Articles From the Team
My top reasons why lawyers don’t accept job offers: (in no particular order)
- Lack of ‘emotional buy in’ during the recruitment process. The interviewing company got what they needed out of the process but the interviewee didn’t.
- The offer was disappointing (to say the least). Coming in with a ‘low ball offer’ is like popping a balloon. All the excitement that has been building up during the recruitment process escapes with a bang – making it, on most occasions, impossible to get back.
- Better offer elsewhere. This might be: a better role, money, business, work-life-balance etc. The majority of good lawyers can get more than one offer in this climate – make sure you go out to beat the competition with your offering.
- Lack of flexible working pattern on offer. In our annual salary survey we ask in-house lawyers why they would move roles. Flexible working is now one of the most popular answers and shows the importance that lawyers put on getting the work/home balance right.
- Laborious (and deemed to be pointless) recruitment process turns them off. In summary, make a lawyer who is generally time short jump through too many hoops they are likely to lose interest. At the same time they may deem your organisation too process driven, and infer that working as an in-house lawyer with you will be the same – potentially reducing their interest in your company.
- A slow process. Similar answer to point 5 with the added issue of you losing them to a quicker/ slicker recruitment process/ company.
- Opportunity doesn’t give them the progression that they are seeking. Sometimes there is not a lot that a recruiting company can do about this – maybe the match wasn’t correct from the start – but remember – in a previous blog I wrote how 95% of the lawyers that I assist are happy in their current role – if the recruiting company doesn’t do enough to make their role worth moving for then they are likely to get a negative response to their offer.
- Current company convinces them to stay. If your offer is not enough to make them move no matter what, and their current organisation can ‘fix’ the perceived problem that made them look in the first place, you may find that your chosen new recruit decides to stay put.
I am sure there are more reasons.. happy to hear them if you are happy to share!
For more information contact Mark Levine at BCL Legal