Planning tips from big law on how to make your callback night event a success.
After the mad dash on campus to interview 2L law students during OCI comes the inevitable period of callback interviews. Callbacks, when the students visit the firm for a full round of interviews after their initial screening during OCI, can at times feel like a logistical nightmare for the legal recruiting team. As OCI continues to be pushed earlier into the summer months, navigating attorney vacation plans and empty offices has meant that the recruiting team sometimes has to look for creative solutions to bring in the multitude of students that are selected for these interviews. One solution that has been getting traction in big law firms is what is known as the Callback Night.
What Is Callback Night?
“The process is much like a mini OCI.”
Callback Night is when attorneys interview a round of students consecutively in one evening, followed by a reception. The process is much like a mini OCI. The firm invites in 15-20 students at once and have the same number of attorneys prepared to interview. The students rotate through 4-5 attorneys individually for 15-20 minutes each with a 5 minute break. Afterwards the students and attorneys attend a reception, where they have a bit more time to build rapport, meet attorneys they didn’t get a chance to interview with, and experience the firm’s culture. Typically the recruiting team will be busy compiling evaluations during this time, for hiring committee review directly after the reception.
Callback Night Benefits
The benefits of callback night are numerous. Instead of spreading interviews out over weeks, they are grouped together during one block of time, which is more efficient for everyone. Lawyers don’t have to be asked for each time slot individually, but instead have a 2 hour time period set aside where they will be scheduled with several back to back. Evaluations can be submitted and reviewed afterwards for many students at once, allowing for quick and easy comparison on candidates who should receive offers. And the reception following gives the students more free flowing time to interact with the lawyers and experience firm culture for themselves.
Callback Night Guidelines to Success
“Be prepared to strategize"
With as many moving parts as this night entails, detailed planning is essential. So how do you manage and run a successful callback night? Below are some helpful guidelines from my experience in Biglaw.
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Determine the practice group focus. These nights work well when you have a large number of students who will be interviewing with the same general interests. For us this was litigation and appellate, whereas at my previous firm the focus might have been International Trade.
Outline the space. Get blocks of time reserved on the lawyers calendars and conference rooms reserved at least one month in advance, more if possible. Request the maximum number of attorneys and rooms your team can facilitate in one night. It will be a lot easier to release the time if you don’t end up scheduling as many students as you predicted rather than trying to add it in.
Guide the students towards your callback nights. When a student calls to schedule, first determine if their practice group interest is aligned with the callback night focus and then suggest your callback night dates. Only after proposing the callback nights first would we suggest other dates if they couldn't make any of them (we had 3 of these nights over 2 weeks).
"Schedule transition time."
Schedule in transition time. Coordinating people in groups will necessitate needing more transition time, and it’s helpful to have that included in the preplanned schedule.
Have the students arrive 15-20 minutes prior to beginning the interviews. This ensures that everyone will have arrived and also allows the hiring partner time to introduce the process.
Ask the attorneys to be in the conference rooms 5-10 minutes prior to the interview start time. That way if an attorney gets stuck on a conference call, or has some other schedule snafu, you have a few minutes to strategize prior to walking a student into an empty room.
Allow for 5 minutes in between each attorney transition. This gives the interviewers time to finish their conversations and a few minutes to jot down notes or complete a short evaluation before the next student comes in. The recruiting team handled this at our firm by knocking on doors at the 20 minute mark to signal the end of the period. We had the students to knock on their next interviewer’s door after the 5 minute wait time to politely signal the end of the 5 minute period. Additionally, we had posted the bios of each interviewer on the wall next to the conference room door that the attorney was in so the students knew who was in there and stimulate productive conversations.
"Document everything, and streamline evaluations."
Document everything. Make sure every attorney has a schedule in their conference room and resumes of each candidate they will be meeting. Handout schedules to every student so they know where to go and have extras of everything in case something gets lost along the way.
Streamline the evaluations. Encourage the attorneys to complete the evaluations during the 5 minute break between students, and ensure that the forms are succinct enough to do so. At our firm we created a Google form that mimicked our internal recruiting evaluations and asked the attorneys to bring their iPads or laptops to complete it in real time. This allowed them to submit it immediately and someone from our team could compile them into the internal system as the next interview was taking place. By the end of the reception, we usually had a complete set of evaluations for every student that interviewed that night.
Limit the time of the reception. Although this is their time to further increase their visibility, the students may still feel as though they are interviewing and not free to leave. In addition, by setting the reception time to an hour and a half or so, you set yourself up for an earlier night too!
Be prepared to strategize. Reminders and confirmations are incredibly important in the days leading up to the event but they can’t, and won’t, prevent all mishaps. Be prepared to think quickly and use your resources. Know which attorneys are in the office that day in case you need to replace one. Ensure you have extra help on hand to print or run for materials. Alert your tech team of the event in case someone needs to video in last minute. Try to think through alternate plans for things that may go awry, but also be prepared for the unexpected.
As you can see, Callback Night has many details to manage but the benefits in efficiency make it well worth your time. Let me know how yours went!
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