Commercial awareness: 10 top tips from a managing partner

Answer

Most current lawyers remember being completely terrified of the commercial awareness component of graduate recruitment processes. Those that don’t might well be suffering from memory loss. Interviewers know that it can be an intimidating process, so it’s important to remember that they’re not trying to trip you up, but instead trying to facilitate a discussion so you can show that you’re indeed commercially aware. Here are 10 tips to help you navigate those commercial awareness interviews.

1) Be calm

Interviews can be scary, even if the interviewer hasn’t done anything to make them so. The best way to reflect your best self is to be yourself. You’re not alone in feeling scared and a training contract interview is likely not the last one you’ll ever do.

2) General awareness

Being generally aware is just as good as being specifically aware. Very few questions are built around a specific company, stock or asset class. You’re far better served in understanding in general terms what’s happening in the economy than you are in memorising the prices of a public company stock.

3) Right and wrong answers

Even the most talented market participants take divergent views on the same topic. In some ways that disagreement can diversify, optimise or even create entire markets. You don’t need to be right; you just need to be thoughtful about the question you’re being asked.

4) Listen

It sounds simple but some people take comfort in trying to memorise an answer and then utilise that in response to any question, even when the answer really doesn’t fit. Listening is a key part of being a lawyer and without listening, it’s very difficult to understand.

5) Communicate amicably

The notion that interviews should be combative or that being a good lawyer means that you must be good at being argumentative are false. In fact, even when resolving a controversial dispute, a constructive approach is almost always remembered by clients. Better to win making friends than making enemies.

6) Think about what you already know

It’s quite rare that someone doesn’t have any commercial awareness. Most of us just find it hard to articulate our commercial awareness as a graduate. Which supermarket do you buy groceries from and why not the others? What mode of transport do you use? What’s the aim of your budgeting? Those are all signals of an understanding of money.

7) Don’t only think ‘law’

 Often, lawyers are asked to provide business advice to their clients. It’s where the real value can be added. Not only did you know the law, but you also advised the client on a business decision and it went right. The likelihood that you build trust increases significantly.

8) Get comfortable with discomfort

Being asked something that’s totally new and outside of your comfort zone may not be the nicest feeling. But it’s an important feeling to get comfortable with. If we already knew the answer, there’d be nothing to learn. In a high-performance institution, there’ll be more to learn. The quicker that becomes more exciting than it is intimidating, the easier the learning exercise becomes.

9) If you (don’t) know, you (don’t) know

Being able to tell an interviewer that you don’t know the answer is very much appreciated by the interviewer, but it also allows you to move onto the next question where you might have the opportunity to impress. Interviews are short. If you spend one-third of an interview digging yourself into a hole, you haven’t given yourself the best chance of success.

10) Remember you’re just starting

If you knew every answer perfectly before being a trainee, there wouldn’t be much room for improvement as you embark on what we hope is a happy and successful career. Recognise that imperfection is the norm, and it’s not only you who doesn’t know the answer.

Aymen Mahmoud is a managing partner in London at McDermott Will and Emery UK LLP.