I sometimes delude myself in thinking, in a seller’s market for legal talent, that my clients will be especially keen on making a good first impression on a candidate – and particularly where that candidate is in the league of those fabled Cravath associates.
And yet, here's what still happens:
SCENE: A junior superstar attends for his first interview with the practice heads of a AMLAW -20 tier corporate practice group. The associate arrives on time, but is then kept waiting for 45 minutes with no explanation except for the hasty apologies of a temporary recruiting assistant who advises that the interviewers are on conference calls and are not available. Disgusted, the attorney finally leaves the office.
I write the partner and my recruitment coordinator contacts the following e-mail:
“CANDIDATE just called me on from his blackberry to tell me that he sat in your reception area for 45 minutes, and ended up leaving your offices without having met with PARTER ONE or PARTER TWO. Needless to say that CANDIDATE is quite upset. What happened?”
Here is the response I got from PARTNER ONE
“PARTNER TWO and I apologize. We were on different conference calls but each was with clients and each of them ran long past the time they should have been over. On the other hand, when I disengaged at 12:48 to meet with CANDIDATE, he had already left. Given that the meeting was to last until at least 1:00, I am not sure why he did not stick around until that time.”
I’m speechless. I know all about client pressures and I understand that these things happen. What I don’t understand is why the firm did not have another attorney or senior recruitment coordinator available, as a back-up, to meet with this candidate? Why leave the candidate with the concern that this firm doesn’t really care about its junior associates - since it doesn't seem to care about impressing the associates it tries to recruit? Worst is the presumption, in Partner One's e-mail - that a candidate should be content to wait the better part of an hour, with little or no explanation, to interview for a job with partners that would likely treat him the same way, if not worse, once the recruiting "courtship" was over.
On the other hand, if these things didn't happen - then associates everywhere would be happier and Lawcruiters would have fewer candidates to work with. And who wants that?