Transcript
Description:
In this video, Harrison Barnes is assessing a resume of a foreign attorney who wants to go into international trade law. He mentions that the resume should make sure everything is on point. You have to show that your law firm material.
- You want everyone to have a scent of what you do.
- Make sure everything is pointing to what you want to do.
- You have to look at it from an employer's point of view.
- Law firms do not like academics.
Transcript:
This person is an LLM, so Ella lambs, it can be difficult for them to get jobs in the U S if they're not from the U S because they law firms or.
Typically more interested in hiring people that are experienced in the U S so it's the same thing here. You want to go and take off all this information and then person recently graduated from the LLM program. I think the education pretty much launched at the end.
It's gonna make you much stronger anytime you have. And I don't think you need to put this LLM and all this stuff here. I think you just want to do that. Oh, Birmingham, Michigan. I actually, I they're up there. My family's from there.
Okay. So the so I would do that and then I would and then make sure you get rid of that. And I would put the experience here first. The reason is because the fact that you are from a foreign country is not is not necessarily a benefit for you. It's not a good thing.
I don't know that I would put you are engaged by Robert half. How long did you work there? You worked there for one month. I don't think I don't think that's going to help you.
Yeah, one month is not something that I can keep alongside there. And then
I like this resume. I think the problem is, I think is it's going to be a little bit difficult. Probably holding a green card looking great. I'm restricted, right? Yeah. Maybe a little bit difficult to get a position in the Detroit area with this type of experience. I think what what what I would do is I think this is a much shorter resume I think you need to you don't have the the Michigan bar, which is okay.
You can probably just wave into there. But I would recommend with this particular resume, I would probably try to shorten it up a little bit. I think you're a good candidate for working in house for the small law firm. Oh, I liked this sample representative transaction list.
This is great. So this is perfect. This is exactly this is what I was talking to everyone about earlier when that attorney should have, so everyone should try to have a representative transaction list if you can. These are helpful. Because they show what the person can do.
And but you do have to see, this, Brazilian wasn't capitalized. You have to be really proofread this stuff for it to look good, but this, other than that, that's a good, and university, Congress, obviously a very well-respected law school especially in the Midwest.
It is all over, but this is great. And you don't want to put it up. You just put the date June 12th, the date you got them, I guess you could put the time over there. Yeah, but other than that, this was good. You may want to have in your cover letter a little bit explanation about, what you're doing in Birmingham, Michigan.
I, it seemed the kind of thing I like. I don't like, you want to basically describe, in a cover letter, what you're doing there and what you're trying to do. And the, you may want to work on Ferris tubs to change, but this is good. This is a transaction list and everybody should be doing a transaction list.
And then you can get this down to here,
but this is a good resume. It just needs to be cleaned up and needs proofreading and some other things. But other than that, it's it's a good resume. It's just, it's going to be difficult for this person to get a job in a smart market like Detroit. But I do think I could get a job in house maybe with a company like Ford or something that has offices in Brazil or general motors.
There's all sorts of. Possibilities. If it was me, I would try to connect with people, in the Brazilian community and so forth in Detroit. I'm sure there are people like that and and talk to them. Okay. So let's see this person. Yeah.
I was in-house counsel for hundreds of organizations by providing for their staff, employees and team members. Our SOP.
I don't know, it's just a comp Oh, on. Okay. This is a
okay. This is a very interesting that resume. There's a lot of good things about it. So what this person does is
So you need to, everybody needs to proofread their their resumes more carefully.
Okay. So I don't know. It says you serve for hundreds of organizations, so I don't know what this means or your experience on my census that this resident with what you're talking about is with a federal tax file compliance, is that you're talking about doing work related to helping companies or, tax exempt stuff.
So I would try to really shorten this. And then it sounds to me like this might be your practice. You might be a consultant or something, but really talk about it. And then I would also not put this link on your file here. I would do something differently. And I would probably, I would probably put this at the end or in a cover letter and most of the stuff.
In your resume belongs most of these things that you do you've done really don't belong. You need some sort of name of lawyer or something, alarm therapist for 2000 times since you've been doing it for a decade. And then most of this stuff also to go at the end and some sort of summary and and then I like these Publications and speaker engagements.
But I think really what you could do is you could just, say something to the extent of numerous publications and speaking events and so forth, instead of all this stuff, just because it's a lot. And the other thing that people are going to do when they look at this, as I may look at it critically and say, what does this person done recently?
These articles are like five or six years old. I don't know. But that's how I would do that. And then all the education and so forth looks really good. I guess one question I have I think this was a fair question. I guess you're doing federal tax law, but you're in Raleigh, North Carolina. I've been there for 10 years.
So foreign, you made them their Carolina bar. That would be something that people would ask, but all this stuff here in my opinion should really to the extent you can should go. At the very end and or in a, summary of experience than then and then really think about what's most important on this stuff to convince what you do because you're or for tax exempt organizations and that's the kind of work you do.
And then that is a very much in demand. And so you need to make sure that, this is a marketable attorney, so you need to make sure that you do everything that you possibly can to. T to get for people to understand exactly what it is that you do. Okay. Let's see here, Mike Miller, not a real name.
Again, I don't like the this, I don't like the Bard mission at the top. And it's presumed Hillary Rodham school of law. Is there such a thing? Wow. It's just for real. Oh, I think the person must have made up the score. That's funny. Okay. Okay, so let's first I got an LLM. You got all this stuff here.
Okay. And then with the Syracuse graduate in 2017 and apparent, it's probably made of school. It's just fine. Resources management. Okay. Okay. So this person just got out of school and they want to do apparently maritime at international trade. And and they're interested. You can see here, they did all this stuff. Okay. And this stuff International law society. Okay. The big thing with us is you want everyone to have the scent of what you do.
You graduated from law school and then did you work in 2017? So you went and you were a spirit professor at Holy spirit university in Beirut Lebanon. Okay. So I don't know what's going on there. Oh. And then for security law policy. Okay. So this person wants to be an international. It looks to me like do something to do with commercial are, international trade and that sort of thing.
So you need to really Make sure that everything on this resume points to your interest in international trade. And so what that means is you want to make sure You know that you, you don't do anything to throw people off the scent of that.
And and so what I don't like here is you're a us educated attorney and it looks like you you went to Alaska, then you've got this stuff in natural resources and now you're you're doing No, you got it. And then you went to Syracuse and you're doing all this stuff.
So this is a resume by the way of someone that, in my opinion, you look and this isn't a negative thing cause obviously, but you look very academic and interesting. And like you have a lot of stuff to talk about and you've done a lot of international travel, but you have to look at it from the employer's point of view.
And they're just going to be a little nervous because they don't have anything to show that you would be as a law firm or in-house company, anything to show that you would have any type of stain power in a law firm. And and that's what scares me a little bit because I don't see, I see all these, and I think you must've made up these universities cause you don't want know you are, which is fine, but it doesn't look it looks like you're.
You're really international trade or Marine type related stuff. So you need to everything that's and this is there's so much going on here that I don't know that I can really clean this up. Don't know what a commercial maritime lawn mooting competition is. But this is you just need to clean up a lot of this stuff.
I don't think you want to do this. You're obviously very interested in this stuff. I would gosh I don't like these things, but I don't know if our, where we converted this to add to this. The thing is that you have to understand too, is law firms do not like. Academics and I'm not making that as a, insult or anything, but they want people that, can be pointed in one direction and will March like a soldier.
And and then the more academic and interested you look and other stuff the more That can hurt you. So here, this person majored in political science. You mean you majored in political science, then you went and got a degree in natural resources. And then suddenly you're just international law.
And now you're interested in maritime and all this stuff. So you have to have something there's gotta be some sort of consistency. And then the other question would be, why did you decide to become a professor at Holy spirit university in Beirut Lebanon? That, that just doesn't necessarily look like someone that's going to stick around and I'll offer, and I hope you can understand and see why that would be.
So all this stuff you've done. Geez. It's all very interesting. But I'm curious you graduate at 17. Yeah. But I would this is more of a, this is a policy. Like it's not a law from us, it's like a policy academic type resume in my opinion. And it needs to be every resume needs to have a focus to depending on what type of job you want.
And then you're a fisheries technician Migrant importations. Yes. You're just doing a lot of things. And I actually, it all looks very interesting. I wish I had such an interesting experience as this person has had, but if you want to get a job you're going to need to have something that looks consistent and and that, and follows a certain type of path.
You're almost done. I hate to say that. I'm not going to do I hate to do this, but you really would be almost better off. Taking all of this stuff off and and trying to take whatever your experience has been trying to take this experience and and make it look like, you're interested in doing international shipping or international trade or whatever that is.
That's what you want to do, or if you to environmental and then you're going to have to you're going to have to focus your experience around that specifically. So it looks like you can be very good at that. And that really would be the main way that I would handle it.
And and then this is cool as true for security law and policy, and this is related. So anything that's related is good, but it has to be, you need to really, and then this is, lease renewals. It's nothing to do with anything. Yeah, so everybody needs to clean this stuff up.
And a lot of times it's difficult. It's not something that necessarily comes instinctually to a lot of people, but it all needs to be cleaned up. There's just too much going on here. And there's nothing wrong with the Holy spirit of course, but having better off just making this assistant professor this is, I don't know how long has she did that for two years?
Geez, 2017. She knew that right out of school. Yeah, faculty assistant, I don't know, just you have, this has to be cleaned up and it has to look like there's direction in terms of what's going on. And
It has to look focused and you may have just made up these schools and stuff to so no one knows who you are, which is perfectly fine. But I would just be very careful. You have to clean this up and make it intelligible. And there has, because if it looks like it's all over the place, then people aren't going to know what to do with you.
And people Myself included, are, just, they put things in boxes and stuff. And so they want to know what you did do. And and this really honestly is your your main job after. Law school. That's how I would try to deal with that, this information.
It doesn't, it's not, doesn't make you happy and but you can put down, you, you had an opportunity, maybe you're I don't know, there's a woman or man, but maybe your wife or husband moved to Lebanon for work or something. And now you're back up. And so you can frame things that way, but that's how I do that.
