up, manage across, meet, cross collaborate with other departments, other teams, and also how to manage my other team members that work on my teams. And so, that's something that I really worked hard to improve upon. All right, Kristie, what is your area for improvement? Do you want my honest answer or my interview? I want your answer, obviously. Okay, so in terms of professional area of improvement, I keep it professional, Kristie. Yes. I would say I have a bad habit of coming to my team with audibles. That's how one of my teammates referred to it, where something will occur to me and I will stand up from my desk and wander into someone's office and be like, you know what we should think about doing with the virtual information sessions this fall? And they're like, okay, what? I like, I'm, I'm, they're like, I'm so busy right now, why are you bothering me? It comes from a place of just, you know, learning by talking and being more of an extroverted person and also being kind of just having so much on my to-do list that I want to kind of offload small things, but it's not, it's not great in a manager, right? And the pandemic kind of beat it out of me because I couldn't wander over to people like, I'm not going to text message somebody or like, you know, send them an email on every little thought. And so it forced me to kind of write it all down and then find more structured time to bring all of those things up to my teammates. Okay, so I'm going to answer this too and it's going to be on a theme, which is interesting because we didn't plan it. So mine is also a management thing. So I have a tendency to micromanage and it makes my team bananas understandably and I have worked really hard as I think you probably both have on ways to curb that. I think it shows it doesn't always reflect a lack of trust, but I think it can be read as a lack of trust by people who you're working with and I don't, I love and trust my team. I don't want them to ever feel that way. And it also ties up my own brain on things that I shouldn't necessarily be tied up on because I'm in the weeds on things that I shouldn't be. So I've also worked on certain things like that, like writing things down and saving them for weekly meetings, not learning how to do certain things, frankly, that I just don't want to be doing because I know as soon as I know how to do them, I'm not going to be able to resist it and really just leaning into my team, knowing that they're the experts in certain areas that I'm not an expert in and that's been really good. So I've also tried to curb my micromanaging tendencies, which can be really destructive of team dynamics. And so I've been working on that too. Look, we were all vulnerable and authentic and look at how good we feel. I have a good TED Talk for you on that topic, actually. We've sent it to both of us. It is a well-crafted marketing tool that, of course, should be honest, but also should portray yourself and your accomplishments in the best possible light for that particular audience. For your law school application, specifically, it's important to reflect on how each school might be using the resume in the process. The application instructions, I know we repeat this on so many episodes, but going back to the application instructions. Look at the instructions. Go back to those application instructions for each school, because they're usually a very good guide, some schools might ask that your resume include every job you've held since high school, and ask you to note whether the job was paid or unpaid. That is a very specific mandate from that school that you should heed, as you're crafting the resume for that school, for that particular audience. Other schools might ask for jobs and activities in another section or on the application form itself, so the resume has a little less need to be as comprehensive because the information is elsewhere. So make sure you carefully read the instructions and think about how your resume for that school fits into the application as a whole for that school. So I agree with that 100%. At YLS, the resume for us is really a backup for two sections of our application called the college activities and the post-college activities sections. Indeed, until a few years ago, the resume used to be totally optional, because it actually wasn't necessary for applicants who did a really good job on those sections. We made it not optional more recently because some people don't do a great job and then it gives them a second crack at providing us with that information. At other schools, however, it is a much more central component of the application. And although it is more work, most law school applicants are going to need more than one resume, depending on how schools ask for it to be formatted and their specific instructions. So Venet, how does this compare to putting together your resume for the job search process? Yeah, Miriam, it's actually not that dissimilar. I want to reiterate Christy's point to know your audience. In a job search, your goal with a resume is typically to land an interview. So rather than needing to provide a full listing of everything you've ever done, you should think about what key highlights does the reader need to know in order to make that call. And I find the best way to do that is through providing relevant experience that relates to the job at hand and specific metrics on what you accomplish in each role rather than simply listing out your job responsibilities. We'll get into the specifics of how to do that later in this conversation, but I find that the most compelling resumes showcase the relevancy and impact of the experiences the candidate has had. And like for a law school application process, you will also likely need a suite of resumes tailored to the types of jobs you're applying for. Perhaps one for big law firms, another for appellate boutiques, another for civil rights nonprofit organizations, and another for public defender offices, for example. Each organization may be interested in different types of experiences you've had, and you can choose to emphasize or deemphasize different experiences based on the kind of role you're applying for by adding more or less content depending on how you want to tailor your resume. Remember, relevance is key. Yeah, it's good to think about what the audience will be able to glean from your resume after a five-second glance, a 30-second kind of review, or a big deep dive where they're reading every bullet point. You really just don't know how much time the reviewer spends on your resume and it's important that your resume works for all of those different levels of scrutiny. Yep. You always want to make sure that your resume is crisp, clean, and easy to read. The key information should basically jump off the page. All right, let's turn to some formatting basics for the resume. I'm admittedly a total nerd about this stuff, but I really do think these little things matter a lot. Then, Anne, give us your basic thoughts on how to format a resume so that it looks professional and frankly, awesome. And I know you're a resume nerd. Yes. I was going to say you're a fellow resume nerd. I know it. Anyone who knows me or has it talked to me or has knows that, so of course I have thoughts on this topic. In terms of font, don't get fancy. You should use a standard font, like Times New Roman, Garamond, something similar. The second piece is you should make sure that you bold, italicize, and underline to make things stand out. Like, for example, the name of educational institutions and employers, your jobs titles, your major, et cetera, but it's a very important, super important that you use styles consistently throughout. So all of your educational institutions should use the same format, the day should all use the same format, et cetera. Your font size should also be standard. Generally, 11 or 12-point font, I personally prefer 11-point font, so that is what I use on my resume. Definitely, nothing smaller. Don't play around with 9 or 10-point font. It's really hard to read and makes everything look really squished. My margins are 0.5 inches on all sides, and that's usually what I recommend. It gives you sort of maximize space, but it definitely should be no less than that. I have a nerdy question. Can you mix font sizes? I do. So I'm hoping it's okay that I do. Like, to put, for example, the name of the employer and 12-point, and then 11-point for the description. I think you can do that, I was trying to think about what that would look like, I don't think I personally should that, but I think you could do that. The other thing that I actually do is, on speaking, I actually use font sizing to differ the spaces there. So instead of just doing a line break and then having it be 11-point font, I'll take that line and change that to five points. And the exact same, yes, but see you do a lot of space overall to shrink those. You can add like one or two lines to your resume by doing that. Okay. Can I just say something on font size? If nothing else, I think your name at the top should be bigger. It needs to be. Significantly bigger. Yes. That should pop. That should pop. A great. I agree with that. So I'm going to repeat something Vinans said because frankly, it needs to be repeated. This styles consistently people. If you are bolding commas, bold the commas, that's fine, but bold all the commas. If you're using m dashes rather than n dashes, totally cool with me. But don't switch halfway through to n dashes. Same thing with the dates. They've got to be consistent. It looks so sloppy in a resume when the formatting is not consistent. So whenever I would review a student resume at NYU, literally the first thing I would do is I would look for small styling inconsistencies. I would find them basically every time. I would note them. I would point them out to the student and I would say go through, find these all and fix them. It really adds such a level of polished year resume when those small inconsistencies are not there. And it's an easy thing to do. You would be amazed listeners at how the smallest inconsistencies jump out to the reviewer. So if you've got a hyphen here for a year range and then an n dash there for the year range, it just like assaults my eyeballs. It's one of the first things I notice when I'm looking at your resume. And then I'm not focusing on all the good content that's there. I think it's because we're former litigators, Christy. Do you think so? I really do. I feel like we got so trained by like blue booking and briefs to like find those same things. Yes. It's not just litigators. Corporal layers too. Absolutely. Transactual attorneys. I think just anyone trained in law are super are trained to be super detail oriented. So again, remember who your audience is. These are things that lawyers, former lawyers, absolutely will pick up. Yep. And don't freak out. It's okay if you find one type of later. It's not to qualify, but just do your best on the front end. All right. I'm moving to a very controversial question. Length. What are your thoughts on this frequently asked question? So just to get it started, I'm going to say that our application instructions, again, a key thing to read, advise a resume of one to two pages. And I think that's basically right for almost every applicant. I will say that for applicants with less experience, so for those who are still in college or very recently graduated, one page is right for those in almost all circumstances. So at HLS, we also advise one to two pages and very rarely will someone truly need more than one page. It's a lot. It's not a need. Yes. Exactly. This is a resume, folks. This is not a CV with an exhaustive list of every move you've ever made in your life, every breath you've ever taken. And as you think about length, also consider polish, a clean, full-page resume looks much more polished in my view than one that sort of dribbles on to page two with just three or four leftover lines of text. Okay. So from a job search perspective, and this might be an unpopular opinion, so at the risk of that, I actually feel really strongly that job candidates should not need more than one page to convey their story, no matter how long ago you graduated, unless, of course, you're applying for academic positions. And I, so myself, also, force myself to stick to one page. Remember that your resume should continue to evolve as your own career aspirations evolve. So I think it's really important for applicants to reflect on both how recent and relevant various experiences are. For example, a summer internship from four years ago usually doesn't need a lengthy description, and you might even consider removing it entirely, if you'd like, unless it is especially relevant to whatever it is you're applying for. Be ruthless in your editing, so that the most relevant and recent experiences become the focus. So on a very related note, there is no need to include a lengthy description, or frankly, maybe even any description of many common extracurricular activities. So all of us in law school admissions, we know what it means to be the VP of the student organization, for example, and you can really save yourself a lot of space, and that's a way to try to get yourself down to that preferred one page by simply listing those out rather than describing them in detail. This is especially true for those of you who have other experiences that you want to describe in more detail. Just for one thing, I know that we're talking a lot about people who feel like they have too much and are trying to shrink it. There are also those people who may have less, and they're looking for things to add. In that case, it is totally fine to include a description, a brief one, a common extracurriculars, because you do want it to look, so it's not like a half-page resume. You do want to try to get yourself closer to that full page. All right, one more question for this team of experts. So what about when applicants get all all fancy? And they include colors and icons, and sort of the jazzy graphical stuff. What do you guys think about that? Chris, he has a face. I was so wild. I can't see my face. All right, to be fair, this is a tough question on the one hand. If it's done with limitations and very tastefully, it can look really pretty good and pack a lot of information into a small amount of space. I will say on the color question, I think no more than two colors, black, and maybe one other as a little bit of an accent. Maybe. It's not my preference. Maybe. But let's not go crazy here. In terms of graphics, I know it's really trendy to list, for example, your language skills, and then a series of boxes or circles that are more or less filled in to show the level of fluency. It's not my personal style. It looks a little bit like Amazon stars to me. But I do recognize it's a popular choice, and perhaps right for certain applicants and certain industries. OK, Van Ann. Yeah. I'm just going to say, I've never heard of the different series of boxes, I don't think I've seen that yet, so. Oh, you see it now. I've seen a lot. I've never seen a lot. And I usually would recommend sticking to just one color as well. The legal profession does tend to be pretty traditional when it comes to resumes, so what might be normal or even desirable in other fields is typically often off-market in the legal profession. I would say proceed with caution and try to stick with what is standard within the industry in which you are operating in. And if you aren't sure what that might be, don't be afraid to ask someone. Like many things in life, when in doubt, don't, that's just good life advice. There's a small tip on this, a lot of law schools, I think including both of ours, Christie. We have resume samples on our websites meant for our current students, that you can just access and kind of get a sense of what a typical current law student resume is like. And so if you are out there and you don't have a lot of legal experience or people in your family or people you know in the legal profession, looking at law school career service websites and looking at their samples is a really good way to see what is sort of standard operating procedure for legal resumes. So turning to the very top section of the resume, the heading. We can talk about it briefly, Van Ann, what should be included in the heading. So Christie, not to point out the obvious, but at a minimum, you should include your name as you've discussed, a phone number and an email address. Many people continue to include a physical address here as well, but that's beginning to become more optional. If you have a specific geographic tie to the school in which you're applying to, for example, if you're currently living there or your permanent address is there, you could certainly use that mailing address to show a tie to that area. And it could also be a good way to indicate ties to a certain geographical location when you're applying for a job, to the extent that you might be currently going to school or living in a different location. The last piece here is some people also choose to include their pronouns in the heading and that's entirely fine as well. So just one small tip to save yourself some space, this heading should be in the header of the document, not in the main text of it as well. That way it's automatically going to repeat if you do go on to a second page in exactly the same way. And it's also going to save you some space on the top of that page very easily. There is so much to say about resumes, especially when you get three people who like resumes as much as we do on the microphone. So much to say, in fact, that we are splitting this topic into two episodes. Next week, Miriam Fananan and I will discuss the main substantive portions of the resume, along with some career advice. This podcast is produced by Ryan McAvoy from the Yale Broadcast Studio.