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Z Legal Placement Blog

9 JUL

Private law Firm vs. Legal in-House Team: Which is Better to Work for?

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There are advantages and disadvantages to working for either a private law firm or an in-house legal team, and if you’re thinking about making a move from one to the other, there are some things you should be aware of beforehand.

Of course, you may have already received advice and commentary from friends and colleagues in the legal profession which you’ve found to be helpful, but it pays to be as informed as possible before making a significant transition. To help out in that regard, here are some pros and cons associated with moving from one of these situations to the other.

Job Satisfaction

As a general rule, more attorneys experience higher levels of job satisfaction with in-house legal teams, as opposed to working with private firms. One of the biggest reasons for this is that they don’t have to go through the billing process when working with an in-house legal team. Since in-house attorneys are spending their time and effort on projects which don’t have to be tracked down to 15-minute increments for clients, the hassle of billing is mostly removed from your job responsibilities.

The environment of a private law firm is such that the requirements of precise billing force a lawyer to be constantly shifting gears and changing his/her mindset from one case to the next, and from one billable client to the next. When this happens several times during a day, it can leave you mentally exhausted afterward.

When you’re working with an in-house legal team, the chances are that projects you work on will engage you for at least several hours of the day, if not the entire day. Not only can you ignore the constant constraints of billable hours, but you have the freedom to immerse yourself in a single area of pursuit for a much more extended period of time.

Financial Incentives

A private law firm may be able to offer you a compensation package which is very attractive, and which you might think is hard to beat if you were to jump to an in-house legal team. However, there could be a possibility that a position with an in-house team provides you with opportunities for purchasing stocks or other options that can eventually be worth far more than any compensation package a private firm would offer you.

In fact, some of these stock-option packages can be so lucrative that they can be used as a retirement nest egg, and can entirely provide for your long-term future. Because of their natural organizational structure, private law firms are unable to match this advantage and offer the same kind of financial incentive.

Burning Professional Bridges

One of the arguments against making a switch to an in-house legal team is that by and large, once you’ve made this kind of move, you can’t retrace your steps and go back to private law practice. For one thing, the majority of attorneys find the whole billable hours routine to be repugnant, and they would prefer having it removed from their lives forever.

Another drawback to trying to move back to private law practice would be that you no longer have any clients to take with you to make yourself appealing to a private law firm. In general, when you’re trying to become a partner at a private law practice, one of the things you need to bring to the table is a following, i.e., billable clients that add value to the law firm you want to join.

Private law Firm Advantages

If you can get over your aversion to the billable-hours process, there is more job security to be found in private firm practice. In-house legal teams are quite often subject to extensive and entirely unexpected layoffs whenever there’s a downturn in business for a company, and budget-cutting becomes the order of the day.

It’s no exaggeration to say that in such situations, literally hundreds of legal professionals can be axed by a single managerial decision. It also happens frequently enough that acquisitions and mergers can severely impact the legal teams of one or both companies involved, and at such times, headcount can take a severe hit. The bottom line is that, since an in-house legal team is more subject to a corporate mentality than a private law firm would be, there is a higher likelihood of slashes being made in the size and composition of an in-house legal team.

Another advantage of working for a private law firm is that there are considerably more opportunities available than there are for in-house positions. Most lawyers also know precisely where they stand in a private law firm in terms of the organizational chart, simply because it’s much better defined.

When working with an in-house legal team, there are likely to be any number of legal professionals who have more or less the same status, which makes for a relatively vague and possibly uncomfortable situation. Professionals working at a private law firm invariably have a clear understanding of their position in the hierarchy, as well as what it would take to climb upward in that hierarchy.

2 JUL

Job Hunting: Capitalize on Your Hiring Prospects

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If you’re in the legal profession for long enough, chances are you will go through the experience of either being let go or of voluntarily moving on to a new situation. Regardless of the reason for leaving a legal firm, it can trigger a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety about the next steps you should take to resume your career after a period of job hunting.

The first thing you need to do is to avoid dwelling on any negative aspects of the separation from your old employer and get yourself in the mindset that what’s best for you now is to prepare for whatever comes next. With that in mind, here are a few steps you can take to minimize the out-of-work period, and get yourself back in the game.

Maintain Your Network of Colleagues

One of the most valuable steps you can take when job hunting is keeping in touch with all of your legal colleagues, and asking them to be on the lookout for you should any opportunities come to their attention. This will also help you to stay abreast of industry trends so that you don’t lose track of what’s happening in the legal profession.

Don’t be bashful about letting your friends and colleagues know that you’re in the market for a new job and that you’d appreciate their help. Just by staying in touch with all your legal associates, you will be keeping your head in the game, and you’ll stay motivated to continue your job search in the field.

Get Your Resume Updated

Regardless of how successful your career has been to this point, you should be prepared to update your resume with everything that has happened since the last update. This needs to include more than just your previous position, and should also entail any certifications or achievements you’ve earned in the interim.

If you haven’t been paying attention to your social media profiles, you should update these as well, since they are routinely consulted by employers looking for top-notch talent. The fact that you’ve made a recent update to your profile will also show potential employers the information on it is current, and that you may be available.

Embrace Job Hunting Mode

A wise man once said that until you have a job, your job is to find a job. While that is undoubtedly a simplistic view of the situation, there’s a pretty compelling truth lurking in there as well. When you are out of work, you should take job hunting very seriously, even to the point where you treat the search for employment as an actual eight-hour workday.

The point is, you can’t allow yourself to fall into the trap of having a nonchalant attitude about looking for opportunities because with that attitude you might only find something if it falls into your lap. You may be feeling depressed or disheartened about the circumstances of your recent job separation, but you must overcome that, and replace it with a positive attitude about finding new employment.

Practice Interviewing

Once you do have some feelers out with friends and you have some applications in at various legal firms, you could be called upon to interview at any time. You need to be prepared for this when the opportunity arises, and you need to maximize the favorable impression you leave with an interviewer.

Unless you are a naturally gifted talker, you’d be well advised to prepare for interviews as soon as possible. You might enlist the services of a family member or friend to help ready you by setting up practice interviews, especially if you haven’t gone through the interview process in a long time.

Along these same lines, make sure you’re quite familiar with your job history and academic history so that you can confidently respond when asked any questions about them. Also, make sure you have a pinpoint response ready when an interviewer asks you about why you left your last position. It’s a question that’s almost guaranteed to come up, and your answer to this question could either be a deal-breaker, or it could be something that earns you points with your interviewer.

Handling Gaps in Your Resume

If you’ve been out of work for more than a short period since your last position, you need to be able to explain precisely why that employment gap occurred. If you have several such employment gaps on your resume, they will also need to be explained, because they will be of interest to a potential employer.

The best policy is to provide forthright and accurate answers to any questions about resume gaps, even if they don’t reflect particularly well on you. It would be much worse for you if you were to provide inaccurate responses to questions in this area, and a potential employer discovered those inaccuracies.

Not only would you have lost an opportunity with that specific employer, but they might also spread the word around that your integrity is questionable. Good news spreads quickly, but bad news spreads like wildfire, and if local legal professionals were to hear about untruthfulness on your part, it might make your period of job hunting a lot longer than you expected.

11 JUN

The in Person Interview: tips for Hiring Success

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By the time you have moved on to an in person interview as a job candidate, you have already cleared several hurdles, and you already know that the client is interested enough in you to talk in person. If you are interested in working for the client, you need to do everything possible to maximize that face-to-face interview and give yourself the best possible chance of becoming the selected candidate for the job.

However, having reached this point, you now have to prepare for the most stressful part of the process by far, because you will be in the firing line, and you’ll have to come up with solid answers to questions spontaneously. Some people are very good at this, while others have difficulty with it because they’re so stressed out, or perhaps just because they’re not particularly good at thinking on their feet.

Regardless of how good you may or not be during personal interviews, the following tips may be of real value in helping you to secure the position you want by maximizing your in-person interview.

Know When to end an in Person Interview

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t feel comfortable engaging in long-running conversation, and you prefer to give short, succinct answers, that’s probably the best way to go in a job interview. There will be times, of course, when an interviewer asks you to tell a little about yourself, and, in those cases, you are expected to extend your response somewhat.

However, the best policy is to develop a sense of when it’s time to break it off and stop rambling. Studies have shown that an interviewer will have lost significant interest in what you’re saying after about 90 seconds worth of talk, and the reduction of interest begins much sooner than that.

For sure, you’ll notice that you have an interviewer’s full attention at the outset of your answer to a question, but after about 10 or 15 seconds the concentration level will begin to fade a little. By the time 60 seconds have elapsed, less than half an interviewer’s attention is focused on what you’re saying, and they are probably already thinking about the next question to be asked.

When as much as 90 seconds have elapsed on any response that you might be giving, no matter what it pertains to, you will have almost completely lost the attention of your interviewer. You should have stopped well before reaching this point because the entire last half of your conversation was lost anyway.

To prevent this from happening, it’s a good idea to practice responses to predictable questions before the interview, and when you see that a more involved answer is necessary, give additional relevant information without letting the talk go too long.

Don’t get Hung up on Salary

You should never walk into an interview with the idea that you’re going to start talking about compensation, benefits, and working hours. A much better approach would be to show the interviewer why you are the best candidate for the job and to sell yourself in a manner that will convince your interviewer of that so that they will want to make you an offer.

If things progress to the point where you do receive a job offer, that’s soon enough to start negotiating about salary and benefits. For the most part, you shouldn’t even have to bring the subject up at all during a face-to-face interview, because your recruiter will have already determined through talks with the client that their salary range is in your ballpark anyway.

It’s natural to think about compensation and about what the hours and benefits might be, but save the talk about salary and hours for some other time, when you know you’re the candidate the company wants to hire.

Know Your Own History

If you are a lawyer interviewing at a legal firm, you should review your case history and be very familiar with the details of the prominent cases you’ve litigated. If you are asked about any of these during an in person interview, and you are unable to supply specifics about the case that you supposedly worked on, it may very well come across as an exaggeration or padding of your case history. To avoid having anything like this happen, make sure you review everything that you’ve worked on of any significance so that you can recite details on demand.

Have Some Relevant Questions Prepared

Everyone who walks into an in person interview is aware of the fact that at some point an interviewer will ask whether you have any questions for them and that you should prepare some worthwhile questions. But don’t settle for questions that are just fluff and have no real interest or relevance to your interviewer.

Try to think up some intriguing questions that you might legitimately want to be answered. This might be about other employees at the organization, about the potential for upward mobility, or about future objectives for the law firm. The point is, you should try and show the interviewer that you are serious about this job, that you took the time to think of some meaningful questions about the company. With these tips in mind, you should be well prepared for whatever you will be facing during an in person interview.

4 JUN

Job Interview Strategies for Professional Legal Positions

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Recruiting for a legal firm can be a very tricky process, and it’s one that calls for the utmost precision, because of the potential for selecting the wrong candidate. It has happened many times, and it will undoubtedly happen many more times in the future, that a candidate is an excellent interviewee, but is someone who lacks the talent to perform at a high level for your legal firm. While it’s far short of being an exact science, there are some telltale signs to look for when conducting a job interview with candidates for legal positions, which can help improve your chances of making the right choice.

Listen to What is Said

As a legal recruiter, you should get into the habit of not being overwhelmed by an incredibly smooth talker, e.g., someone who could talk for two hours about the nature of a pencil. More important is what the interviewee is saying, rather than how appealing their delivery might be.

One thing that you can be on the lookout for is when you detect that responses have merely been rehearsed or memorized, and are being smoothly regurgitated for your benefit. It can also be a cunning ploy by an interviewee to respond to a question about his/her weaknesses by describing something that sounds more like a strength. This is the kind of question that someone on a job interview anticipates, and it’s one that your candidate might well have worked out the most evasive response for—even if it doesn’t answer your question.

Speaking of evasiveness, it’s also a good idea to be alert to the possibility of seemingly terrific responses that are very smooth and thoughtful-sounding, but which don’t answer the question at all. This kind of redirect may be hiding something the interviewee doesn’t want you to know, so a little red flag should pop up in your head when you sense this kind of evasiveness.

One last observation about the manner in which your interviewee responds to questions is that you should be aware of long, rambling answers that go far beyond what you initially asked. This too can be a way of covering up something that your candidate doesn’t want to be scrutinized.

The Best Questions to Ask

If you want to get a feel for the kind of conversationalist that your candidate is, it’s entirely acceptable to ask a few general questions or even some throwaways, just to get him/her speaking, and to gauge responsiveness. However, as a legal recruiter, what you should be trying to achieve is to find the best possible candidate attorney to fill the position available.

While specific characteristics deemed desirable by legal firms may vary somewhat, most are looking for candidates that have a team attitude, have a healthy, active academic background, and are willing to work hard for the firm. In order to obtain some sense of whether a particular candidate possesses some or all of these characteristics, there are some tried and true questions you can formulate.

As an example, you might ask why they chose their specific area of practice, what were the most significant lessons they learned at law school, where they see the future of law heading, and even why they got involved in the legal profession in the first place.

The Personal Side of a Job Interview

It is crucial to assess the personal side of an interviewee in a face-to-face meeting, as well as their academic and professional qualifications. This might be the first and only opportunity your firm has to find out what kind of person a candidate might be, as opposed to what level of expertise he/she brings to the table. Finding out about character and personality can be just as important as finding out about expertise or skill sets.

This being so, a legal recruiter should make every attempt during the meeting with a candidate to find out things of a more personal nature. It’s worthwhile to try and find out what’s important to your candidate, and how he/she spends time away from the job. You won’t discover the candidate’s whole belief system in the space of one interview, but you should be able to get a feel for what matters to them.

Maybe they’re heavily involved in the community or with charitable causes, maybe they have a terrific family life, and maybe they have strong local political ties. Whatever the case may be, it’s worth the effort to find out everything you can about a person before welcoming them into your legal firm. A background check and research may help in this regard, but hearing it from a candidate’s mouth can tell you a lot about what kind of person they are.

Past Successes and Failures

There’s one last thing you should consider during a job interview with a potential candidate for a prominent position with your legal firm. You should take into account those things which worked well during past interviews and were particularly revealing, just as you should consider dropping those questions which provided little value. Since your goal is to hire the best candidate for the job, you should always use those questions, and the kind of dialogue, which help to achieve that objective.

14 MAY

The Advantages of Working with a Legal Recruiter

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A professional legal recruiter is very good at finding and delivering multiple candidates suitable for employment at your firm, even when the position that needs to be filled is a very high-visibility, top management job. Undoubtedly, you have some in-house personnel who can do some of those same things, and find the talent needed to fill specific openings in your legal firm.

So what makes a professional recruiter more qualified than anyone on your staff, and why should you consider paying someone to do a job which could be handled by someone in your own company? Why are major corporations and large law firms more than willing to enlist the services of professional recruiting agencies to find talent? There are some definite differences between professional legal recruiters and anyone you may have in-house, as the discussion below should illustrate.

Negotiating Skills

One of the more overlooked skills a legal recruiter brings to the table is that of negotiation between clients and candidates, and this is a natural consequence of their ‘middleman’ position between the two. The legal recruiter represents both parties and is therefore ideally situated to bring about an agreement between the two, where such compromise is possible.

Any minor obstacles which can come up during the process are usually handled efficiently by a skilled legal recruiter so that that common ground can be discovered by the parties involved. The process of recruiting qualified talent to fill professional legal openings can be a very delicate matter at times, and it calls for genuine understanding and some skill at negotiating. The best legal recruiters are all very adept at this.

Matchmaking Skills

It’s not exactly a dating service, but a legal recruiter does usually have the cognizance necessary to match the right candidate with a firm in need of the candidate’s specific skills. To ensure the legal firm’s long-term stability, a conscientious legal recruiter will thoroughly vet candidates who appear to be well-suited on the surface.

That research must go below the surface though, to find out exactly what kind of person the candidate is. In truth, a weak candidate match reflects poorly on the legal recruiter as well, so it isn’t just a matter of inconvenience to the client firm – the reputation of the recruiter is also on the line.

The match-making legal recruiter also has to take into account all the elements about the legal hiring firm which are relevant to a potential candidate, for instance, their location, the areas of legal practice they’re engaged in, existing talent within the company, and the culture of the firm.

There is probably never a perfect fit between candidate and hiring company, and that’s why the skills of the legal recruiter are so valuable—finding numerous areas where the two can complement each other could very well lead to a long, thriving relationship. When things work out well, it can become a match made in heaven, with the candidate being very happy about working at the new company, and the legal firm prospering as a direct result of hiring a talented individual.

Legal Recruiter Discretion During the Search

There are many situations where a company in search of a high-profile candidate would not want that fact publicized. As one possibility, there may be in-house candidates who feel they were overlooked for the position, even though they may technically have been qualified. It’s also possible that conducting a broad search through classified ads and other channels may alert competitors to your company’s future direction.

Whatever the reasons might be, if it’s necessary for your company to maintain confidentiality during a search for an appropriate candidate, a legal recruiter would probably be your best bet for accomplishing that. In discussions with your chosen recruiter, you can make it clear that you prefer the search to be carried out confidentially, and that the selection process to be discreet.

Sense of Urgency

If for some reason, your company needs to find and interview candidates relatively quickly, you probably won’t have the resources to do that within your own company. If urgency is a factor in executing the selection process, a legal recruiter is well-equipped to carry that out on your behalf. Whereas you may not have anyone in your own company who can commit eight hours a day or more to finding candidates, a legal recruiter expects to spend every day doing exactly that, all day long.

Able to expedite the process, a recruiter will be much more familiar with the local marketplace and talent pool than anyone else who might be enlisted to help with the search. Not only does the recruiter have extensive knowledge of the local landscape, but they also generally have an extensive network of colleagues and contacts, all of whom can be consulted to help advance the progress of the search. When time is of the essence, there is no faster way that suitable legal talent can be discovered, vetted, and provided as interview candidates than through a legal recruiter.

7 MAY

How to Find Employees Suitable for Legal Positions

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Does your legal practice need to find employees? As the increasing demand for litigation services continues, so too does the need for legal firms to discover suitable talent. A survey conducted in the latter portion of 2017 revealed that the vast majority of legal firms are anticipating the need to expand staffing by hiring competent legal professionals. However, that may be easier said than done, since the available qualified talent will be at a premium.

The survey made it clear that those in charge of staffing for legal firms expect to face severe challenges in classifying talented personnel and luring them into the fold. Nearly half of the survey participants said they predict competition from other legal firms to be one of the primary obstacles to hiring desired candidates.

That being the case, it’s more important than ever that legal firms develop a formal strategy for finding qualified candidates and appealing to them strongly enough for them to accept employment. In order to develop that kind of overall hiring strategy, some of the most important things to be aware of are the specific hiring trends in your practice area, as well as what benefits qualified candidates consider desirable.

Experience is Important

One of the survey elements most often considered highly desirable in qualified candidates was a high level of experience, with the most appealing prospects having at least five years of experience as an associate or a paralegal. Professionals with this level of experience would have a very short learning curve as a rule on any new job because their business knowledge and proficiency would allow them to adapt to a new environment quickly.

Because experienced personnel is going to be highly sought by virtually all legal firms in need of staffing, it stands to reason that they will be the most difficult to hire, simply because they have multiple options available to them. This makes it likely that the shrinking talent pool will force many legal firms into a lateral-hiring mode so that they can find employees to fill critical vacancies.

Trends in Litigation Areas

Experience alone may not be the most decisive factor in obtaining qualified talent for your law firm, especially if the kind of experience you’re seeking is in a specific sector of the general litigation field. Trending downward is experience with personal and family law, and medical malpractice is in that same category of de-emphasized litigation trends.

Of much greater significance today are employment litigation and personal injury litigation, with hiring managers seeking candidates in these two areas at a rate of between 15% and 20%. Higher yet on the trending scale is commercial litigation, where 23% of desired candidates are needed to fill vacancies.

At the top though, and by far the hottest area of litigation in the legal profession these days, is insurance defense. More than 35% of hiring managers for legal firms declared in the survey that the kind of candidates they sought after were to fill positions that were primarily related to insurance defense. Many of the queried survey participants indicated that seeking candidates in these specific areas would alleviate the need for securing the services of external legal firms to fill gaps caused by litigation requirements.

Reasons to Find Employees

As can be seen from the above, one of the biggest drivers for hiring additional legal talent is the increased need for litigation attorneys. However, that isn’t the only reason that legal firms require additional staffing for the coming year. Many firms indicated a need for general business professionals who had a thorough understanding of commercial law, and who could provide support in those areas.

There is also a strong need for real estate lawyers, as well as labor and employment professionals with a solid background in these areas, with this experience being useful for handling client issues. Of lesser importance to hiring managers were candidates skilled in healthcare issues and regulatory issues, although between 2% and 3% of candidates were still being sought to fill positions in these two areas.

How to Attract Qualified Candidates

Given the fact that competition will be so intense for talented legal professionals in the foreseeable future, there are a few enticements you should consider beyond the obvious monetary inducements.

Many candidates polled in the survey expressed the opinion that after compensation, the most desirable perk which a legal firm could offer would be work arrangements that are very flexible, with nearly 30% of all respondents voicing this opinion. The next most appealing job perk was considered to be the opportunity for professional development at a firm, including work assignments which are challenging, and the potential for personal growth. In some cases, these two considerations ranked even higher than salary levels.

Something you should remember when seeking to find employees is that no matter how good your perks and benefits are, it would be best to for you to plunge right in and start looking for needed candidates as soon as possible. With a talent pool that is steadily shrinking, every wasted day may leave fewer and fewer candidates to choose from.

30 APR

Your Staffing Plan: What Needs to be Accounted for?

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Devising an adequate staffing plan involves more than determining whether your current number of employees equates to the current number of job openings. If there’s a noticeable shortage of employees due to high turnover rate or some other reason, that points to the need for increased staffing pretty clearly.

However, there are some other factors which you should evaluate as a hiring manager or as a business owner, to make sure that you are adequately staffed for the coming year. Given the fact that talented employees for skilled positions are difficult to find, this can be an essential process for you to go through.

When you’re reviewing your overall staffing situation for an upcoming period, here are some factors you should take into account to make sure you have the right number of people and the right skills to accomplish your business objectives.

Obvious Employee Shortage

If it’s apparent that you lack adequate staffing, or that you require skilled personnel to fill specific positions, you should take steps to find that talent as soon as possible. It’s reasonably well-known that the talent pool which is currently available for skill positions in this country is not adequate to meet demand, so there may be many other companies competing for that talent.

That makes it crucial that you devise a plan for how you’re going to attract skilled employees and how you’re going to find them in the first place. One of the first things you need to do is have a meeting of the minds among all managers and executives in the company to discuss employment needs, compensation packages, and specific time frames for hiring. If you can develop a consensus on the main points about needed talent and benefits to be offered, it will save a lot of time in the future.

Obstacles to Hiring

You should make it your business to be aware of any obstacles that might get in the way of hiring the staff that you need. For instance, if you’re aware of a similar talent search from other employers in the local area, this is going to intensify the competition for any available skilled workers.

Although it might be difficult, you should attempt to find out the depth of the talent pool in your area, perhaps by consulting with employment agencies and by researching university graduations in your field.

If one of the obstacles to hiring necessary talent is on your end, e.g., lower salary offers than your competitors, you’re going to have to consider some other benefit you can provide to offset that disadvantage. If necessary, you may need to consider deferring other high-budget items to a future business quarter, so that you can have a better chance of securing adequate staffing to meet business objectives.

The Numbers are Right, but not the Skill Sets

One of the traps you should avoid as a hiring manager is to think that you have adequate staffing just because all positions are currently filled. Numbers don’t always tell the whole story, and this is a case where that is very definitely true.

For instance, all positions might be well accounted for, but the performance level from two or three key areas is not what you need it to be. Then too, there is the possibility that your business priorities will be changing for the coming period, and your staffing level needs to change with it, either numerically or in terms of talent.

You should also consider the possibility that one or more of your most valuable employees will unexpectedly leave the company. After all, if you think they’re talented, it’s likely that other companies will see them the same way, and those other companies may be trying to entice them away from you. Your staffing plan should not focus entirely on the number of people you have working for you, nor on the number of skilled positions which need to be adequately manned. It should also include some consideration of personnel changes, both expected and unexpected.

Your Staffing Plan for Upcoming Projects

Another significant component of a good staffing plan is to have an understanding of what the business objectives for the coming year are, and what kind of projects will be worked on during that time. You should look at whether or not you have adequate staffing to accomplish those projects planned for the coming period, and whether you can solve any shortages by a reallocation of personnel. It may not be necessary to take on new staff if you can accomplish upcoming projects by reorganizing departments or project teams.

If it’s at all possible, you should try to set aside sufficient budget for hiring additional personnel, should that become necessary. Given the fact that business objectives can change very quickly, and there can always be an unexpected exit of valuable employees, you should be prepared for such eventualities.

Of course, it may be a tough sell trying to convince upper management that budget should be set aside for the uncertainties of business, but adequate staffing is a critical area that justifies a little strain on the budget. Without the right staffing plan to help achieve your company’s business objectives, it’s going to be very difficult to accomplish them.

16 APR

Choosing the Right Recruiting Firm for Your Legal Practice

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When your company needs to find skilled candidates to fill an upper management or executive role, it’s a process that you just can’t afford to misfire on, so it’s understandable that you might want to leave it to the experts and hire a recruiting firm.

But which one should you hire? There are probably several reputable recruiting firms in your area, and each of these might have some compelling testimonials from professionals that you know. In addition to finding a company that is highly qualified to carry out an executive search, the best recruiting firm to work with should be one whose representatives are very compatible with your company personnel.

This is a significant element for several reasons, among them the fact that you will have to convey to them the position requirements and acceptable hiring terms, as well as possibly even asking for their assistance with onboarding. Here are some suggestions about things to look for in a recruiting firm that might best serve your needs, when you have to fill a highly visible role within your company.

Recruiting Firm Experience

One of the first things you should do is investigate the upper management of the recruiting firm you are considering. More than likely, that kind of information will be available online, so you can quickly check out their prior experience level with high profile recruitments. You should also be able to learn about their other business experience, and how long they have worked with other industries.

Social media platforms like LinkedIn will also provide some clues and background information about the people that you might be working with, especially about their professional ties. To be thorough, you should also check into at least some of the staff members for your candidate recruiting firm, to see what levels of experience they have and where their expertise lies. It would be beneficial for instance, to find out that at least some of the members of a candidate recruiting team have had considerable prior experience with finding executives in your specific industry.

Geographic Reach

It’s entirely possible that the kind of high profile candidate you’re looking for to fill a position may not be locally available, and in fact, this is very likely to be the case. That makes it important for any recruiting firm you work with to have a broad geographic reach that they can canvass for potential hires.

It may be necessary for your recruiting firm to have strong associations out-of-state, possibly even on the other side of the country. This is, in fact, one of the reasons that you would probably want to enlist the services of a capable recruiting firm in the first place—because they have a much broader network of contacts than your company could hope to have with any talent pool.

How do They Approach Executive Search?

If your research has turned up some possibilities for a recruiting agency you think you can work with, you’ll probably have to take the direct approach then and contact someone in that company, to ask them some specific questions. It is essential to know what their process is in going about an executive search for talent.

You’ll also want to know how they intend to gain a clear understanding of what you’re looking for, and how candidates should be evaluated. A few ground rules about how to set up interviews should also be included in this exploratory discussion, as well as any steps they take concerning vetting candidates.

Lastly, it will be important to establish an understanding of how they intend to keep you updated on the progress of the executive search, so you aren’t left wondering throughout the process.

Gaining Confidence in a Recruiting Company

Assuming that you find one or more recruiting agencies that you think might be suitable to work with, you should then attempt to gain a measure of confidence in that company so that you feel good about your chances of success. One of the ways you can do this is by asking for client references, especially from clients whose talent searches were like the kind of search you’re about to become involved with.

Polling any trusted contacts in your circle might also be a good way of learning about how trustworthy and reliable any given recruiting firm might be. It’s entirely possible that any testimonial can be somewhat skewed and even a little inaccurate, but you should be able to get a general idea of a recruiting company after reviewing some different sources. If the overwhelming body of information you receive is favorable, you are probably safe in dismissing one or two negative assessments.

Finding a recruiting firm to work with to secure the services of a top-notch executive or another high-profile manager should be done very carefully and with the utmost focus on getting it right. That makes it worthwhile to be painstakingly correct about each step in the process, especially once you’ve engaged the services of a recruiting company to help you find your candidate.

4 APR

Dealing With an Indifferent Interviewer: Personal Connection

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Landing a job with a legal firm as a lawyer is a moderately challenging process as it involves all the work you’ve done academically, passing a pretty stiff bar exam, and preparing a resume that’s interesting enough to get you an interview at the firm of your choice. The interview itself can also be pretty grueling, especially if there are numerous sessions, and several of the partners want to learn all about you personally. More often than not, you may even have to face more than one interviewer, with one of them engaging you as the others observe your reactions and responses.

Of course, it doesn’t always work out this way in face-to-face interviews for a legal position, and instead of a battery of razor-sharp professionals grilling you, it’s also possible that your interviewer is someone who happens to be somewhat indifferent to the process. It could be your luck to draw the one partner at the firm who is not a very well-spoken individual, and who has so little interest in the interview process that they appear to have difficulty staying awake. While this may not happen often, you should be prepared for the eventuality when it does.

Make a Good First Impression

That old saying about not getting a second chance to make a good first impression is entirely true of the face-to-face job interview. Those first few minutes of engagement with a job interviewer are critical, and you should make every effort to appear friendly and responsive so that you can help set a positive tone for what follows.

It just might be that your cheery and talkative demeanor rubs off on your interviewer and gets him/her into the moment much better. This doesn’t mean you have to carry the conversation or drive the direction of the interview, but you should cheerfully respond and be prepared to take up the slack if your interviewer appears to be a somewhat dry conversationalist.

Do Your Own Background Check

You will likely know who’s going to interview you by name before the actual meeting takes place, and that means you should have the opportunity to find out information about them. It’s a simple matter to go on the firm’s website and look up information about the partners which you can use to stimulate conversation.

If it turns out that your interviewer has difficulty with sustaining dialogue, you can liven things up by asking questions about academic background or case history of the person. Not only will you be maintaining a more favorable atmosphere and tone for the interview, but you will be demonstrating that you were interested enough to do some prior research before the meeting.

Make a Personal Connection With Your Interviewer

It might be even better if you can establish a more personal connection with your interviewer by introducing talking points about their family or hobbies. When you first walk into the interviewer’s office, a quick glance around at the walls and the objects on the desk may provide you with enough information to bring up either or both of these topics, or something else of a personal nature.

For instance, you might see an award on the wall from a local organization about outstanding service rendered by this particular partner. There might be a golf trophy or a bowling trophy that could provide stimulating conversation. Photos of the family are another obvious discussion point, or possibly pictures taken on a fishing or hunting trip with friends. All of these can serve to keep the conversation going whenever the interviewer seems to be running out of things to say.

Don’t Take it Personally

Make sure you don’t take it personally if your interviewer appears to lack interest in the process, or in you. If you do allow yourself to think that way, chances are it will affect your mindset as the interview progresses, and you will not be presenting yourself most efficiently.

Regardless of how indifferent your interviewer may be, you still need to bring your A-game and try to handle every question skillfully and accurately. The worst thing that could happen is that you allow the tone of the interview to bog down, and become as disjointed and strained as the questions from your interviewer.

Be Ready for Canned Questions

In situations where your interviewer is having difficulty coming up with questions about your experience, or about anything else relevant to employment, it’s possible that they may fall back on old reliable inquiries that call for little or no thought.

That means you should prepare for questions about where you see yourself in the next five years, or what your greatest strengths and weaknesses might be. Yes, they’re puffball questions, but if you’re not prepared to give a robust response to them, you could end up leaving an unfavorable impression.

You should be able to tell in the first few minutes of the meeting whether the partner you happen to be conversing with is of the type that falls into the category of an indifferent interviewer. As soon as you make this determination in your head, try to recall some of the tips mentioned above and be prepared to take a more active role in creating a personal connection during the interview so that you can make the most of the opportunity.