Hi George, I sent you a private message but unsure if you will be able to respond there! i have my interview coming up next week, if you had any key tips/advice for the day that would be amazing! Thank you so much
Hey
@Jellybelly829,
Apologies for not getting to this before!
My advice would be, as best you can, to practice the article interview with a friend/family member. The first question your interviewers will ask is "please can you summarise this article for us?" or "what did the article say?".
A structure for answering this
could be:
1. Short
one sentence explanation of subject of the article + conclusion
2. Succinct identification of three main points covered in the article (outline that you would happily speak about each, or one of these in more depth if required/your interviewers are interested).
There are also some great resources on the forum with tips about article interviews, such as
here and
here. I also thought that
this post from
@James Carrabino might also be useful as he has written out a great list of things to ask yourself when analysing an article for an interview!
When analysing the interview too, think about the strength of reasoning employed. Do the authors make any logical jumps for example? Are they trying to persuade a particular audience of something? Take a look at the first post linked above for more questions like this.
The article interview will, however, only take up a small proportion of your interview. Try as best you can to avoid making broad statements during your interview as, if your interviews are anything like mine, your interviewers
will pick you up on them (i.e., they will ask you back up what you are saying or try to discuss the subject with you). One way of using this to your advantage would be to inadvertently bring up a subject that you actually are very knowledgeable about. You
might then be able to steer the subject of your interview towards a topic you really want to discuss(!).
The last broad piece of advice I have for you is to think about some classic questions but when you are practicing them, frame them slightly differently. For example, rather than asking, "Why law?", you might be asked, "Why not consulting?". If you have a lot of international experience, they you could be asked, for example, "Why don't you train at
Freshfields?".
Be prepared to be asked (and to justify) the firms that you have applied to alongside Slaughters too. If you give a very narrow range of firms (e.g., Travers,
Macfarlanes and Slaughters), they might ask you "Well, the US firms pay a lot more, did you consider training at a US firm?", or suggest that it was a mistake to apply to so few firms. All this goes back to is be prepared to justify your decisions under a very tough line of questioning!
I hope that helps! Please let me know if you would like anything clarified 🙌
