The top reasons why job offers were turned down by lawyers in 2018

Across all professional markets it seems the overriding message in 2018 is that there were more open vacancies than applicable job applicants.

This is certainly the case in the UK legal market; a market that puts distinctly different challenges in place for recruiters and recruiting clients.

Based on what we encountered in 2018, below are the top 10 reasons why lawyers turned down an offer for an in-house legal position:

The package wasn’t as good as their current package; reducing any gain in salary to negligible
Buybacks from current organisation – primarily in the form of £££, but also ‘opportunity’ on offer to stay
Something wasn’t ‘perfect’ about the opportunity and with other options to look at, ‘why settle for anything less than perfect?!’
Another role: paid more/was deemed a better opportunity in a better industry
Concerns about uncertainty within the company/redundancies within the business
Client offered another lawyer first, had the offer turned own, reverted back to the second choice and with the time delay interest had waned
Interim/contract roles being turned down for permanent offers
Poor handling of the offer – candidate lawyers not taking themselves off the market until contract is in hand… and faster moving HR departments won the day
Recruitment process was faster elsewhere - increasing the 'buy-in' to that role/company/people - making them the preferred choice

It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2019 - might the tables finally turn, or at least balance out?