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Legal Business |
Firms often fail to manage the recruitment process well. It is important to realise that the smaller the firm, the more effort and care must go into the recruitment process. The reason is quite obvious — the impact of one person in an organisation of five people will be far greater than the impact of one person in an organisation of 50 people. There is also a tendency among law firms to sometimes fail to give due regard to the importance of the selection of non-fee earners. This is a common mistake.
Let us consider some aspects of managing recruitment.
If you have recently advertised for job openings, as I have, you will realise that good employees are hard to find. You place your advertisement in the press or with The Law Society and you are pleased when you see a stack of resumes awaiting your review. However, you soon become disappointed as you begin looking at them. ‘Why did this guy apply? He doesn’t have half the required number of years of experience!’ ‘This applicant has never done this kind of work before.’ ‘That lady must have responded to the wrong advertisement!’
Finding and hiring the best candidates for a job has never been easy. However, with all the streamlining, downsizing and rightsizing going on today, a lot of people are looking for work. The challenge is to figure out how to pluck the best candidates from a sea strewn with flotsam and jetsam.
Employers look for many qualities in candidates. The real question is, what is important to you? Generally, there are some basic qualities that good candidates must have. They are:
Hard work can often overcome a lack of experience or training. You want to hire people who are willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Conversely, no amount of skill can make up for a lack of initiative or work ethic. Although you won’t know for sure until you make your hire, careful questioning of candidates can give you some idea of their work ethic.
What constitutes good attitude is different for different people. A positive, friendly, willing-to-help perspective makes life at the office much more enjoyable and makes everyone’s job easier. When you interview candidates, consider what they’ll be like to work with for the next five to 10 years.
Candidates often naively think that they would be hired immediately based on the weight of their academic qualifications. However, experience is a critical element in the hiring decision matrix. An interview gives you the opportunity to ask very pointed questions that require your candidates to demonstrate to you that they can do the job.
You don’t want to hire someone today and then find out that he or she is already looking for the next position tomorrow. You can get some indication of a person’s potential stability or a lack of it by looking at how long he or she has remained with each employer, particularly the last and asking why he or she left their previous positions.
Bright people can often find better and quicker solutions to the problems that confront them. In the commercial world that we all operate in today, bright people give you a cutting edge and can make a significant difference to the success of your firm.
You need to hire people who are willing to take on the responsibilities of their positions. I fear we have not developed a culture where taking responsibility is part of the work ethic. You should find out exactly what your candidate has been responsible for, their exact roles and find out how much responsibility they are willing to take on.
Hiring the right people is one of the most important tasks in managing a firm or a department within a firm. Unfortunately, most of us give too little time and thought to this important task. The employers seldom realise that they too need to spend time preparing for the interview and they must leave enough time in the actual interview to cover the important areas. Whether you believe it or not, the results you get from a hiring process is usually in direct proportion to the amount of time you devote to it. If you devote yourself to finding the best candidate for a position, you are much more likely to find them. If you rely on chance to bring them to you, you may be disappointed with what and whom you find.
People are the heart of every business and let’s face it, running a law firm is a business. The better the people running your business, the better the business you will have. Some people are just meant to be in their jobs. It may be as simple as someone who just thrives on being a receptionist. Think about how great your firm would be if you staffed every position with people who are dedicated to doing their jobs well.
A bad recruitment can make working for a firm an incredibly miserable experience. Over the years I have observed many lawyers whose ability to be effective has been significantly restricted or undermined by their support staff. The negative impact of hiring the wrong candidate can reverberate through the firm. It is better to spend a few extra hours up front to find the best candidate than to devote countless hours trying to straighten out the difficulties caused by a problem employee.
More than anything else, the heart of the interview process is the questions that you ask and the answers that you receive in response. You get the best answers when you ask the right questions.
A great interviewer asks great questions. You can categorise all interview questions under one of these four headings:
Really. Why is the person sitting across from you going through the trouble of interviewing with you today? You have just one way to find out — ask. You may assume that the answer is because he or she wants a job with your firm, but you may be surprised at what you find.
Always an important consideration! Of course, your candidates are all going to dazzle you with their incredible personalities, experience, work ethic and love of teamwork — that almost goes without saying.
Few of your candidates will be absolute angels or demons, but don’t forget that you’ll spend a lot of time with the person that you hire. You want to hire someone whom you enjoy being with during the many work hours, weeks and years that stretch before you. Do they share your views in regards to work hours, responsibility and responsiveness? Are they responsible and dependable?
It does you no good if you find the perfect candidate but, at the end of the interview, you bring up the topic of pay and find out that you are far apart. Keep in mind that the actual wage you pay to workers is only part of an overall compensation package.
So what should you do to prepare for your interviews?
Not only is it extremely poor form to read your interviewees’ resumes during the interview, but you miss out on the opportunity to tailor your questions to those little surprises that you invariably discover in the resumes.
Are you familiar with all the duties and requirements of the job? Really? Telling interviewees that the position requires duties that it doesn’t is poor form. It’s definitely poor form to surprise new hires with duties that you didn’t tell them about at the interview — especially when they are major duties.
Make a checklist of the key experience, skills and qualities that you seek in your candidates and use it to guide your questions. Of course, one of your questions may trigger other questions that you didn’t anticipate. Go ahead with such questions as long as they provide you with additional insights regarding your candidate and help to illuminate the information that you’ve outlined on your checklist.
Your interviewee will likely be uncomfortable regardless of what you do. You don’t need to be uncomfortable too. Make sure that the interview environment is well-ventilated, private and protected from interruptions. You definitely don’t want your phone ringing off the hook or employees barging in during your interviews. You get the best performance from your interviewees when they aren’t thrown off track by distractions.
Don’t rely on your memory when it comes to interviewing candidates for a job. If you interview more than a couple of people, you can easily forget who said what and what your impressions of their performances were. Not only are your written notes a great way to remember who’s who, but they’re also an important tool to have when you are evaluating your candidates.
As you have no doubt gathered by now, interview questions are one of your best tools for determining whether a candidate is right for your firm. Although some amount of small talk is appropriate to help your candidates relax, the heart of your interview should focus on getting the information you need to make your decision.
You did take interview notes, didn’t you? Now is the time to look them over. Review the information on each candidate — one by one — and compare your findings against your pre-determined criteria. Take a look at the candidates’ resumes, your notes and the results of your reference checks. How do they stack up against the standards that you have set for the position? Do you see any clear winners at this point? Any clear losers? Organise your candidates into the following stacks:
These candidates are clearly the best choices for the position. You wouldn’t hesitate hiring any one of them.
These candidates are questionable for one reason or another. Maybe their experience isn’t as strong as that of other candidates, or perhaps you weren’t impressed with their presentation skills. Neither clear winners nor clear losers, you’ll likely consider these candidates for hire only after further investigation or if you are unable to hire anyone from your pool of winners.
These candidates are clearly unacceptable for the position. There is no way that you would consider hiring any of them.
In some cases, you may prefer certain candidates because of their personalities or personal charisma — regardless of their abilities or work experience. Sometimes the desire to like these candidates can obscure their shortcomings, while a better qualified, albeit less socially adept candidate may fade in your estimation.
Be objective. Consider the job that is to be done and consider the skills and qualifications that being successful requires. Do your candidates have these skills and qualifications? What would it take for your candidates to be considered fully qualified for the position?
Don’t allow yourself to be unduly influenced by your candidates’ looks, champagne-like personalities, high-priced hairstyles or dangerously named colognes. It’s unlikely that any of these things will tell you how well your candidates will perform on the job. The facts are there for you to see in their resumes, interview notes and any reference checks that you are able to make. If you stick to the facts, you can’t go wrong.
What do you do if you are unable to hire anyone from your group of winners? This is a tough call, but no one said that management is an easy task. Take a look at your stack of potential winners. What would it take to turn your top potential winners into winners? Perhaps they just need a little more experience before you would put them in the ranks of the winners. You can make a judgement call as to whether you think that their current experience is sufficient to carry them through until they gain the experience you are looking for. If not, you may want to keep looking for the right candidate. After all, this person may be working with you for a long time — waiting for the best candidate only makes sense.
If you are forced to go to your group of almost winners and no candidate really seems up to the task, then don’t hire someone simply to fill the position. If you do, you’ll probably be making a big mistake. Hiring employees is far easier than ‘unhiring’ them. The damage that an inappropriate hire can wreak — on co-workers, your clients and your organisation — can take years and considerable amounts of money to undo. Not only that, it can be a really big pain in your neck!
Stanley Jeremiah
Goodwins Law Corporation
E-mail:
stanley_jeremiah@goodwinslaw.com