A retired Assistant United States Attorney sits down with the Art of Manliness blog and shares valuable insight into the life of a federal prosecutor and advice on how to become one.
Here’s an excerpt:
How competitive is it to get a job with the Justice Department?
Highly competitive. Highly, highly competitive. You may send a resume to any USAO and it will be placed in an applicant file. Hopefully, your resume will have that something-special, i.e., bi-lingual, information technology expertise, outstanding trial work-qualifications that will put you high on the list. Openings now are generated primarily by attrition. When a “slot” opens, the U.S. Attorney has the applicant files pulled for review by several staff AUSAs, who begin the resume weeding-out process. Some offices may have 200 applications for one slot, others may have close to 1,000. Whether they winnow it to 10 or 25, several prospects are called in for intensive interviews, usually by several members of senior management. That interview may be the most important “jury trial” of your career. Here’s a caveat: if you don’t have an ego, don’t even try.
Then, perhaps, to three, then one. Every office has a procedure, not necessarily the one I described, but something similar. But this is where personality, prosecutorial experience, and high-level recommendations become the deal-maker or deal breaker.
For the complete article, visit the Art of Manliness.
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