When you’re seeking a new position as a legal support professional, it’s important to showcase your past experience and demonstrate how it will help a law firm, legal department or other organization to succeed. To do this, think about how you talk about your work experience during a job interview.
Here’s how to prepare for your interview so you can place your experience in its best light:
Answer the interviewer’s number-one question.
Law firms may differ, but every interviewer has the same fundamental question: “How can this person help us reach our goals?”
When you prepare your interview responses to this question, you stand out from candidates who treat an interview as a reason to talk about their own goals and plans. You create a positive impression in the interviewer’s mind. They don’t have to guess how you can help them; they know.
Focus your discussions of your experience on demonstrating how the things you’ve done in the past can help this organization reach its current and future goals.
Focus on specific accomplishments.
As most legal support professionals already know, a case with a strong storyline is more compelling than one with a simple laundry list of facts and law. The same applies to interviews. Choose your top two or three accomplishments, and practice framing them as a story: You, the hero, up against a challenge, coming through victorious with the application of your strongest skills. Storytelling helps your accomplishments “stick” in the interviewer’s memory, which helps them see you as the kind of person who can accomplish similar heroic feats at their firm.
Be willing to talk about failure.
Nearly every interview includes the question “When have you failed?” or “Tell us about your weaknesses.” To create a complete picture of yourself as a legal support professional, be ready to talk about a time you failed at a task or attempt. To prepare, focus on what you learned from the failure, and how you would change your approach to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future.
At Kent Legal, our recruiters help legal support professionals connect with some of the best organizations in the greater Toronto area in their search for a great new job. Contact us today to learn more about our legal support career opportunities in Toronto and beyond!