8 Ways You Can Help Us Help You Win the Job Search/Recruiting Game

We’re not opponents. The object is for everyone—candidate, employer, and recruiter—to end up on the same team, with all parties having achieved their goals.

Here’s how you, candidates and our employer-clients, can help us legal recruiters help you win at the job search/recruiting game:

1. Know what you want

• Candidates – spend some time at the outset clarifying your must-haves and desires in terms of practice, type of organization, culture, compensation, and location so we can search for opportunities that meet your career goals as well as your personal needs and preferences.
• Employers – be clear about what you seek. Let us know the seniority level, practice experience, and soft skills you need for a successful placement. Importantly, make sure all your stakeholders are on the same page before we start your search. Otherwise, we’re all spinning our wheels.

2. Know what you have to offer

• Candidates – identify how you can bring value to a prospective employer and what sets you apart from everyone else in the marketplace. Be ready to discuss your experiences to illustrate your skills and attributes when interviewing both with search consultants and potential employers. Perhaps write a business development plan to clarify your selling points for yourself and to help your recruiter identify firms with the best platforms to maximize your value proposition.
• Employers – it’s important to differentiate your organization from others in the market in terms of support for a candidate’s career growth, business development, and cultural compatibility. Be ready with an answer to the question: Why should lawyers want to join your particular organization?

3. Have your marketing materials ready

• Candidates – polish your resume and be prepared to provide your recruiter with highlights to incorporate in their cover letters. Write a business development plan if you’re a counsel- or partner-level law firm lawyer and have your production numbers (hours, billings, collections, realization rate) and conflicts information (matters and adverse parties) at hand. Review your writing samples and/or update your representative matters/deal sheet. Prepare a list of references. And, associates, make sure you have a copy of your law school transcript. Your recruiter will need all those materials at some point in the process.
• Employers – please have an updated and complete website, with additional practice-specific information available for recruiters to provide to prospects. Encourage your marketing department and recruiting professionals to work together to create materials to attract candidates, not just clients, to the firm. It’s helpful to provide recruiters with a “law firm highlights” document to share with candidates. Promote your firm’s differentiators, culture, statistics, affinity groups, etc., as well as any recent talent acquisitions, wins or deals, and other press. And make sure your firm’s successes hit the legal press to raise your recruiting profile.

4. Be responsive

• Candidates – When prospective employers have questions or want to schedule an interview, the promptness of your responses to your recruiter with the answers or your availability indicates your interest in the position while also demonstrating how you might treat client inquiries.
• Employers – a quick and full response indicates interest. Any lack of response to a recruiter’s or candidate’s questions allows ardor to cool and decreases the likelihood that either the recruiter will give your future searches priority or that your desired candidate will maintain their interest in your opportunity

5. Get your hustle on

• Candidates – Don’t drag your feet! Chances are that there are other candidates in the wings and your delays will prompt both the recruiter and the employer to move on to the next one who is ready to move apace. Also, get back to us quickly after your interviews for a full debrief so we can work with both you and the potential employer to move the process forward smoothly.
• Employers – Of course your lawyers are busy practicing law and your clients’ needs must take priority, but time kills all deals. In a competitive marketplace, the top candidates will have multiple suiters. You don’t want to lose them to your competitors who moved more quickly. Get back to us as soon as you can regarding your interest in any submissions and after each step of the interviewing process. On the other hand, let us know if you have no further interest in the candidate so we can continue our search to fill your hiring need.

6. Communicate openly and honestly

• Candidates – Recruiters need to know the whole truth, warts and all. We can help smooth the way by tackling the touchy subjects on your behalf or coach you in how best to talk about any possible blemishes in your record. Failure to disclose important information up front to either your recruiter or prospective employer can lead to termination of employment discussions or, if already hired, get you fired.
• Employers – the more you tell your recruiters, the better we are able to bring you the candidates you want. Let us know what’s going on behind the scenes at your firm and tell us why the candidates we present do or don’t fill the bill. We then can be more on target next time.

7. Be open to coaching

• Candidates – One of the benefits of using a reputable recruiter is to have the benefit of our knowledge and experience. We know what our clients want and what will work best with those employers specifically and in the market in general. Listen to our advice on preparing your job search documents, selecting which firms to pursue, how to interview, how to proceed throughout the interview process, and negotiating your offer.
• Employers – Since we talk to the candidates, we know their motivations and what they seek in terms of opportunity and offers. We can help you tailor your approach with each candidate, including the composition of the interviewing team, information the individual candidate needs in order to decide, and their hot buttons and pain points. We want to help you land the candidates you desire, so let us give you the information you need to increase your chances of doing so.

8. Play by the rules

• Candidates and employers – It helps if everyone is playing by the same rules.
• Using recruiters who are members of NALSC (National Association of Legal Search Consultants) ensures that they have agreed to be bound by the NALSC Code of Ethics® which establishes rules for conduct vis a vis candidates, clients, and other search firms. Increasingly, law firms include compliance with the NALSC Code of Ethics® in their agreements with search firms as a requirement for doing business together, demonstrating their growing demand for heightened ethical behavior by search firms.
• While there may be excellent, non-NALSC-member recruiters out there, only NALSC members are bound by the NALSC Code of Ethics®.  A complaint cannot be filed against a non-member who violates its provisions even if that non-member search firm signed an agreement with a law firm to abide by the provisions of the Code, because that non-member has not agreed to be bound by the Code’s enforcement process. So, keep that in mind when choosing your recruiting teammates.

Let’s  play ball!