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Patterson's Guide to Intellectual Property PATTERSON’S GUIDE TO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CAREER INTERVIEWING AND JOB SELECTION or NOVEL, USEFUL AND NON-OBVIOUS WAYS TO FIND AND ACCEPT THE PERFECT JOB IN THE IP FIELD by Katharine C. Patterson The following guidelines on preparing your resume, finding out about potential jobs, interviewing, and job offers are designed for patent and IP specialists. The advice, however, applies to almost any law student seeking a job whether novice or about to graduate. Hope it helps! I. RESUMES In today's competitive job market your resume is critical. It is the first substantive contact between you and a potential employer. Basic Resume Rules: Readable, Legible, Decipherable. A resume should invite the eye to read it. No microscopic print; avoid a riot of typefaces; be consistent in layout (i.e. all dates should be listed either most to least recent or vice versa). Crisp, Brisk, To the Point! Trim your language down to the substantive bare bones (or in resumese: cut to minimum). Choose what are relevant facts and figures. ’Tis a gift to be simple. Make the resume look attractive, neat and nicely spaced. Typesetting and fancy paper are not needed. A stable electronic format is essential; in my work I always submit resumes in .pdf format. And please restrain your use of bullets—a partner in a firm wants to know you can write a paragraph not just make a list punctuated with so many bullets your resume looks like it went through the shootout at the OK Corral. There is no such thing as the "perfect resume". Your resume is a combination of facts, figures and sales pitch. It is important to tailor your resume to appeal to the people who will read it. With IP jobs this may mean writing several versions of your resume. Talk Techie to Me! Remember, you are not going to be hired at this point in your career because of your legal skills. Let an employer know about any previous experience that may be relevant. What a patent-oriented employer will likely concentrate on is your scientific/engineering background or technology expertise. A more business-oriented employer may want to know about your experience in contract management, a litigation-oriented firm that you were involved as an expert witness in a dispute at your old company. Make your resume highlight and detail these experiences. Equally, if you have patent prosecution experience in a firm or at the U.S.P.T.O., be sure to give specific details about how many applications you have handled, what technologies you have worked on, or the groups and art units you may have worked in. Cast Your Web Beyond What’s in Your Resume! One of the hot button items in recruiting nowadays is awareness of how employers and colleagues are using the Web to find out more about candidates. You will all be Googled, Facebooked etc., so make an effort to use these resources to your advantage. Think about how your web persona reflects and integrates your interest in IP or patents Patterson's Guide to IP Career Interviewing and Job Selection Page 2 of 14 Become the Perfect E-Candidate! With the growth of computer-based employment systems firms have become very sophisticated consumers of electronically-submitted resumes and employment materials. You need to make sure your materials are adapted to multiple methodologies. Importantly, don’t assume that what is prepared for a system used for on-campus recruiting like Symplicity translates automatically to the big outside world of corporate America. Part of being the perfect e-candidate is recognizing how important the human factor is in hiring. If you only exist on paper or in an electronic form, you lose the chance to communicate as a person. Don’t hide your personality, charm, enthusiasm, professional demeanor and energy by reducing your candidacy to a purely electronic exchange. Call people. Talk. Visit in person. Write a letter. Don’t reduce your abilities and talents to dry resumes and transcripts— there is always someone with better grades or schools than you on paper. Make sure your resume has a file name that tells the employer exactly what the document is. A resume file should be “Last Name First Name Resume.doc” (mine would be “Patterson Katharine Resume.pdf”) NOT “4xbj53sfu.pdf” or (and this is a real one I received) “Bad Resume.doc”. Attached resumes are forwarded to interviewers, partners and various internal record keepers and should identify YOU. I also recommend scanning your transcripts into an Adobe .pdf file, .jpeg or other common image file which can easily attach to an email and is stable in format on various platforms. Be sure the file is not too big in size so it won’t blow out an email server. A scanned transcript is a quick way to acquaint a prospective employer about your school and coursework history. This is a particularly useful for students who have technology backgrounds and want to show employers the range of technology courses they have studied, so be sure to send your undergraduate/graduate transcripts too. Do You Make the Grade? General practice firms are largely concerned with patterns of academic and personal achievement as shown by grades, LSAT scores, law review and journal work, and judicial or other clerkships. They may be equally interested in your technical, patent or trademark expertise, but be sure to answer their more traditional needs thoroughly. So ask yourself: Who exactly is my potential employer? Is it a patent firm, a corporation, or a GP firm doing either patent prosecution work, or litigation, or licensing and corporate transactions involving intellectual property? Each combination has its own special concerns and problems. To illustrate this, attached are three sample resumes, one geared for the patent community, one for the general practice community, and one for people who do not have a science background but are broadly interested in intellectual property. Also, in IP there are several exceptions to the regular resume rules. Here are some important points: A. The name of your employer is more important than your title so it should be listed first and boldfaced for each entry. B. Your resume can be two pages. Don't be shy! Your placement office probably will tell you to write a one-page resume. They are not wrong. Again, this is an issue of who's reading it. GP firms review thousands of resumes and often require one page. Patent firms only sift through hundreds and are interested in details of technical experience, science degrees or corporate training. This may mean using two pages. Do not shortchange yourself by leaving off pertinent work! Patent groups often hire a specific individual because they need a particular technology (i.e. medical devices, semiconductor fabrication, C++ programming, or organic chemistry) or industry expertise. A one-page resume may be required for on-campus interview submission. You may want to bring a two-page resume with greater detail to an interview where you know the interviewer has a real interest in the full range of your previous experience. Why not take short and long versions of your resume on your interview? The successful Job Warrior has many different weapons to deploy on the employment battlefield! Patterson's Guide to IP Career Interviewing and Job Selection Page 3 of 14 C. Do not pad your resume. Always include relevant jobs, awards, honors or interesting activities. Do not include irrelevant material such as a summer job bagging groceries. Remember, this is a sales document not the story of your life. The Cover Letter A resume should always be accompanied by specific instructions for its use! This means writing an effective cover letter to mail or email. It should include personal facts or issues, background, ambitions, needs or concerns that are not suitable in the factual format of a resume. It should: A. Introduce yourself and say why you are writing. If you have a personal introduction through contacts or networking, be sure to remind the reader (i.e. "Governor Jerry Brown of California recommended that I speak with you about an internship with your firm."). B. Give information about yourself that may not be appropriate to put in a resume. Shared professional acquaintances or contacts, special expertise, or particular personal interests that are significant to the reader (i.e. “I spent most of my early years living in the Twin Cities before settling in Waukegan.” or “I note that your firm represents Hostess Cakes, where I worked as a Cupcake Icing Engineer every summer during my high school years.”). C. Set up lines of communication and expectation. What do you plan to do and what do you expect them to do? Open the door to further communication. (i.e. “I will contact your firm at the end of the month to get an update on your search for summer associates. Please do not hesitate to call me with any questions or if you need further information. I can be reached at (address/email) or by phone at 555-123-4567. II. FACTS OF LIFE IN THE IP WORLD There are several distinct markets in IP—the general practice law firms, the specialized IP and patent firms, and patent prosecution boutiques. Each of these markets hire differently. GP firms emphasize schools and grades much more emphatically than do prosecution boutiques. GP firms usually hire on the traditional school recruiting schedules. Small boutiques often hire anytime they feel they need to, and that could be in October or April. Getting hired by an IP or patent firm has become very competitive so you have to be sure to market to their peculiar needs in order to stand apart from the bulk of candidates.
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