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Application Advice Hub

Setting you up for success

We want to see the best of you throughout the recruitment stages. So to set you up for success, the advice detailed below will help you prepare for the process and ensure you put your best foot forward.

Reasonable adjustments

We encourage you to contact us to discuss any questions or queries you have about our interview process and how we can support your individual requirements. We will do our best to accommodate appropriate adjustments to the recruitment process, to help you best demonstrate your suitability for the role.

See below for some examples of adjustments we may be able to put in place:

Allowing extra time to answer questions during interview
Changes to the interview to be online or face to face
Interview to be scheduled at a certain time of day
Assistance for written assessments
Interpreter support or assistance

Please note, this list is not exhaustive and we encourage you to contact your recruitment contact to discuss what could work best for you.

Your CV

We know that creating a CV isn’t always as easy as it seems. As an experienced hire, it’s important that your CV shows the very best of you to hiring managers and recruitment teams. Below, are some of our tips on how to build a great CV.

Your contact details

Make sure all your contact details are easy to see and at the top of your CV. Ensure you provide more than one method of contact, such as your phone number and email address. And if you have a preferred method of contact, you can highlight this on your CV. If you have LinkedIn, we recommend creating a clickable link to your up-to-date profile.

Your career

We recommend including a short but impactful summary at the top of your CV, which will set you apart from other candidates. Your summary should be five or six lines long, so spend time making it succinct. In your summary, tell us about your best skills, career milestones and include a sentence tailored to the firm or role you’re applying for.

Your employment history

List your employment history in reverse chronological order – your most recent role first. Make sure you clearly include employers’ names, job titles and the duration of your role. For each role on your CV, it can be helpful to provide a sentence that contextualises what your previous firm or company did.

Your duties and achievements

Under each role you list, include key projects or cases you worked on. It’s important to be succinct here, so we recommend including the areas of work and the value of cases you worked on, to provide recruiters with context. Our top tip for listing your duties and achievements is to make sure what you write is easy to read and includes the most essential top-level detail.

Your qualifications

Just as you did with your employment history, list your educational qualifications in reverse chronological order.

Need inspiration?

Click this box to view a few specially selected CVs that stood out to some of our recruiters.

Interview preparation

Our interviews follow a competency-based format, to ensure that we have an open discussion about your strengths, experiences and weaknesses.

What's the interview process like at Clyde & Co?

How should I prepare for an interview?

What's the best way to answer interview questions?

Body language

Your body language can often be as important as what you say. We recommend staying in a neutral posture, avoid fidgeting and to give each interviewer reassurance with balanced eye contact and a smile.

Tailor your responses

When responding to the interview questions, make sure your examples are relevant to the job description and the business requirements. In order to do this well, it’s imperative to have done research as this will help you to provide specific examples, which will add value to your application rather than responding with generic examples.

What are some of the common pitfalls you see in interviews?

Competency-based interviews

Becoming familiar with competency-based interviews will enable you to succeed, as you’ll notice these types of interviews have a specific structure. Designed as an open conversation, we recommend you take the initiative and lead the conversation in detailing your experiences and suitability for the role. Your interviewers may ask follow-up questions, so that they can seek clarification. Below are a few questions you might expect to be asked, but do note, that this doesn’t necessarily mean they will be asked on the day.

Describe a challenging situation at work and how you handled it. What actions did you take, and what was the outcome?

This question looks at how you handle difficult situations and how you might go about helping others.

Can you provide an example of a project or task where you had to use your problem-solving skills? What approach did you take, and what were the results?

Here, the interviewer is looking for how you analyse a situation and how you resolve a problem.

Give me an instance where you had to meet a tight deadline. How did you prioritise tasks and ensure the work was completed on time?

This question helps the interviewer to understand how you work under pressure.

What interview questions catch candidates out the most?

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

As a global growing law firm, we know that our success comes from our people. We help each other to be at our best and believe our differences result in greater achievement. That’s why “celebrating difference” is one of our core values.

Find out more

Our referral scheme

We trust our employees to know what’s best for our firm. That’s why we place great importance on referrals. Make sure to get in touch with one our current employees if you know them as it will help you with your interview preparation and provide you with an insight into our firm. It also means that your referrer may be eligible for a bonus.

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