Articles From the Team
Clients – a guide to getting value
In most instances our blogs are directed towards candidates as a means to provide market insight and trends as well as top tips and areas for improvement as part of the legal recruitment process. Clients (in our case, law firms and in-house legal teams) are often forgotten about. In a rare break away, I would like to focus my attention on the client side.
I am fortunate to work with a varied breadth of law firms from boutiques, West End, UK and International firms operating both with partners and HR teams alike and, having been with BCL legal for 5 years, like to think I have seen a heady mix of good and bad recruitment processes and wide degrees of engagement.
Legal recruitment and perhaps recruitment in general is held in different regard depending on who one talks to and I would be the first to accept has its good and also very bad recruitment businesses and consultants. As is ever the case the latter tend to be the ones that denigrate the true value that recruitment agencies provide to a law firm and is the overwhelming perception of recruitment agents and agencies alike. Thankfully not always.
The most successful recruitment processes have arisen where all parties have been fully engaged but that is often only ever achieved where it is understood how much value is gained (and given) when a partner or recruitment manager fully engages with a recruiter. It is often difficult to see and understand the true value of recruitment agencies or to witness the huge level of financial and personal investment that goes into candidate generation and relationship building. It is not hard to see why when the only occasion on which a partner may gain exposure to an agency is when they are reviewing CVs. The natural assumption seems to be that it has been an easy process to simply ask for CVs and receive them. I can testify that is rarely the case. I wish it were.
When I was a lawyer, I experienced a similar level of expectation when being asked by some clients to “quickly” prepare a “simple” sale and purchase agreement to dispose of the business and assets of a company. Whether that construction was easy or not did not undermine the training and development that went into getting me to the point where I could do that. That background and historical dealings represented part of the value added that I could bring. Alongside my sparkling personality (obviously).
As a recruitment agent what I want is to provide clients with what they want. That requires communication on a meaningful level so we can best find the right solicitor to marry you with. And it is a marriage (of sorts). Both clients and candidates need to go in with a clear understanding of what is expected and that will in turn ensure a successful hire. In life as it is in law, the devil is in the detail. The more that you can give to us, the better prepared we are to address clients expectations and needs. Equally what you will get is a more focussed and considered search and so the CVs you see are in line with what you expect. We will always try to think flexibly but acting in this way will give us a clear handle on what could work and what won’t work. In a world where time is precious, what you want to see is results. Results require an investment of time and that time spent will ensure you get the best value from the service we provide.
Speak to us – you might be surprised about how much we know and how much value we can really add.
To find out more information please speak to Paul Warburton or visit our website BCL Legal.