Do you know what I’m thinking when I interview a candidate during the Course aux stages?
I’m not trying to check whether they know the three fundamental rights attached to a corporation’s shares (I assume that their law school did a fine job teaching them that!) nor do I try to see how they’d react if I started a discussion about world politics or managing public finances.
I look at the candidate in front of me and wonder whether I’d enjoy having them as a colleague in one year, or even five years. I ask myself whether they could eventually become a partner and contribute to the firm’s development. I reflect on whether I’d be able to entrust them with files, but also whether I could count on them when the team’s morale needs a pick-me-up.
Of course, everyone changes over time. During your career, you could develop skills in areas of law that you still know nothing about, or that may not even exist yet; you could also turn out to be especially gifted in business development, mentoring or management.
When I meet a candidate, all these questions spring to mind. To answer them, I try to discover as much as possible about the candidate’s personality and get a complete idea of who they are. That’s why I recommend that you don’t prepare for an interview as if it were an end-of-term exam for your Security Law course. Trust the personality you’ve developed over the years—that’s what we want to discover!
Geneviève Goulet is a business and corporate law expert. She has been the head of our Recruitment Committee for several years.