Recruitment Advice

The purpose of most interviews is to establish two things. First, whether you have the skills, knowledge and experience for the role. Second, to find out if you are the right fit.  What the interviewer is trying to establish is whether your values, outlook and ambitions match those of the firm and the people who work there. The question asked to determine this is usually along the lines of “What attracts you to this role?” or “Why do you want to work here?”

Candidates often don’t give this question due care and attention. It’s often asked at the start of the interview, and they give a somewhat perfunctory answer. Candidates wrongly treat this question as little more than a warm-up ahead of what they consider to be the meat of the interview, namely questions about their skills and experience. This is a big mistake.

Candidates need to think more deeply about why firms ask this sort of question. What interviewers are trying to ascertain is whether you are likely to be at the firm for the long haul. In some ways, you could say that they want to find out if the candidate’s ‘story’ (i.e. their values, future career and where they see themselves in the years ahead) aligns with the firm’s values and where it is headed. In other words, interviewers want to have a thorough understanding of what matters to the candidate, where they’ve been, and whether this role will get them to where they want to be?

The candidate’s ‘story’

The three main topics to discuss when answering this question are broadly:

• The services the firm offers and why this interests you.

• The firm’s culture, mission and philosophy and what appeals to you about them.

• The training and development they provide and why that is important to you.

Regurgitating what you have read or heard about the firm during your research is not enough. It’s how you relate what you have found out specifically to you, your interests and ambitions that matters.

You should be pleased to be able to answer this question early on as it will set the tone for the rest of the interview. Bear in mind that from the interviewer’s point of view, all the skills and experience in the world won’t make up for the fact that the candidate and firm are not on the same page. Firms recognise that skills can be learned and experience acquired, but fit either exists or it doesn’t.

It should go without saying (though I’ll mention it anyway) that giving the salary or benefits as an answer is an absolute no-no.

Relocation

How you answer the “why us” question is even more important if you would need to relocate to take the job. It may not be that important if you are moving to London from the regions – London has a huge ‘pull’ factor, salaries are high, and almost everybody knows somebody in the capital – but it’s vital if you’re moving from London to the regions or if the move involves a relocation overseas.

In these circumstances, the interviewer is trying to decide whether you are likely to reverse your move due to a failure to settle. Typical follow-up questions you can expect are whether you are originally from the area or went to university there and whether you have local friends, family or any other ties. You need to overcome any doubts in the interviewer’s mind that you intend staying for the long term and that they won’t be recruiting for the same role in a few months or a year or two down the line.

The firm’s ‘story’

Thinking about this question in terms of your ‘story’ can help you focus not just on whether you are right for the job, but also whether the job is right for you. It’s easy to forget that an interview is a two-way street. Candidates can become so desperate to get an offer that they fall into the trap of convincing themselves that the firm is a fit for them. They need to take a step back and use their questions to the interviewer to work out if they want to work there after all.

If you ask the general public which professions they dislike the most, lawyers would come pretty high on the list. This isn’t new. Shakespeare was in on the act more than 400 years ago. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” says Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, part 2. That’s a bit harsh in my view. Surely that punishment should be reserved for bankers and estate agents?

Ask the same questions to a bunch of lawyers and their response is likely to be unanimous: recruitment agents. It seems there is a special place in the dark heart of most lawyers reserved for people who in theory should be helping them with their careers.

Why is that? Here are four reasons why newly qualified solicitors don’t like recruitment agents:

1. They waste your time by advertising non-existent jobs

This is an age-old tactic. Advertise a juicy sounding vacancy in order to build a database of candidates that they might be able to place at some future date. You spend ages honing your CV and gearing up for an initial interview with the agent, only to discover that the ‘job’ has already been filled. Don’t worry, you are told, even better opportunities will be along shortly. And now they have your CV on file, you’ll be ahead of the game.

2. They don’t keep you informed

Not all jobs are fictional. Sometimes the agent manages to secure an interview for you with a firm you would like to join. You think the interview went well and are already picturing yourself progressing well at your new home. You are excited, and anxiously waiting for ‘the call’. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting… You calls are met by voicemail, your messages unanswered. When you finally get through, you are told that unfortunately the job went to someone else. No explanation, no feedback.

3. They’re indiscreet

Worse than not getting a call at all is being called on your work number. You mumble into the handset trying to disguise who you are talking to, hoping that the partner you’re sharing an office with doesn’t cotton on.

Or, the agent touts your CV to all and sundry without your consent. They’ll even send it to firms that aren’t recruiting, in the vague hope that their scattergun approach will find a target. Any target. No thought is given to the incestuous nature of the legal world. Your boss’s best friend is Head of Department at that firm. How could they do that?!

4. They put you forward for a position that is totally unsuitable

This usually goes something like this. “I know this isn’t exactly what you are looking for but this firm is really going places and you are a great fit for them.” In other words, ignore the fact that you want to join a magic circle firm to do high value M&A work, why not attend an interview with a West End firm looking for a corporate/commercial lawyer?

Some agents are more subtle. They will tell you that the job is precisely what you are looking for. This is the type of work you want to do, it’s a great salary and there are real partnership prospects. These are lies. Of course, you only find this out as you sit across the desk from the interviewer and listen to them outline a different role entirely, at a lower salary.

You then have to fend off persistent calls from the agent trying to convince you that it would be a big mistake not to take this job. Sometimes it’s even tempting to accept it for no other reason than to stop the agent calling you!

Social mobility ought to be a top priority for law firms if they want to attract the best employees and help create a more diverse, innovative profession. 

As a recruiter, one of the words I hear regularly from hirers when recruiting junior lawyers at NQ to 2 PQE is ‘fit’. Will the potential hire be a good fit? How will they fit in with other junior lawyers at the firm?

To my mind, this is code for, “Are they one of us?” It is this type of thinking that leads to firms recruiting identikit lawyers who share the same background in terms of class, upbringing and education.

If you don’t fit the mould, there are invisible barriers that can reduce your chances of being employed by certain firms or even entering the profession at all. This is regardless of your abilities.

This type of blinkered thinking is not exclusive to lawyers. It crosses all sectors and has resulted in the UK being one of worst countries in the 37-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for “social mobility”.

Social mobility is usually measured through income or social class. According to the Sutton Trust, a foundation set up to improve social mobility, income mobility compares parental income to the adult earnings of their children. Social class mobility examines whether individuals are in the same or different social class to their parents.

The goal is to break the link between someone’s parental background and the opportunity for them to reach their full potential in terms of income and occupation. A report by the Sutton Trust last year revealed that a small increase in the UK’s social mobility (to average western European levels) would add £39bn to the UK economy.

My comments at the start of this blog are certainly not true of all law firms. In fact, the profession dominated the 2018 Social Mobility Employers Index. This index “ranks Britain’s employers on the actions they are taking to ensure they are open to accessing and progressing talent from all backgrounds”.

Fourteen law firms were named in the top 50, with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP), in fourth place, the highest ranked. Others in the top 20 included Baker McKenzie, Linklaters, Herbert Smith Freehills, and Freeths. BCLP partner Tim Smith said of his firm’s placing: “It’s fantastic to have recognition for our approach to social mobility, which is opening up a broader and more diverse pool of talent. We know that diversity drives innovation, which is a key differentiator in the legal market.”

This focus on the benefits of diversity is a theme picked up by Jonathan Andrews, a lawyer at Reed Smith who in December was named Rising Star of the Year at the UK Social Mobility Awards 2018.

“When you encounter people who come from different backgrounds and have different views, it means they’re able to share their unique perspective,” he says. “If there is a particular strategy that you want to use, or a particular marketing or branding issue, you can make it more inclusive and relatable to a broader range of people by having those people in on the conversation. These are all really important in business to get your measures across.”

Jonathan, a trainee solicitor at Reed Smith, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of nine, went to his local comprehensive school before reading English at King’s College London. He followed this by studying at Cambridge University through the Queen’s Young Leaders programme.

He credits Reed Smith for recognising the importance of taking on people from diverse backgrounds, particularly those who think differently or have different experiences to contribute. “They launched a Disability Task Force in 2012, now called LEADRS, where people who have a disability can network and share their experience and understanding,” he said. “They recognised that it was a barrier that existed and worked hard to create a level playing field, so they were the firm for me.”

Other firms committed to improving social mobility have signed the government’s Social Mobility Pledge. This is an initiative launched by Conservative MP and former education secretary, Justine Greening. The pledge includes a promise to “adopt open employee recruitment practices which promotes a level playing field for people from disadvantaged backgrounds or circumstances. This could include a ‘name blind’ approach to considering applications (replacing names with numbers) or adopting contextual recruitment practices.”

There is no doubt the legal landscape is changing. AI is the disruptor on most people’s lips but one that could have an equally important impact, certainly from a hiring point of view, is social mobility. It will certainly be interesting to see how this is reflected in the recruitment of junior lawyers over the years ahead.

The trend for large London and international law firms to operate regional hubs that not only provide support but also offer legal services is gathering pace. But will firms have to adapt their recruitment strategies to attract the right lawyers to these locations?

Magic circle heavyweight Freshfields announced recently that it plans to recruit 10 to 15 associates into its Manchester office. That may not sound too surprising until you learn that they will be the first qualified lawyers hired to work in an office of around 600 staff. Until now, these have consisted mainly of business and legal support assistants.

Freshfields’ recruitment of legal staff to its ‘northshore’ outpost is an example of a growing trend. Firms that once saw regional hubs solely as low-cost centres for non-legal tasks are increasingly using them to offer legal services.

Hogan Lovells has been recruiting lawyers to its Birmingham office since 2015 as part of its commitment to provide “cost-effective solutions for the delivery of legal services”. And earlier this month Clyde & Co opened its first Bristol office, offering “market-leading expertise in insurance and infrastructure”. The opening takes its number of regional outposts to 10.

This begs an important question. How are these firms going to recruit junior lawyers for these regional offices?

As discussed in a previous blog, data from our online platform shows that a staggering 90% of final seat trainees who trained in London would be unwilling to relocate to the regions. A further 7% would ‘consider’ relocating and only 3% actively want to do so.

This places firms in a bit of a quandary

Top tier law firms have traditionally preferred to recruit London-trained NQs. This is on the basis (possibly erroneous) that they will have received better training and dealt with higher quality work. As a result, firms who fought to bring the best graduates to London as trainees will now have to try to persuade some of them to head out to the regions to continue their careers.

How will newly qualified solicitors feel about this? For one thing, they may be settled in London. For another, they are unlikely to rush to embrace moving to an office that in all likelihood undertakes lower quality/value work than the main office. After all, that’s their raison d’être.

Most of all, assistant solicitors in London are probably enjoying a sizeable salary. Here we come to possibly the biggest issue. There’s a yawning gap in salaries between London and the regions, one that is not fully compensated for by the lower cost of living. To give just one example, DWF paid NQs qualifying into its London office last autumn £59,000, while those in the regions started on £38,000 and in Scotland, £36,000.

How will firms overcome these issues?

The simplest solution would be for firms to recruit junior lawyers with ‘City’ training from other regional firms, although at present this is easier said than done as there is only a small pool to choose from. But this will improve over time, albeit slowly. As more and more London and international firms employ trainees and other legal staff in their regional offices it will be easier for firms to recruit from these offices.

An obvious solution would be to pay higher wages in order to bridge the gap between London and the regions, but this defeats the object of supplying legal services from a lower costs base. Nevertheless, we expect this to happen as the quality of work in the regional offices improves and lawyers demand greater equality with their London counterparts.

One way will be to recruit trainee solicitors direct into their regional offices so that they have a pipeline of NQs. Hogan Lovells has been taking trainees in its Birmingham office since 2016, presumably with a view to achieving exactly this.

Another is to integrate their London trainees into their regional hubs with the object of giving them a taste of life outside the capital and an idea of the type of work they can expect to do. Berwin Leighton Paisner (now Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner) started offering trainees a secondment option to its Manchester outpost in 2017 and in doing so was keen to emphasise the quality of work they can expect. “The secondment is to ensure our trainees obtain the benefits of working within the largest legal market outside London,” a spokesman said at the time.

Above all, we can’t help thinking that these firms need to change their mindset when recruiting. Traditionally they have looked to recruit lawyers with a City training under their belt. But if the work carried out in these outposts is not as complicated or as high value as their London office, surely it makes sense to hire lawyers who fall outside this rigid profile?

Lastly, I believe firms need to rethink their recruitment strategy. They will have established relationships with City head-hunters and other mechanisms in place to attract the brightest and the best to their flagship offices. However, they need to recognise that this is a fundamentally different recruitment exercise and should be tackled accordingly.

This is where our online recruitment platform can help. From a hirer point of view, a practical answer is to find candidates who have trained in London but are willing to move to the regions to further their career. Our online platform, NQSolicitors.com allows hirers to identify candidates that meet these, and other, specific criteria.

For more information, contact us now.

I believe that 2018 will be the year that hirers and candidates fully embrace technology and data for the first time.

I’m not the only one who thinks this. A recent article in Forbes says: “In 2018, a big internal shift is coming, but this time the focus is on technology: how it can be used to find people, connect people, engage people, even replace people — and what to do when that happens. For years, technology has acted as a tool to help with day-to-day tasks, but the focus in 2018 will be technology as a way of life in the workplace.”

Before we look at how technology will improve recruitment we need to look at why it hasn’t done so to date.

Say to people that technology hasn’t improved recruitment and they’ll say of course it has and point you in the direction of job boards and LinkedIn.

But I’d argue that these tools have simply changed the way recruitment consultants do their jobs. They have helped to grow the recruitment industry and perversely helped to entrench the reliance on agents.

Technology has changed recruitment rather than improved it. There seems to be an ever-greater reliance on agents nowadays – there’s an entrenched belief that you need the middle man.

This isn’t true. Recruitment consultancy is a relatively modern industry and it’s only since the 70s and 80s that the industry took shape as the one we recognise today. Granted, people didn’t move around as much in the past as having a “job for life” was still very much the goal for many people, but they still moved. When they did, they tended to do it themselves, generally through word of mouth and by replying to adverts.

Clearly law firms would rather not pay hefty recruitment fees when hiring junior lawyers, especially given the cost of training.

Quite sensibly, firms are doing what they can to attract applicants themselves but it’s not as easy as it used to be for two reasons:

1. The candidate mind-set has changed.

This has been aided by the prevalence of recruitment agents – many candidates think that the right role will simply find them.

2. Noise.

People used to advertise in a small number of newspapers or publications so candidates knew exactly where to look to find a new job. But now it’s so much harder to get peoples’ attention.

There’s no doubt that LinkedIn is making a big play in the recruitment space and is trying to persuade hirers that they can effectively source candidates themselves through the platform. Its pitch is that it can help hirers identify and target candidates with a high level of accuracy.

The problem is that LinkedIn charges a subscription for reaching out to the market (whether you are successful or not) and because it is making money through subscriptions, it relies on getting as many paying customers as possible. More customers means more noise, and more noise means it’s harder for you to target candidates and get your message out there.

It’s a similar story with jobs boards. These are another good example of how technology has changed rather than improved recruitment. The vast majority of adverts placed on jobs boards are by recruitment consultants rather than the actual hirers.

Go back 20 years and any agent will have known the candidate they were dealing with, will have met them in their office and will have known their client inside out. Job boards allow any Tom, Dick and Harry to search CVs, identify candidates, find adverts and make an introduction.

I’m always surprised by job boards selling themselves on the basis that they have 400,000 CVs on their database, as if that’s a positive. I don’t want 400,000 I want 1,000 good ones! Any more than that and it’s just more noise.

So, how can technology improve recruitment?

Technology has changed our lives in so many ways because it allows us to design and build tools for highly specific uses. It’s not easy to build these tools. First, they have to be thought up, then they have to be funded. As technology-driven tools tend to require plenty of investment, the urge is to scale them up as quickly as possible in order to make a quick return, and when you scale things up they tend to lose focus on why they were built in the first place.

But if you get it right, if you build a recruitment platform that understands the drivers and mind-set of the candidates and the needs, desires and issues of the hirers, then you can achieve something that is truly transformative.

NQSolicitors.com has been built because we steadfastly believe that technology can dramatically improve the recruitment of junior solicitors at NQ – 2 PQE. That’s what the platform is designed to do, and that’s what it’s doing right now.

Here’s how:

1. Quality

NQSolicitors.com allows hirers to locate candidates that meet their specific criteria. Whether it’s a top tier US law firm seeking candidates with an Oxbridge education and magic circle training, or a five-partner practice in Tyneside with a more open approach.

2. Speed

Hires can search for candidates that match their vacancy at any time, any place and at the click of a button. Additionally, the site’s saved search function will continue to search for new matches while you get on with your job.

3. Reach

Traditional recruitment agents are, of course, constrained by the number of candidates they can deal with. NQSolicitors.com allows hirers to conduct a search of the entire market, allowing you to reach more suitably qualified and interested candidates.

4. Cost

NQSolicitors.com does not charge hirers a subscription fee, and only charges a fee upon successful placement. The cost of hiring through the platform will be approximately half the market rate at 12.5%, meaning that many law firms will typically save between £4,000+ per hire.

The message we are getting from hirers is that unlike LinkedIn and jobs boards, NQSolicitors.com is not just changing recruitment but changing it for the better. By embracing technology the way we have, NQSolicitors.com has made it easier for hirers to identify quality candidates, do so more quickly, and at a reduced cost.

When candidates create a profile on NQSolicitors.com, we ask them about a dozen questions regarding their academic record and legal experience to date, and a further four questions about their specific work preferences.

In order to accurately match their profiles with law firms that are looking to hire, we need to know:

• their preferred location(s);

• their minimum salary requirement;

• the department or practice area within which they would like to work; and

• the type of firm they want to join.

When designing the platform, we spent lots of time mulling over the length and content of the list of practice areas we would include on the site. As every law firm names their departments or practice groups slightly differently, the list could easily run to more than 200. But in the end, we settled on a list of 75 distinct practice areas from which candidates can choose their preferences, (and they can obviously select more than one).

We thought it would be interesting to dig into the data and tell you which practice area is the most popular for trainees and junior solicitors at NQ-2 PQE.

If you think that Commercial Litigation and Corporate departments are the most popular destinations for junior solicitors, then you’d be right, (26.4% of candidates selected Commercial Litigation as a preferred department, and 25.5% selected Corporate).

Employment was comfortably the third most popular choice (22.9%), while other distinct practice areas which are popular destinations for junior solicitors include IP (13.2%) and Banking & Finance (11.1%).

While Arbitration/International Arbitration and Commercial are clearly popular choices as distinct practice areas, they are generally selected by candidates who also select associated practice areas.

For example, candidates who select either Arbitration or International Arbitration generally also select Commercial Litigation as a preferred practice area, and are clearly keen to join some kind of Commercial Disputes department. Similarly, candidates who select Commercial as a desired practice area, generally also select Corporate and are clearly motivated by working within a transactional practice group.

The pie chart below shows the results when we apply our data to The Legal 500’s broader groupings of practice areas.

Having grouped individual practice areas together within wider banners, ‘Corporate and Commercial’, (which includes Commercial, Corporate, Corporate Tax, Competition/Antitrust, Equity Capital Markets, Financial Services, Partnership and Private Equity) now leaps to the top of the popularity league table, and by a reasonable margin, ahead of Dispute Resolution (which encompasses seven distinct practice areas), Real Estate (nine) and TMT (five).

If you source candidates through NQSolicitors.com (and why wouldn’t you?), it is worth bearing in mind candidate habits/behaviours when setting your search criteria.

If, for example, you have been asked to source a first-rate junior solicitor for your Disputes practice, it would be wise to include multiple practice areas (you can select up to three), within your vacancy details e.g. Commercial Litigation, International Arbitration, and Arbitration.

If your Corporate department, (which in reality undertakes a broad mix of Corporate, Commercial and Equity Capital Markets work), wants to hire an NQ, you should include all three of these practice areas within your vacancy details, as it will generate a greater number of matches.

If you have any questions about optimising your results when searching for candidates on NQSolicitors.com, please don’t hesitate to contact us.