On the afternoon of Day 8 (Tuesday, 11 August), every fellow sits a full mock job interview with a panel of three senior legal practitioners, and receives detailed feedback on how they performed — face to face, before they leave the room.
It is one of the few opportunities a fellow will have to be interviewed by people who make hiring decisions for a living, and to hear honestly and specifically what they made of them.
The three panels
The cohort is divided across three panels, each interviewing for a different role:
The government panel interviews for a position as a legal advisor in a government entity that reviews international agreements and memorandums of understanding before Oman signs them.
The in-house panel interviews for a position as legal counsel at a state-owned energy company listed on the Muscat Stock Exchange.
The private practice panel interviews for a position as a junior associate at an Omani legal consultancy firm.
Fellows are told in advance which panel they have been assigned to. Assignments are made by the fellowship team rather than chosen, so that the cohort is spread across all three settings.
How the interview runs
Each fellow has a 25-minute slot: 18 minutes of interview, followed by 7 minutes of feedback.
Ten minutes before the slot, each fellow is handed a short written brief describing a situation they might face in the role. That time is for reading it and making notes, and the sheet can be brought into the room. The largest part of the interview is a conversation about that situation: what the fellow would want to find out, what would concern them, and what they would do first.
The rest of the interview covers the ground any interview does — a little about the fellow and their CV, a couple of questions about how they have handled things in the past, and time at the end for their own questions to the panel.