I recently had the opportunity to discuss my latest ‘not getting a traineeship’ incident with one of my supervising solicitors (oddly enough, the one involved here, we have since got on very well indeed. In fact, I think the combination of early challenge to a non professional task, combined with doing my best to fulfill every professional request won them over).
The solicitor used to work at the firm involved. Apparently, they had never seen a trainee over 25 at the place in all the years they worked there. In fact, this solicitor had also been a mature entrant to the law and had been turned down for a traineeship from the very same firm.
This, as you might expect, led on to a general discussion of the problems of mature applicants. The solicitor’s experience paralleled and extended mine - particularly prior experience/career being treated in interview as a problem, something to be explained and justified, rather than an opportunity of the ‘what can you bring us’ kind.
Our consensus was that experience or career in other areas tends to be seen as a threat by recruiting/interviewing partners. Said partners must be startlingly insecure if the fact that one has had authority in another field appears as a difficulty or challenge to their own position. Or perhaps it is that they are so insecure in their own position that they cannot envisage someone who has had authority in another field willingly giving it up and being prepared to be an underling. This strikes me as probably the truer option.
Given the sheer level of skills mature entrants can bring; literacy, dealing with opposition, dealing with bureaucracy, pragmatism, advocacy, identifying key facts, working with a wide range of people and, of course, basic work skills all being amongst them, then it is time recruiting/interviewing partners addressed their neuroses as a business risk.
And now we are after 1st October, recourse to the EE(A)R is becoming a temptation.
