Black Law Student Discussion Board

[justGem]

That's interesting.  So they affirmatively selected you for the BLSA spot?  Normally, I would say go through OCI, but if they saw your resume and such and selected you for the job fair, then perhaps it would be better to go to that.

Hi Alci,

Why would you normally say go through OCI?

Normally I would think pre-select would be the best option, but I've been given three opinions that have me leaning slightly toward OCI:

1. An Associate friend who was an interviewer last year recommends OCI.  According to him, the firms ask minority associates to conduct the interview sessions. In his experience, the associates are asked to let the hiring partner/committee know if there were any candidates worth considering. But in effect, it was more of a pre-screening and the associate would have to sell the candidate to the hiring partner rather than straight up initiate a call back.  I think I may prefer the direct mode if this is generally the way it's done.

2. My career advisor recommends doing the OCI interview and mentioning that I was selected in the other job fair.  Not so sure about this...I can't even think of how that would be brought up or the purpose of mentioning it. Plus, I get the sense that my career advisor shoots from the hip when answering questions.

3. A Friend dealt with this a few times last year. She recommends the BLSA fair interviews.  She was able to secure several call backs through the NEBLSA and MABLSA fairs. However, her bidding approach and target markets were very different from mine..

Maybe I'm over-thinking all of this, but this economy has me a bit shook and I feel the need to strategize as much as possible to maximize my chances.

Miss P, I think it is pretty practical advice (that I obviously hadn't though of) to give the recruiters a call. Thanks!

Sands, please do let me know if you are able to recall how students typically handle this. 

[A.]

Normally I say go through OCI b/c the firm is likely to have more spots designated for your school than for the job fair.  But ITE, it might be more valuable to have been prescreened.  But I'd probably take P's suggestion and call up the recruiting coordinator (i.e., the staff person, not the attorney).

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

What's interesting about this scenario is that it reveals that the HR department is not communicating with the firm's Diversity department, otherwise why would they book the same person two times?

This may speak to the fact that they are only doing the NBLSA job fair to "show their support" for diversity, or it may be that they actually recruit people from the NBLSA job fair but have simply failed to cross reference their diversity candidates with their OCI candidates.

I'm with A and P, I'd call the firm.

[t L]

Totally naive questions:

1. Is it possible to contact the firm's recruiter and find out what it prefers?
2. Would it be the worst thing in the world to do both?

I'm obviously not an OCI person as I have been on a particular public interest track throughout LS.  Nonetheless, I did once work at an organization that did job fairs for (competitive) summer internship positions, and I think we would have been happy to give a little advice like this prior to an interview.

I'm going through this same issue right now.  I got a grip of interviews from the Chicago Diversity Fair, but I didn't get my interview schedule until after our bids were due for OCI.  There's a good chance that I may have 7 double interviews.  I don't know what to do.

For the other poster going through the same situation, I can give you one anecdote.  My friend said he got callbacks from tons of firms at a job fair that had rejected him at OCI.

I'm really considering just doing them at both.

[justGem]

Totally naive questions:

1. Is it possible to contact the firm's recruiter and find out what it prefers?
2. Would it be the worst thing in the world to do both?

I'm obviously not an OCI person as I have been on a particular public interest track throughout LS.  Nonetheless, I did once work at an organization that did job fairs for (competitive) summer internship positions, and I think we would have been happy to give a little advice like this prior to an interview.

I'm going through this same issue right now.  I got a grip of interviews from the Chicago Diversity Fair, but I didn't get my interview schedule until after our bids were due for OCI.  There's a good chance that I may have 7 double interviews.  I don't know what to do.

For the other poster going through the same situation, I can give you one anecdote.  My friend said he got callbacks from tons of firms at a job fair that had rejected him at OCI.

I'm really considering just doing them at both.

Thanks for chiming in, t L.

Can you clarify bolded for me? By "rejected", do you mean he was not selected for interviews from the firms after the bidding process, or do you mean that he received ding letters from them after interviewing at OCI?

[t L]

Can you clarify bolded for me? By "rejected", do you mean he was not selected for interviews from the firms after the bidding process, or do you mean that he received ding letters from them after interviewing at OCI?

Our OCI is completely lottery-based, so when he said "rejected", I assume that he did the interviews but didn't get callbacked.  I should also say that the Job Fair that he went to was literally a job fair.  He was not selected for interviews.  He just went around to a bunch of tables and chatted with the representatives and handed them his resume again.  It might be different when you have "formal" interviews at the Job Fair and "formal" interviews at OCI.

[Eugene Young]

Umm...who here actually enjoyed reading Marbury v. Madison?

<----------------(sheepishly raises hand)

[malwal]

I got a question for anybody that may know,......does URM only apply to US citizens? I'm a black permanent resident,...i keep getting conflicting reports on this. I was looking at the Northwestern application and it says "US citizens only" before the race designation box. It also has a disclaimer saying that schools getting federal assistance must report minority stats.

However some other schools don't have "citizens only" tag,...although they all obviously ask for citizenship. So does the urm thing vary,..or does it only apply to citizens?

This would make a huge difference in the kind of schools i apply to.

[Kirk Lazarus]

I got a question for anybody that may know,......does URM only apply to US citizens? I'm a black permanent resident,...i keep getting conflicting reports on this. I was looking at the Northwestern application and it says "US citizens only" before the race designation box. It also has a disclaimer saying that schools getting federal assistance must report minority stats.

However some other schools don't have "citizens only" tag,...although they all obviously ask for citizenship. So does the urm thing vary,..or does it only apply to citizens?

This would make a huge difference in the kind of schools i apply to.

Most kids that benefit from affirmative actions are NOT U.S. citizens.

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

Umm...who here actually enjoyed reading Marbury v. Madison?

<----------------(sheepishly raises hand)

I'm a con law nerd but I have to admit that I never read the whole thing.  My Con Law professor actually started with McCulloch v. Maryland.  It was sufficient to know that Marybury stood for the proposition that the Supreme Court is the *&^%.