What makes an 'undesirable' trainee candidate?

As my days are now almost entirely consumed by applications, trawling the web for vacancies and blogging, I am beginning to wonder whether in a firm's eyes there is such thing as an undesirable candidate for a training position and what that person would be like. It seems there are several categories/ qualities which firms are reluctant to budge on. I must just clarify that I am not generalising about firms but merely passing comment on what I have observed about the application process. Here are just a few observations:

Degree Classification and University
90% of Firms which I have come across either via the web or their hard-copy literature request an upper second class degree or above, regardless of discipline. There are a small percentange of firms which state that they 'require' a lower class degree or above and an equally low number of those which do not specify a degree class on their recruitment brochures etc. So on this evidence it seems that the likelihood of a student getting offered a training contract with anything less that a 2:1 is going to be based on a lot more than their degree result.

Legal Practice Course
I have also recently noticed that a large number of firms are now specifying 'Distinction' and 'Commendation' as well as the 2:1 or above. Fair enough.

Language Ability
A lot more firms are wanting fluency in a second language and I have even come across one or two which wanted fluency in several languages! In particular the international and multi-jurisdictional firms will place more importance on the fluency of candidates in different languages and this is not at all unreasonable given the nature of the firm. However, some smaller (medium) sized firms would love a candidate to be fluent in a second language also.

Legal Experience
This is interesting as the firms do not ALWAYS mention this but it is assumed that they'd all want some level of experience. The experience could range from vac schemes and pro bono work to part time employment and paralegalling. The experience requirement is not exclusive to law of course but it seems that it is vital to securing a training contract. The good thing I have noticed about some firms is that they clearly state that should there be a reason why the candidate did not achieve a high level of academia, if they have 'good' experience elsewhere, this may have a positive impact on their application.

SuperPowers
The often hidden category, the majority of firms expect a level of superpowers ranging from time travel, flight and invisibility to telepathy. No sarcasm whatsoever. In all seriousness it seems they would like prospective trainees to have something...special about them. Having interests outside of work are handy.

SO, back to the original question, an undesirable doesn't really exist...do they?

I don't expect firms to compromise on quality of candidates of course; that would be to their and their future clients' as well as the profession's detriment. I can't argue with that.

CBC

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