Ann Israel is the legal profession's Dear Abby. A New York legal recruiter since 1979, Ann is a past president of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants. Advice for the Lawlorn is updated every Tuesday.

Q:I am a second-year student at a top 10 law school. Despite a reasonably good transcript and a resume with prior U.S.-based business experiences, my job search has been an exercise in frustration. As an immigrant (I also completed my undergraduate education here), I thought that my foreign language fluency would be attractive to the New York-based international law firms. While I managed to secure call-back invitations from many such firms, I failed to convert most of them into actual job offers.

If the commonly held understanding that once you received a call-back then the job is yours to lose is correct, then I must be doing something consistently and horribly wrong when visiting the offices of prospective employers. I did a number of mock interviews with my career service counselors, and they did not identify a major flaw. I can think of two possible problems.

First, I speak with an accent even after taking a number of accent-reduction courses. But people have no difficulties understanding me.

Second, I know that sometimes I do not come across as the most social person.

What kind of advice can you give me so that I can become a more marketable candidate in the future? Also, does etiquette allow me to contact my on-campus screening interviewers who invited me back to their firms for further interviews? Ideally, I hope to find out from them what I did wrong. I also hope that keeping a line of communications open with them can only help me when I reapply to their firms in the future. Are these two goals realistic?

Regards,
Curious

Dear Curious: Over the past 12 years of writing this column I have received many questions that I thought were probably made up by people who had nothing better to do with their time than goof on me. Why anyone thinks it is funny to waste their time sending fictitious questions to me is beyond my imagination, but clearly, they are very bored with their own lives or else perhaps they feel they have been treated poorly by headhunters in the past and are just trying to find a way to get back at one of us.

Whatever.

At any rate, in every question, true or fictitious, there exists an aspect that I believe is worth addressing. So, even though I know some of these questions are pure nonsense, I have published them from time to time because I have found a lesson to be learned buried somewhere beneath their idiocy.

This week's question puzzled me. Should I doubt its veracity? There was even a part that the author asked me not to publish that was so benign that it didn't make sense (and, of course, that part has been omitted). Once again, I decided that it didn't matter -- there were certain issues in the question that deserved to be addressed whether or not the question is real. So, here goes.

I do not subscribe to the "common understanding" that a call-back interview means the job is yours to lose. That understanding only holds true in specific circumstances (such as when you are going back for a final interview with the decision maker and you are the only candidate left in the process) and, as far as I am concerned, is never true after an on-campus interviewer has met with you for 20 minutes and you are invited back to the firm. That one interviewer represents X number of people from the same firm who are interviewing 2Ls from a number of different law schools. There will be a large group of candidates invited back to the firm for a call-back round of interviews. These candidates will then meet several (or more) partners and associates at the firm who will whittle down the number of the final candidates who will receive an offer.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why you are not making it through the call-back round of interviews, but these are the more difficult interviewing sessions, where the interviewers are looking at you as a potential associate with the firm.

Perhaps your inability to come across in a social manner (whatever that means) did not allow you to compete with more social candidates.

Interviewing is tough; perhaps you should work with guidance counselors who specialize in interviewing techniques; that might make a big difference in the outcome of your advanced interviewing rounds.

In any event, you need to do an honest evaluation of why none of these firms made you an offer. Based on the composition of the attorneys working at international law firms, I can't imagine that an accent would be the reason for your rejection, and it sounds as if you have worked hard to lose that accent.

I don't think it will really work in your favor to contact the people who interviewed you on-campus to find out what went wrong. First of all, they recommended that you receive a call-back, so obviously, they didn't think that much went wrong with your initial interview. Secondly, after seeing literally dozens of people at your law school over the course of a few days, the chances of them remembering the specifics of your interview are not great. Lastly, you have been told that these firms are no longer interested in your candidacy. If the interviewers even do take your phone call, which is doubtful, what do you expect them to tell you?

Finally, unless your on-campus interviews were so spectacular and you spent an inordinate amount of time with these interviewers (which isn't probable since there is a schedule to be followed), I am not certain that you are being realistic in thinking that you are keeping lines of communication open by having phone calls with these people. I would not foster hopes that they will be able to -- or want to -- assist you when you reapply to their firms in the future. Again, unless something out of the ordinary happened between you and the interviewer, you need to recognize that you were just another 2L that they recommended be brought back for an advanced round of interviews.

Now, the real dilemma is, what are you going to do for your 2L summer? You need to enlist the help of your career services office and make sure they hear you loud and clear. You are a top student at a top school -- they need to pay attention to you.

Best wishes!

Sincerely,
Ann Israel
President, Ann Israel & Associates