I Got a Job After Over a Hundred Rejections — Here’s What I Learned

This past week, I finished a round of four interviews and a writing exercise and got a legal job that I had applied for. I thought I was a long shot to get this particular job, but all my interviewers liked me and I apparently did very well on a writing exercise that they wanted.

I am beyond grateful for this opportunity because the job hunt process for my post law school job has been arduous and difficult, and I applied to over a hundred jobs, and got rejected by every single one of them.

I applied to a big law program that looked for more non-traditional law students, including evening students like myself who did not have the most success with the traditional hiring process, or people who showed more long-term professional success in other areas or who showed an upward trajectory in their grades. One thing that disadvantaged me compared to many law students was being an evening student who is a teacher during the day and a law student at night.

There was slightly less urgency for me to get a job than other students because, well, I have a job in education right now, but I still got caught up in the need to transition to a new career. I have been interviewing for jobs for the past seven months or so, and my mind definitely spiraled. First, I wondered whether there was something wrong with me or whether I was giving off the wrong vibes interviews. If I had gotten this many interviews, gotten many second-round interviews, and not gotten offers, the only possible explanation was that I wasn’t interviewing well.

Every interviewer smiled and said “I’ll be in touch,” and I always thought we had a great connection and I felt like I liked the interviewer, and they usually liked me. However, I would come close, but I would get sent generic emails about how there were many extremely qualified candidates, that I was one of them, and they had to make a very difficult decision. Of course, I thought that was just them sugarcoating it and that I thought I had done something wrong.

I had a friend in law school tell me what he thought my problem was in the interviews. I have a very mild, calm, and reserved outward demeanor on first impression that does not reveal how hard I will work long-term or the tenaciousness with which I tackle problems and challenges. He did not want me settling for a job and not being adequately compensated for the level of work I consistently produce. The implication, I gathered and suspected, is that I don’t necessarily stand out because of my outward presentation on that first impression. I come off as someone who is super calm and super chill, when a lot of what employers might look for is a super zealous go-getter. My resume certainly says I fit more of the mold of the latter, but when people talk to me, they tend not to get that impression unless they’ve known me and worked with me for some period of time.

Because I hadn’t had a lot of success in the hiring process, I did take this friend’s advice to heart. I didn’t have any offers, so there was the risk I would settle and take the first offer that I got. It could be an offer that my credentials did not exactly align with, one I could possibly be overqualified for, one I wasn’t even that interested in.

There were a lot of very close opportunities that I was pretty disappointed not to get. I had one potential employer, several months ago, call me personally about how much they liked me, but how they just weren’t hiring in the particular area I was interested in and how they would be interested in me being the first to consider for that area when they were hiring in a few years. I had also performed well on their writing exercise. I really liked everyone I talked to for that job, but still, I couldn’t help but think about whether it was a poor reflection on my interviewing skills or whether I had given off the wrong message.

I even did a mock interview with someone through my law school’s career office, who said I was an extremely likeable person. I asked for advice from an unbiased source, who said I needed to write better cover letters and improve my resume. I took that advice to heart. I had applied to what must have been over a hundred jobs. At first, I thought it was unrealistic to write a new cover letter from scratch for every single one of those jobs, and I would write about why I was qualified and a great candidate instead of truly researching that potential employer and explaining why I was the right fit for what they were looking for. I then started writing every cover letter from scratch after a lot of research on the employer. This was a lot more time-consuming, but I looked back at my cover letter for the job I got, and it was very particularized as to why I was the best fit for that particular employer.

As to my resume, I got feedback that it was too long. The font was too small and hard to read. People told me it was a great resume for someone who wanted to be promoted in teaching or to administration — three quarters of it explained my accomplishments as a teacher.

But why would a law firm or legal employer care about how great of a teacher I was? Why would they care about the great work I did in the school system? If anything, overemphasizing my accomplishments in my career rather than as a law student was a disadvantage in any job that wasn’t in public interest. The employer would think “wow, this guy would make a great attorney for the the school system, but he would not be a great fit for [government] or [big law].” Of course, I felt conflicted about changing this. I am much more proud of what I have been able to do for my students than my grades in law school. But I did have to play the game.

People who gave me feedback also told me there were tons of things about my profile not on my resume that I was, implicitly, stupid for not mentioning. For example, why would I not mention that I can speak Chinese fluently, or that I can read or write proficiently in Spanish? Honestly, I did not think these parts of myself were very important, and if anything, I am ashamed that I cannot read or write in Chinese being a Chinese person, and I did not see the utility in being able to speak and understand a language and not be able to read or write. I also did not see the utility in being able to read and write in Spanish but not being able to keep up in a conversation with a native speaker. However, my standards for language proficiency should not have factored into my resume, according to feedback.

I knew that interviewers could really like me as a person and we could have a great conversation, but I could still not be what they were looking for. There were still law students who looked better than me on paper: people with better GPAs and who went to more highly ranked law schools. There were people interested in more coveted practice areas, like mergers and acquisitions. There were also awkward parts of my profile as someone who spent most of my professional career in public service and public interest as a teacher in an urban school district, so most potential employers would be skeptical as to why I wanted to work at a big law firm. I also was on an awkward graduation schedule graduating a year earlier than my counterparts, and hiring timelines can be very rigid for law firms in particular.

Now that I got a job after going through four separate interviews, and a more prestigious and coveted job at that, all those thoughts about having poor interview skills finally dissolved. I’m not saying I didn’t do poorly on any of those interviews, but that it doesn’t matter now. The job that was the best fit was the one where all the interviews went very well and where I was evaluated well throughout the whole process. The job I was meant to get is the one I got, and although the process took much longer than I liked, the process ended up working out and I can close the chapter on the legal recruiting process.

I was just warming up, and there was one other job I was applying for. The recruiters for the job also really liked me and poured a lot of interest and investment into me. Telling them I had taken another offer was very difficult, and although I’m sure recruiters are very used to people blowing them off or ghosting them when candidates are no longer interested, I just wanted to be upfront and honest in letting this recruiter know as soon as possible that I took another offer. I told them, essentially, “it’s not you, it’s me, and I’m just pursuing the opportunity that’s best for me and my family’s future, and I want to thank you for everything.” Every correspondence with this job I didn’t take was extremely cordial and we wished each other the best, but I did feel bad because it felt like I was breaking up with the employer, even if I knew I was doing what was best for myself.

I find the hiring process for any job tough and demoralizing. I am the kind of person who performs and does well when I actually have the job, but auditioning for the job is the difficult part for me. I don’t like putting on a show — I perform best when people actually see me in action on a day to day basis.

If there is one thing I wish I did differently, it’s that I wish I didn’t take things so personally or see it as a reflection on my broader credentials or character when I did not get a job. They could not have hired me for a million reasons that I didn’t even think of.

However, I learned that particular employers look for particular things and that it takes time to learn what they’re looking for.

For example, when I first became a teacher, I had a hard time getting a job. Demographically, as an Asian guy from New York who went to Emory University, a predominantly White university, trying to teach in an urban school district should have made people skeptical as to my capabilities to handle the job with no experience. They could doubt I would be the most culturally responsive teacher for predominantly Black and poor students.

I ended up just being placed in a school that had a vacancy instead of any job I interviewed for. A year later, that school closed, and I had to interview for a teaching job again. I had a couple of interviews where I did not get the job because I thought only from my perspective. And then I thought from the employer’s perspective. I thought about the frustration’s from my bosses in my first year of teaching. They were frustrated at people who did not show up to work for extended periods of time, and people who were late on their deliverables.

So although I had weaknesses as a teacher after my first year, which included classroom management, I emphasized on one interview, “I show up to work every day and am never late on a deadline.” That potential employer called my boss as a reference and, from the fact that I got a job offer extremely quickly, I presume that phone call went well. One interviewer even joked, “what’s your address so we can get you to sign the contract right now?” If I knew that all I had to say was “I show up to work every day and am never late on a deadline,” I would have said it much sooner. I worked at that school for two years with effective performance reviews and great relationships with all staff and most students, so it ended up working well.

In the legal profession, it took me a much longer time to learn this game. I learned that a lot of law firms look for prestige. The rank of the law school matters. This put me at an inherent disadvantage. My law school is not bad, but it’s in the top 50 law schools in the country. Compared to many law students who are in the top 14, I could have slightly higher grades and test scores, but they looked better on paper. I have good grades, but I know there are more qualified candidates who have even better grades.

Likewise, I was trying to graduate a year early, and these law firms have very rigid hiring schedules. The moment I said I was going to graduate early, they questioned whether I was on the right interviewing cycle and questioned whether I could start at the right time. This put me in a very difficult to explain to employers, but I was not allowed to interview in the actual graduation cycle until I could prove that I could actually earn enough credits fast enough to graduate early. I don’t blame anyone for not allowing me to break the rules based on my own representation that “I can graduate a year early,” as it’s hard to believe someone’s pipe dream. But this year, I did show I was able to do it.

This meant that I had significantly more luck with post-graduation opportunities as a third year law student than in summer graduation opportunities despite my high standing in my class and grades. To many post-graduation employers, I was a much more qualified than usual third year law students without a post-law school job who slipped through the cracks, which may explain my success now and lack of success later.

I also learned that certain employers are only hiring for certain practice areas. For example, some law firms are only hiring lawyers who work on mergers and acquisitions, while others are only hiring litigation associates. Others are looking for someone who is open and willing to do whatever to mold into the kind of attorney they want. This is all very market dependent.

Of course, you don’t know this going into the interview. But I wanted to be a litigator. I did a judicial internship with a local circuit court judge. I loved improving my legal writing skills and arguing before mock judges in oral judges, like people do in the Supreme Court. I wasn’t going to lie to interviewers and say that I wanted to become someone who drafts contracts and works on mergers and acquisitions when that would have been a lie and disingenuous just to get hired. However, if I could find out what particular employers were hiring for by talking to people and networking, I could not waste my or the employer’s time by interviewing for an area they weren’t actually hiring for or that I wasn’t interested in.

I am kicking myself for not seeing from the employer’s perspective earlier. But at those moments, I genuinely did not know what they were looking for. It’s hard to read minds or know an industry you’re new to. However, one thing I can do better is to try to do my research and network with people a lot sooner to learn that system.

All of this is to say I might be overanalyzing how the hiring process went and that I was unlucky when I didn’t get hired, and lucky when I was. I likely am reading too much meaning into the jobs I didn’t get. But I presume there are millions who do the same thing or go through the same thought spiraling process. I know that this process is not likely to change: employers have to make a lot of hard decisions and have a lot of qualified candidates.

However, I do have an aversion to this process because I find it’s more about putting on a show and less about what you can actually do when you get the job. For that reason, I have a particular sense of loyalty to each of my employers. I do not want to transition again for a long period of time.

Do I have bad interviewing skills? Honestly, I do not know, but I will presume under the presumption that I do so I can keep improving them. But for my own sake, I don’t want to go through the interview process again until I absolutely need to.