To wonder how some students expect to get jobs!

[A1980]

I'm putting my flame resistant jacket on here and my padded jacket (to deal with knives)!

But, following on from the thread about how the "hell" some people get into university and the current employment crisis for young people, most bizarre experience.

I am an associate solicitor as a good well known law firm. Someone I vaguely know (youngster, aged about 20 who lives near me) asked me if they could put me in touch with their friend who is a law student and looking for some experience. I don't mind at all, you have to start somewhere and happily handed over my details with absoultely no promises (as it's not up to me to hire, the decision rests with department heads but I an certainly put in a good word with something to go on). I said to tell his friend that I would need a good CV from him and to know what he's looking for.

What I got baffled me. Bear in mind I am:

1. A stranger
2. He knows I am a solicitor
3. He is looking to gain expereince by getting in contact with me.

I got an email from him. It started "Hi ya Aleson" [I think he meant Alison]. That is already way too informal IMO. Then the body of the email has virtually no puncuation and consists of about 2 sentences even though it's several lines long. It refers to his "mate" giving him my details. Then it goes on to say he has no clue waht area of law I practice in but wants to arrange something with me for experience.

There is absolutely no information whatsoever about him and what he wants. No CV attached. In short sod all about him.

When I used contacts or made enquiries as a student, my emails and letters were as follows:

"Dear Mr / Ms, I was given your details by XYZ regarding the possibility of arranging work experience at your firm. Please find attached my CV for your kind perusal. I am currently a student at XYZ and will graduate in XYZ. I am interested in XYZ areas of law, etc, etc. I have had the following experience: [list it and the dates.] I look forward to hearing from you, Kind regards, XYZ"

The above you can't go wrong with and that's what I would expect.

Please tell me, is this standard these days or AIBU and unkind? I fail to see how his email is meant to impress anyone and have me or anyone else think him serious coontender for experience in a firm of solicitor.

hell maybe i just feel for the 20 something student you 'vaguely' know, whose email is being posted all over the net for everyone to gloat at

do you not at least try to mentor people coming up? has it got that competitive?

please reply to him with your feedback, there are some very bright young people about who don't have anyone professional at home. My DH was that young man, he's now a sucessful professional but his luck only started to chang when I trashed his CV (like mine was when applying for weekend jobs as a teen by my parents who sat on interview panels in their jobs) and gave him some proper interview prep.

It's so sad when someone really bright has never had anyone teach them about formal professional communication, its not common sense if noone at home has ever had to do it. (DHs parents both worked, but word of mouthey trade type stuff).

But my next sentence was meant to illustrate that maybe his friends had had bad experiences and he didn't want to pigeon hole himself.

Maybe the bit of law he actually enjoys is something your firm doesn't want to do, but he is struggling to get people to look at his CV, and he sees this as more of a stepping stone? You said yourself you expect to see experience on there.

Unlikely, but not impossible.

hell maybe i just feel for the 20 something student you 'vaguely' know

I don't vaguley know the 20 year old. I don't even know waht he looks like. His friend, I vaguely know. Which makes it worse given that he sent that email to an utter stranger.

Mentoring people, yes. But with a first impression like that I think we'll be starting from the ground up with how to behave rather than encouragement.

As for your comment has it got that competitive......? YES! We're talking about the legal profession. It has always been that competitive.

I'd reply with some kind advice.

If he doesn't act on it then he's blown a great opportunity.

I had some helpful rejection letters and I had plenty that we not worth the paper they were written on, but at least they were written, so many firms couldn't be bothered to reply at all, and I remember every single of them now I'm practising and meeting these people.

A reply is courteous, a constructive reply is priceless!

so maybe just email him back to say you are not the right person to help him, rather than post it all over the internet?

Lucky you didn't decide to do conveyancing sassee. The whole market has gone under.

I knew straight away I didn't like EU law, land lad, commerical law or equity. I was great at tort and criminal.

so maybe just email him back to say you are not the right person to help him, rather than post it all over the internet?

Please go and post this response to every one else posting about personal and other issues tonight. Also drag up the other uni related threads and say the same. If you're not prepared to do that don't single me out for posting all over the internet.

My EU, land law and tort books made great draft excluders as I recall.

Crime, sadly all my clients seemed to wind up in prison, I came to the conclusion quite quickly that my skills weren't there!

Child protection for me.

what?? i certainly wouldn't have posted some poor students emails asking for advice on mumsnet for all to gloat at, and be honest you want everyone to say how awful students are

i myself would have just replied to him

I will do that Sassee. I hadn't completely ruled out the possibility of still asking about work experience for him at my firm.

But I certainly won't ask at my firm without seriously brushing up on his skills and seeing a decent CV first.

Yeah I went off crime on the LPC sassee. Civil litigation for me. I tried family law on my tc and enjoyed it but the child protection cases would be too much. Far too sad.

YANBU at all.

I applied for City TCs not too long ago and the application process is still v. fresh in my memory... I can say for sure that I would never have dreamt of sending an email like that! It beggars belief that a student who wants work experience can't even manage to write a coherent and polite email.

I don't feel sorry for him for possibly having the "wrong message" sent by his friend or whatever. Regardless of what he was told about this possibility with the OP, if he wants to be successful he should have enough common sense to know what is suitable in this situation. If he can't write a simple email, you wouldn't even want to let him loose on filing or copying, let alone anything that requires real brain power...

Agree that the kindest thing would be to contact him and let him know that his e-mail was completely inappropriate. I think that for some reason, a lot of young people haven't learnt about "register" - as in understanding that there are different ways to communicate with different types of people - and tend to communicate with everyone in the same way. I'm not sure why university employability offices don't address this!

Bluestocking my friend was in our careers department waiting for an appointment and overheard the following conversation
"Hi, I'm applying for a job, and was wondering if someone could look over my application?"
"Sure! What's the job?"
"MI5"
"Um, that's sort of the one job application we can't really help you with..."
"Can you look at my covering letter?"
"No. I'm pretty sure you agree to a secrecy agreement when you decide to apply"
"So I can't show you my application?"
""

When I was at uni there were quite good employability sessions time-tabled in, and a walk in advice centre where you could get someone to go over your CV. However the sessions were VERY poorly attended. The main problem I think was they ran them in first year when students were thinking about getting through their first year's coursework and not really beyond that. There weren't any in the final year.

Oh good god PastGrace. You're not meant to tell anyone you're applying for a job at MI5.

Well, since the original post mentioned "coontender" and "firm of solicitor" I'm not sure that the applicant would be out of place.

A1980 hence the response he got!

I think the careers department should have taken the application, shredded it, and possibly told M15 the name of the student.

maybe he didn't realise you don't ask for jobs at mI5

no wonder the world is in such a state

so many people unwilling to help others get on, even in the most basic sense

i despair

so maybe just email him back to say you are not the right person to help him, rather than post it all over the internet?

What a bloody stupid comment. Are you going to tell everyone who posts stuff involving other people that they shouldn't be posting at all?

And who's gloating? This student, somewhat shockingly, thought this was an appropriately written email to send in a professional setting and needs to find out PDQ that it isn't. Unfortunately he's probably far from being the only student to labour under a similar misapprehension. There's more support out there for students through school and university than ever before: there's no excuse for being so unaware.

stupid? maybe it's just me, but i wouldn't post work related stuff (especially if i were a solicitor!) on here

Winter it says on the MI5 website:
"Owing to the sensitivity of our work, we do not publicly disclose the identities of our staff. Discretion is vital. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member."

Well, since the original post mentioned "coontender" and "firm of solicitor" I'm not sure that the applicant would be out of place.

I knew that was coming. There's always a smart arse isn't there . There is a difference between being a bad typist and not caring about correcting typos on a chat forum and writing a formal email. But someone always tries to be smart by pulling the other person up for bad typing.

Legal work is checked, checked and checked again before it goes out. I'm not bothered about typos here.

^ I didn't check for typos in the above post either.

Nor this one