Guest writer, Richard Hooper from Balance Recruitment, tells us his take on how best to attract and retain the right person for your law firm.
I’ll soon be approaching 20 years of recruiting within the legal finance community and I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts and advice in the ILFM’s Legal Finance & Management Forum on the 15th March.
The topic for the forum is ‘Attract, Train & Retain’, all areas that I discuss day in day out, both from an employer and employees’ perspective, so I hope to be able to add some real value and practical advice to those who join the forum.
Attracting and retaining staff isn’t easy and there’s no getting away from the fact that hiring is usually a frustrating experience. It’s a distraction and requires investment of time, which is a precious resource. It can also be expensive, particularly when things go wrong, which is all too common.
However, for those with the need and/or motivation to solve such problems, there are nearly always some simple steps to remedy them. It can even become an enjoyable process and an opportunity to strengthen a team.
Attracting staff
Attracting staff is difficult for most businesses that don’t carry a household name. So how do you go about enticing someone to want to join your firm?
Firstly, you need to consider your audience. Who are you trying to attract? What stage of their career are they likely to be in right now, and what can you offer them that’s going to improve their situation?
Salary, benefits and office culture all play a part in this, but to attract people’s attention in a candidate short hiring market, the potential career move really needs to make sense. Whether that’s through professional development and training, offering them more of the work they enjoy or helping them achieve other career/life goals, you first need to understand what you can offer to the individual/s you’re hoping to identify.
You then need to capture their attention and get this message across. This is where most firms struggle.
Take a look at the last job advert your firm produced and shared. Was it an advert or was it a job description? Adverts create desire. They focus on the reader’s desires not the firm’s needs and wants. Anyone reading it needs to know “WIIFM” (what’s in it for me). Job descriptions don’t do this. When they’re used for vacancy adverts they read like a list of demands.
They can still work, but they’re only going to appeal to the small segment of the talent pool who are the most active in their job search. Around 20% of the market by most estimations.
When you’re only meeting active job seekers, you’d better have an attractive proposition to offer, as you’re like to have competition for the stronger applicants you see. They may even be applying for roles as knee-jerk emotional response to a situation in their current employment that can be remedied when push comes to shove. It often does when someone hands their notice in, resulting in a last-minute withdrawal from your process and back to square one with the search.
Thoughtful consideration needs to go in to producing a compelling advert if you want to attract the most relevant individuals. Many people casually browse vacancy adverts, with targeted adverts appearing in their social media feeds. Only when they hit on something that really connects with them will they be called to action, and to do that, you need to adopt effective copywriting techniques to keep them reading. If not already doing so, engage your marketing team in the process of creating adverts – it’s commercially sound use of their expertise and abilities.
The other route to market is via external recruiters.
Law firm leaders are familiar with ‘no win - no fee’ business (aka CFA’s – Conditional Fee Agreements). For some it’s part of their business model, whilst for many areas of legal services, you just couldn’t commit fee earners to spend sufficient time on work for which they might not get paid. Work that looks unlikely to result in a return won’t be taken on in the first place.
Strangely though, this is the model in which most law firms prefer their recruitment partners to operate, often instructing multiple recruiters at the same time. There’s a misconception that this provides wider access to the talent pool, when the reality is that this creates a race to represent the most easily accessible job seekers, regardless if they’re the best possible fit. With competition all vying for the same success fee, rigour and diligence won’t always be rewarded.
Identifying a respected and experienced recruitment partner and working with them in an exclusive, committed partnership will allow them to search high and low to identify and engage with the best available talent for your vacancy. They’ll be able to ensure both the short and longer term requirements from the role align with the motivations of recommended applicants, resulting in the building of better teams and improving long term retention rates.
Retaining staff
As a recruiter, discussing people’s motivations for change is a daily occurrence. In many instances, it’s just time for a fresh challenge. Most employers will recognise that some staff turnover is inevitable and can breathe life and innovation in to their teams. Long gone are the ‘job for life’ days. In our 2022 Legal Accounts Salary Survey, 43% of participants had been with their current firm for under 5 years.
There are instances however that are avoidable and costly for employers. Recruitment and inductions use up precious time and expense, and premature departures can be a real blow to morale and progress within finance teams.
Keeping people engaged and motivated is therefore crucial to keep wandering eyes away from the job boards. Ongoing training and personal development should be high on the agenda for staff you’re looking to retain long term. You may not be able to offer regular promotions to everyone looking for progression in their careers, but when you invest in upskilling those individuals, you’ll keep them engaged and motivated for far longer.
There’s plenty more you can do too, which we’ll cover in detail on the 15th March. I hope you can join us or continue this conversation through the ILFM.
Richard Hooper, Balance Recruitment
Comments