Back on June 4th, I moderated a panel discussion called “Outstanding Interviews and Powerful Résumés” for the State Bar of Michigan Young Lawyers Section’s annual Summit. The panelists and I discussed our takes on networking, résumé drafting, and the whole interview process, from careful (though not alarmingly thorough) preparation through sending the thank-you note. The panelists had varying preferences on a couple of topics. (I said that unless law is your second career, your résumé right out of law school should be one page; others didn’t feel strongly about that.) But for the most part, our advice was unanimous. We emphasized tips like these:
- Keep your résumé formatting clean and uniform, and vigilantly guard against typos.
- Be prepared to ask thoughtful questions of your interviewer and never, ever say “no questions.” Don’t sell yourself short: you’re the interviewee and the interviewer.
- Be professional during the interview, but also be ready to adjust—if your interviewer wants to talk about your shared love of dance instead of law review, follow her lead (as it were).
One question that caught the panel off guard was whether to include a photo on or with a legal résumé. Every panelist said not to do it. Admittedly, I don’t think most of us had really considered the question before. My knee-jerk answer was that including a photo is unnecessarily showy or tacky—like glittery or scented paper—and that “it’s just not done” in the legal profession. You want to stand out as a job applicant, but not because you’re “that one guy who sent the head shot.” And as the panelists also noted, a potential employer will almost always look at your LinkedIn page or find pictures of you elsewhere, so it seems superfluous.
At the lunch following the program, my table talked about the topic a little and I started to wonder whether the panel had jumped the gun. A friend said she was surprised that we were all so strongly against the idea. Weren’t we being old-fashioned? SBM President Lori Buiteweg stopped by the table and joined in, asking whether it would in fact be beneficial for firms looking to increase diversity among their attorneys to see the pictures right there with the résumés. Another attorney at the table showed us her business card, which had—you guessed it—a photo. How convenient for people trying to connect 12 different faces with names the day after a hectic networking event.
Back in the office after the program, I did a quick Google search just to check whether we’d been off base. As I expected, the general take seems to be that applicants should submit legal résumés sans photos, although some say it’s up for debate. In the end, I think I’m sticking with my gut reaction against inclusion of a head shot. But I don’t think “it’s just not done” is the most watertight of reasons, and it will be interesting to see how trends change in the coming years.