Interviews and assessment days are to be celebrated, not dreaded. You’ll send out dozens of application forms and get blanked by many firms. So when you do get an interview, give it your all.

Interviews

The biggest error that can be made while hunting the Lesser Spotted Training Contract is to confuse getting an interview with getting a job. You’ve worked really hard so far, but it’s time to ratchet things up another notch. Turn on the charm, adopt a good posture and be thorough with your homework. It’s time for a classic aphorism: ‘If you fail to prepare, then you prepare to fail’. As one recruiter acknowledged: “It’s a bit David Brent, but it’s true.”

Before any interview:

Read and think about your application form. Interviewers will pick up on what you wrote and question you on it. A lot of the time, they’ll discuss your application form as an icebreaker. It’s your chance to speak about things that interest you and to build up rapport. Chat, be expansive, maybe even flash the pearly whites. If you fibbed on your application form, make sure you’ve got an extensive cover story sketched out to back up your claim or else you’ll be found out. Better yet: don’t lie or over-exaggerate in the first place.

Research the firm. A stock question is ‘Why this firm?’ Recruiters tell us this is where many people trip up. Make sure you’ve got something good, innovative and non-generic to say. Read the True Picture reports and find out about the firm’s strengths, its history and what is being said about it in the legal press. Ideally you will find a topic or two that can be developed into a reason why you and the firm are a perfect match.

Research the people who are interviewing you, if possible.‘Know your enemy’, as they say. Practice area, precedent-setting cases they’ve won, previous firms they’ve worked at, their favourite sport – all of this is gold and firm websites often contain such details. Don’t quote it all back at them though… that’s creepy.

Have a finger on the pulse of legal news and current affairs. The Lawyer, Legal Week, Solicitors Journal and Law Gazette are all very good, as is Thursday’s Law supplement in The Times. And have you signed up to the Student Guide’s Facebook page? Be ready to see the connections between law and the real world of politics, society and business.

Practise answers, but not too much. It’s not hard to guess what sort of questions you’re going to get; something along the lines of ‘Why do you want to be a lawyer?’ is a bona fide cert. It is wise to rehearse a little to collect your thoughts, but as great comedians will tell you, you’ve got to be ready to deviate from the script. Speaking off the cuff makes you sound more interesting and often a classic question will be slightly altered and you need to be ready to adapt.

Historically, we Brits are modest folk and talking about cash is often deemed vulgar, but at the end of the day it is important. Don’t be scared to mention that the excellent financial rewards are a factor in choosing to be a lawyer. You’re among friends. Just make sure you give some other, more wholesome, reasons too.

The default setting when going into an interview is to want to be liked, but remember that the interview is a crucial opportunity for you to figure out whether you like the firm back. You can become the questioner; and should have a couple of questions prepared for the end of the interview. There are so many things you might ask and it’s best to pick something that isn’t already covered in the firm’s own literature. You could find out what your interviewers like about the firm or ask them about when they trained. You could ask them what the firm is doing in reaction to [insert your preferred relevant current affair here]. Be confident and use this opportunity to improve the rapport with your interviewers.

The usual interview tips apply:

• Arrive early. Have a contact number ready in case some cruel act of divine vengeance makes you late.
• Dress appropriately. Make ‘ordinary’ your goal.
• Be polite to EVERYONE.
• Shake hands firmly (not so they lose their balance – that’s too much) and make eye contact. Smile non-menacingly.
• Speak to everyone on the panel, ensuring you make eye contact with all present.
• Don’t fidget or sit awkwardly. Don’t allow your body to tense.
• Do mock interviews beforehand and get feedback from whoever tests you. Even family members and friends can be surprisingly good at this if you explain what sort of questions you want them to ask. They may identify an annoying verbal tic. Do what you can to eradicate any rogue erms and umms.
• Listen carefully to questions so you can establish what it is the interviewer seeks. Don’t just shoehorn in pre-packaged answers.
• Finally, be yourself. The interview process is “about showing your personality, showing yourself as you are normally,” says Paul Kendall, graduate recruitment manager at Cobbetts “There's nothing worse than seeing someone trying to be what they think we want them to be.”

Assessment days

Even though you might have an LPC distinction, a first-class degree, three As at A level, 29 GCSEs and a gold star from Mrs Haslem’s nursery class, some firms still want to see you in action and test you out with their own assessments. In their arsenal, firms have written and negotiation exercises, personality profiling, research tasks and group tasks. On our website we detail the different hoops you’ll need to leap through at each of our profiled firms.

Recruiters are all keen to see whether you can work in a team. Advertising pitches to faux-clients and pretend mini-transactions two common exercises, but these things are always changing and different firms have different methods. Be careful not to dominate group tasks too much or fade into the background.

There are several types of psychometric test and law firms like to throw a mixture at applicants. Some test verbal or numerical reasoning skills, others test your judgement when confronted by certain scenarios. Although the companies that produce these tests try to keep their secrets safe, the internet is a great place to read up on them. Personality tests aim to find out whether you are a leader or a follower, a planner or impulsive, etc. In theory, there are no right or wrong answers and the standard advice is to be yourself, but before you expose your soul to recruiters, it is worth thinking about why they have set this test and what they are looking for. The general format varies between selecting adjectives that best or least describe you, to choosing a response to a given scenario. Many of the questions on a recent Clifford Chance situational judgement test, for example, began “your supervisor is extremely busy...” Obvious attempts to throw the test may be picked up by recruiters; however, profiling yourself as an indecisive, emotional control freak isn’t going to help you. Although some people swear that these tests accurately determine an applicant’s personality, others still denounce them.

Numerical and, in particular, verbal reasoning tests are the most important ones and, thankfully, these you can prepare for. Look into the methodologies of the main ones (start on Wikipedia) and ask your careers service for examples. Some firms might post out samples in advance, so take advantage: it is really important to be in the right frame of mind for these. Two common ones are the Watson Glaser and SHL tests. They’re usually comprised of multiple-choice, reasoning-based questions that look for intellectual rigour and some business awareness. Applicants must typically decide whether a statement is true, false, or impossible to determine given the information available. Accuracy is imperative, as is mental agility, so if your brain cells are as agile as an arthritic grandmother, get practising – they’ll need to resemble a Russian gymnast come test day.

Numerical reasoning tests assess your ability to process data contained in graphs and tables. Questions ask you to find percentage changes and calculate quantities from percentages. Some tests deliberately contain too many questions, as they’re designed to assess your speed under pressure. Make sure you know if you’re sitting one of these and, whatever the test, try to use your time effectively. Tests may change, of course, but try to quiz people who’ve taken them already – perhaps your law school classmates – and check out discussion forums on law student websites.

Don’t relax too much if there’s a social event as these can be just as important when it comes to making a good impression. Some firms have lunches where you sit round with three or four partners and a handful of other applicants and make small talk over the duck à l’orange. Who will your prospective supervisor want to hire? The girl who kept her eyes on the plate for the entire meal and whispered unintelligible answers to every question? The chap who drank too much of the Bourgogne Pinot Noir and spent most of the meal calling him 'buddy'? Or the nice young man who made some pertinent observations on the Greek debt crisis and showed an interest in his taxidermy hobby? Similarly, a drink with the firm’s trainees is an opportunity to strike up a rapport with them, not to start making comments about how your vac scheme at Ashurst was soooo much better.

And finally…

The sad fact is that for many people it could take a while to succeed. Don’t let rejection bring you down: treat a failed interview like the end of a relationship: convince yourself you just weren’t right for each other. Ask recruiters what led to the rejection and try and learn from it. Chin up, champ: plenty of fish left in the sea. Badmouthing a firm afterwards is optional (and cathartic) but best done privately.