Entries in the Category "Etiquette"
E-Mail Communication: Dos and Don’ts
If you choose to follow-up with employers to which you’ve applied by e-mail or to reach out to networking contacts using e-mail, keep in mind that, in order to be effective, your e-mail communication needs to be professional, clearly written, and error-free. Some things to keep in mind:
1. Use a Specific Subject Line. Imagine you’re looking an in-box filled with numerous e-mails that all have the same subject line – “Summer Associate Position.” Seems pretty easy for all of those e-mails to run together, doesn’t it? Be specific in your subject line. If you’re following up on a position to which you’ve applied, consider using something like “John Smith’s Application for 2008 Summer Associate Position.” If you’re seeking a networking meeting with an alum consider using something like “Networking Meeting – Case Western Reserve University School of Law.” This will allow the person to whom you are sending the e-mail to immediately identify the purpose of your message.
2. Make your Message Easy to Respond To. Take time to draft a well-written and focused e-mail that clearly articulates why you have contacted the person and allows the person to provide you with a quick response. If you’re following up on an application, clearly say that you are writing to check on the status of the hiring process and/or to see whether the employer’s hiring needs have changed (depending on the status of your application). If you’re requesting a networking meeting, ask the person if there’s a convenient time to schedule an in-person meeting.
3. Spell Check. You should treat all correspondence with a potential employer with the same care that you use when drafting a cover letter. That means no errors.
What Not to Wear: Dressing for Holiday Receptions
So, you have set up an informational interview over winter break or have gotten an invite to a holiday reception or other networking event. Great! But now you are wondering "what should I wear to a holiday reception or for a networking meeting?"
If you are meeting an alumni or another contact in his or her office, wear a suit. Remember this is a business meeting. If you are invited to a holiday reception and the invitation doesn't specify dress, remember this is a business reception, not a holiday cocktail party so wear a suit. No cocktail dresses or tuxedos! Just wear your best suit, hose if you are a woman, a tie if you are a man, shine your shoes, and impress the employers with your personality!
Ok, you get it - wear a suit. But what if the person you are meeting or the event details say "feel free to wear business casual?" Keep in mind that "business casual" can vary from employer to employer and sometimes even person to person. Wearing khakis, a button down, and a sport coat may be "business casual" for one employer while cords and a sweater may be "business casual" for another. As such, trying to dress "business casual" can be difficult for potential candidates and visitors to the employer. Your best bet - you guessed it - wear a suit!
Just because someone says you can dress "business casual" doesn't mean you have to. You are better off wearing a suit the first time you meet with an employer or contact or attend a networking event and being able to gauge what might be appropriate "business causal" for next time. No employer, contact, or alumni is going to look poorly upon you for feeling that they were important enough to wear a suit for!
If you have questions regarding what is appropriate dress for different events in the legal community please feel free to stop by the CSO to chat with our counselors!
Mind Your Manners: Why Etiquette Matters to Employers
Are you up to date on your rules of etiquette? If not, you might want to refresh your memory. Believe it or not, more than a few of the employers that the CSO has met with in the past few months have highlighted basic etiquette skills as something they are looking for (and not always finding) when hiring. And they’re not just talking about saying please and sending thank you notes!
Employers want to know that the people they hire are capable of handling client meetings, business lunches, and everyday office interactions. To determine whether you are capable of doing these things professionally, employers consider a number of factors, regardless of whether you’re sitting across the desk at a traditional interview or sitting across the lunch table at a lunch interview. Employers look to see whether you are dressed professionally, whether you’ve been polite to absolutely everyone who you’ve met while on your interview, whether you’ve turned off your cell phone, and, yes, even whether you know which water glass is yours at the business lunch table and which water glass is your neighbor’s. (Hint: bread plate is always on the left; water glass is always on the right.)
So that recruiting cocktail party or call back interview lunch you’ve been invited to? Think of it as the perfect opportunity for a potential employer to evaluate your ability to remain professional in different environments. It is still part of the interview and employers are expecting you to remain polite, respectful, and professional.
If you have questions about etiquette in these or other situations, stop by the CSO to talk with a counselor about the resources you can use to brush up your skills!
NALP's Principles & Standards for Law Placement and Recruitment Activities
The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) adopted "Principles and Standards for Law Placement and Recruitment Activities" in 1978. These Principles and Standards are organized by General Principles, Principles for Law Schools, Principles for Candidates, Principles for Employers, and General Standards for the Timing of Offers an Decisions. Please go to http://www.nalp.org/content/index.php?pid=16 to review these Principles and Standards.
We wanted to highlight the Standards for Timing of Offers and Decisions on this blog. Please keep in mind that employers and law schools that are members of NALP (Case Western Reserve University School of Law is a member) are expected to abide by these Standards -- employers that are not NALP members are not expected to follow them, and most likely would not. If you have an offer or offers from NALP employers, please refer to the chart at http://www.nalp.org/content/index.php?pid=28 so you know when you need to respond to the offer and how long you may hold offers. If you ever have any questions about accepting and rejecting offers, please ask someone in the CSO.
The Gossip Mill
Gossip is simply an unavoidable presence in all workplaces. As you begin your summer positions, take Holly English's advice and keep the following "gossip rules" in mind:
1. Some gossip is good - That's right. Some gossip can actually be beneficial. Good gossip includes discussion of the latest events and informal workings around the firm. You want to make sure that you are plugged in and aware of what's going on. The way to do that is to have lots of relationships with many people, and to stay connected with them, find out what they're doing, and to hear about what other people are doing.
2. Bad news is a red flag - A simple rule of thumb is that when the gossip being repeated is negative about an individual, you should be on the alert.
3. Beware of people's motives and act accordingly - If someone is passing along negative information about a colleague, you should instantly be alert as to their motives. If you suspect that they are deliberately trying to backstab or otherwise undermine someone else, these are exactly the kinds of conversations to steer well clear of. If not, you could somehow wind up implicated as one of the gossip mongers!
4. Don't repeat information that is ostensibly confidential - Many times people come in possession of confidential information, and inadvertently repeat it, only to find out that the assumption was that the information was closely held. The very fact that you possess the information will be held against you, even if you learned about it innocently. Therefore, be careful about what you repeat to others.
A Couple of Etiquette Matters
As you receive invitations to interview with employers and then interview with them, please remember a couple of basic etiquette rules that job-seekers sometimes forget:
1. If you receive an invitation for an interview outside of the on-campus program -- whether the invitation is received via email, phone, or letter -- be sure to respond, even if you aren't interested in going through with the interview or have accepted another position. Sometimes we hear from employers that students haven't responded to invitations to interview or even job offers! Always respond so that employers know what their next step should be.
2. After an interview, be sure to send a thank you note. You can handwrite them on a note card if the card is professional and your handwriting is neat. Otherwise, it is best to type out the letter as you would a cover letter. As with you cover letters, we are happy to review thank you notes.
What Not to Wear: Dressing for Holiday Receptions and Networking Events
So, you have set up an informational interview over winter break or have gotten an invite to a holiday reception or other networking event. Great! But now you are wondering "what should I wear to a holiday reception or for a networking meeting?"
If you are meeting an alumni or another contact in his or her office, wear a suit. Remember this is a business meeting. If you are invited to a holiday reception and the invitation doesn't specify dress, remember this is a business reception, not a holiday cocktail party so wear a suit. No cocktail dresses or tuxedos! Just wear your best suit, hose if you are a woman, a tie if you are a man, shine your shoes, and impress the employers with your personality!
Ok, you get it - wear a suit. But what if the person you are meeting or the event details say "feel free to wear business casual?" Keep in mind that "business casual" can vary from employer to employer and sometimes even person to person. Wearing khakis, a button down, and a sport coat may be "business casual" for one employer while cords and a sweater may be "business casual" for another. As such, trying to dress "business casual" can be difficult for potential candidates and visitors to the employer. Your best bet - you guessed it - wear a suit!
Just because someone says you can dress "business casual" doesn't mean you have to. You are better off wearing a suit the first time you meet with an employer or contact or attend a networking event and being able to gauge what might be appropriate "business causal" for next time. No employer, contact, or alumni is going to look poorly upon you for feeling that they were important enough to wear a suit for!
If you have questions regarding what is appropriate dress for different events in the legal community please feel free to stop by the CSO to chat with our counselors!
A Few Words About CSO-Sponsored Workshops
Greetings. Over the summer, the CSO spent time thinking about how to make its workshops, both mandatory and voluntary, more interesting for you! Among the changes we implemented were smaller sessions for mandatory workshops to make them more interactive and less about us “lecturing” to you; theme weeks for various areas of the law (more to come in the spring semester); more food, since most sessions occur over the lunch hour; and some raffles. We feel that the changes have been positive, and hope you do as well.
However, we would like to comment on a couple of disturbing trends we have seen this semester. Basically, this comes down to asking students to refrain from the following:
1. Please do not assault CSO staff members for leftover food (usually pizza), and do not take food if you do not attend the workshop. We purchase food for specific events, and do our best to order the right amount for the projected number of attendees. If there are leftovers, we usually set them out – if they are set out for public consumption, then you may take them. This food is paid for by the CSO’s budget, and is intended to be consumed by the students and workshop participants. We know that school is expensive, but...we’re sure you understand. Thank you.
2. If you decide to attend a workshop, please plan to stay for the full hour UNLESS you really have somewhere else you need to be (and if that is the case, sit by the door so your exit is not so disruptive). The fact that students are walking out is especially troubling during the attorney panels. Securing speakers for panel discussions is difficult and very time-consuming (we contact two, three or four times as many potential speakers as actually say “yes”) and while the attorneys enjoy participating in these events it takes at least a couple of hours out of their day. It is disrespectful and disruptive to see people walk out, and some speakers may decide not to volunteer their valuable time again. Again, thank you.
The Perils of Interview Thank You Notes
We heard from an alumnus recently who had some advice to offer about thank you notes. The message? A thank you note with any sort of error will likely be more of a detriment than benefit. If you send them, triple-check for errors. He said he’s seen thank-you notes with spelling errors, name errors, and even notes with the wrong name of the law firm. For example, he has seen thank-you notes sent to attorneys at his firm after callbacks thanking them for the opportunity to interview at another firm! The result? These people did not get call-backs or offers.
Most employers still expect thank you notes, so review them several times before you send them out, and ask the CSO, friends, and family to take a look as well.
What To Do When An Employer Calls
It is interviewing season, and you are bound to get calls from potential employers wanting to schedule interviews, follow-up after an in-person interview, or better yet, make you an offer of employment! Don't be caught off-guard!
Here are some suggestions that will help you be better prepared for employer telephone calls.
- Check your voice-mail message. Is it professional?
- If you share a phone with family, friends, and/or roommates, remind them that you are expecting employers to call and ask them to take a message for you.
- Have pen and paper ready before answering. Get contact names, correct spellings, e-mail addresses, driving directions, and note the day/time of the interview.
- Have your resume, cover letter, transcripts, and writing sample handy so you can talk about them.
- If an employer leaves a message, call him or her back the same day!
- Avoid distractions and focus on the caller.
Some Email Etiquette Advice
It seems that use of email to apply for jobs and communicate with employers has become the norm rather than the exception. This is good in a lot of ways. However, there are also many potential pitfalls when one is using email. Here are just a few issues to keep in mind:
• Check, double-check and triple-check punctuation, spelling, and grammar
• An increasing number of employers are complaining that summer associates, interns, and new attorneys are too informal in their communications, including emails. Whether you are applying to or have already landed the job, you are communicating with people who have the power to make decisions about your future! Of course your superiors and co-workers will expect varying levels of formality and informality – just be sure to err on the side of formality, because those who expect formality will be more likely to be offended by informality than the other way around!
• If your email address is unprofessional in any way, change it. (Examples we’ve seen include “dude” or “babe” as part of the address.)
• Utilize subject lines and clearly label your attachments – these help people know what they are about to open, and help when they file your email or attachment or need to search for it later in their Inbox.
• Read your emails at least twice before you send them, and if you have any doubt about the tone read it aloud.
• Remember that emails, unlike letters and phone messages, can be forwarded around the world! Last year the national legal community got to read a very long and nasty exchange between a graduate from Suffolk law and a Massachusetts employer (although after appearing on national television, the graduate allegedly received a number of job offers from other employers!).