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TGIF Again

I am very thankful it is Friday. I cannot wait to sleep in tomorrow and relax a little bit. I am pretty worn out by Thursday every week. In fact, I can barely keep my eyes open for an entire episode of Grey's Anatomy (and its not because its a boring show).

But despite being constantly tired and worn out, I am grateful for my job. I have great bosses and co-workers. The building I work in is pretty cool, and has a nice cafeteria that serves breakfast and lunch. And the work itself is interesting to me. I know that the job market is tough for a lot of students right now, and I feel bad for everyone. But a lot of friends have recently said that I was "lucky" to get this job. So for all of you who think this job landed on my lap, let me tell you exactly how I got this job!

I had fully planned on going on to get an LLM in Tax Law following graduation last May. I had applied to about 10 different schools and was accepted by every one of them. I also planned on going back to Utah, to work in estate planning. But being the OCD person I am, I made sure I had other options. I was a little worried about taking on the extra debt of an LLM. Don't get me wrong, an LLM in tax law is a very good investment. But I wanted to see if anyone would consider giving me a job right away. I started looking for jobs like crazy in September of my 3L year.

So I applied to every tax law job and even business law job that popped up on the career services website. That was a bust for me. No replies for any of those positions. While I had done well in my tax law and business law classes, I had not done well in other classes and that hurt my overall GPA.

I went to Craigslist and poured through the legal and accounting/finance job postings. This approach provided me with a few responses, but nothing ever panned out.

I went to Monster and posted my resume. I received a few interested inquiries from some tax consulting firms. That was actually a good tactic. If anyone is interested in tax law, I recommend posting on Monster, and indicating you are willing to work in any location. I received calls from Chicago and New York for tax positions. But, I will warn you that you will also get a ton of stupid emails from insurance companies trying to hire you.

Another good tax jobs website I tried was Taxtalent.com. However, unless you have a decent amount of experience it is hard to get a job from this site.

The last and most successful tactic I used, was going through the Intercollegiate Job Bank. I would highly recommend asking career services about it. It provides the job postings from schools in every single state. I poured through postings from schools everywhere, and applied to jobs everywhere. This was by far the best place for me to get interviews. I found my current job in a posting at a law school in Georgia. The Intercollegiate Job Bank literally has thousands of jobs posted.

In the end, I applied to thousands of positions. I am not exaggerating. Anything business, tax, estate planning related, I applied to it. I was flexible in terms of location and it paid off. Out of all of the emails I sent, I only received 3-4 interviews. But it only takes one offer to have a job. I guess my point is that I was not lucky in getting my current job. I spent all of September and much of October of my 3L year sending out applications. I wasn't too disheartened by the rejection letters than came in the mail daily, because I made sure I had a back-up plan (LLM school).

That is my job hunting story..Good luck to all of you.. Trust me though, use the Intercollegiate Job Bank!

Full post as published by Dagny’s Law Blog on October 31, 2008 (boomark / email).