Top Tips for Candidates – finding & getting the right legal job (Part 4)

Tip 8: First impressions count 

First impressions count – smart dress, a firm handshake and good grooming go a long way. Solicitors are meant to be confident people. The way you dress reflects the sort of person you are – properly shined shoes, neat hair, clean fingernails, good clothes and confident greeting are all parts of the jigsaw.

Most people make up their minds about you within the first minute of meeting you.

These are easy things to get right to pick up easy points in the legal recruitment game. It does not matter whether you are a legal secretaryparalegallegal executiveFCILEX, solicitor or partner in a law firm there is no excuse for getting this bit of the recruitment process wrong – and if you are in a close run thing with another candidate for the job it may come down to the smallest of things to choose between you – so make sure you stack the odds in your favour!

Tip 9: Eye contact and smiling 

Eye contact and smiling is very important – but overdoing it might make you look like a lunatic!

People recruit people they like and people who are like them. Your interviewer will be wanting to meet a smartly dressed, confident and open person. The eyes, it has been said, are the windows to the soul. If that is right you need to make sure that you can hold eye contact with someone to show that you are an open, believable and honest individual. Your interviewer will want to see how you will behave with clients as well as colleagues – it is important to demonstrate that you will be a good fit for their firm and that you will be seen as a confident, approachable and competent advisor by clients of the law firm.

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