The identification, attraction and retention of the best candidates has always been a preoccupation of partners and general counsel in the legal sector. Once academic results have been used as a filter, hiring managers can still be left with a group of articulate individuals with good presentation skills. With comparatively more lawyers now on the ‘open’ job market how do employers distinguish between them when attempting to secure the very best employee?
The current state of the economy has complicated the situation: In many areas there is a surplus of individuals with the right prerequisites, and yet not all of them are going to be ideal for the roles they are applying for. A combination of redundancy and fewer new positions has meant that candidates will consider, and even take, career moves that do not necessarily align with their true ambitions.
With comparatively more lawyers now on the ‘open’ job market how do employers distinguish between them when attempting to secure the very best employee?
Candidates that accept a job on the basis of “any port in a storm” can have a negative effect on a team. Low levels of enthusiasm and motivation may create tension and jeopardise a department’s performance. In addition to this, employees in such roles will be highly likely to continue their search for their ideal role – “it’s better to search for a job from within a job”. Once they do find a new job, the employer will find themselves back at square one.
So how can employers identify the candidate that genuinely wants their position? Firstly the hiring manager should fully explore the circumstances of their departure – who else was made redundant? Why? What were the redundancy criteria based on? How had their previous appraisals gone? What were their billings figures like in good years, i.e. 2007? Who can you approach for a reference to check all this? Secondly it is worth investigating the candidate’s view of their previous employer – are they bitter and angry or realistic and pragmatic over their departure? Thirdly, hiring managers should examine candidates’ long term career aspirations – what had they wanted to do when they started their career? How have their aspirations developed over their working life? How have they re-evaluated their aspirations in light of their current situation, if at all? What would their plan have been if they hadn’t been made redundant?
Appropriate filters should be applied at an early stage to help whittle down applicant numbers to more manageable proportions – such as setting highly specific qualifications, skills and experience criteria. There are many techniques that can be used to comprehensively explore a candidates’ skills and experience to get really honest answers in addition to asking standard direct questions. Competency based interviewing is one of the best tools to look at underlying behaviours and questions candidates about situations they have actually been in – it is much easier for candidates to mislead interviewers if they’re asked direct, simple and factual questions.
If employers find they need to reject large numbers of candidates for a given vacancy the response needs to be handled quickly and appropriately in order to avoid damaging their employer brand. Recruitment agencies are invaluable in times of candidate over-supply. They act as an initial filter and buffer, responding in a timely manner to all applicants on behalf of the employer. Well trained and experienced recruitment consultants can identify suitable candidates and use competency based interviewing to gain a true understanding of a candidates’ aspirations as well as acting as an independent, third party sounding board to further distinguish between good candidates.
