One common feature of active lateral hiring markets - and which we are seeing in this one as well - is signs of stress in our client-side recruitment-coordinator colleagues and breakdowns in their lateral-hiring procedures. We see the firms that have responded to this strain like winners – by continuing to move effectively, purposefully, and quickly on candidates and seemingly getting stronger in the process; and also the firms that seem to be losing their way – by mismanaging the recruitment-marketing stage (i.e., getting information to the Lawcruiters), the interview stage, and (worst) hiring decisions and actions.
This is bad for everyone except for Lawcruiters. The firms under stress lose candidates; and the candidates themselves lose viable career alternatives. As a result, Lawcruiters like me are immediately motivated to start headhunting from these firms on the basis that the poor management of recruitment efforts is symptomatic of a failing firm.
Cases in point are the experiences of one candidate who last week experienced an unusual string in of “worst practices” client-side recruitment behavior, such as:
- Firm A asked the candidate to interview, then changed its mind,and then again invited the candidate to interview. And then changed its mind again! When asked to explain this behavior – the clearly out-of-his depth recruitment coordinator responded by suggesting – of all the things to say to a Lawcruiter - that there was some sort of internal political battle going on that was complicating the firm’s recruitment efforts.
- Firm B somehow managed to ensure that the candidate was interviewed by:
- a partner who had no idea why he was interviewing this candidate, and who asked the candidate what position she was interviewing for;
- another partner who wondered why my candidate would be interested in their firm since “we’re really not that good” in the practice area in question;
- an associate who spent 15 minutes complaining about how much she disliked the practice of law in general, and at her firm in particular.
- Firm C when I sent the RC an e-mail requesting a confirmation and interviewer schedule for my candidate’s meetings the next day responded: “What interview? Is it tomorrow? I’m in another city and don’t have her schedule. Have her show up and we’ll work something out” (Well – at least she was honest about being out of control…)
- Firm D exhibited signs of a total breakdown of their hiring systems (masquerading as attempts at efficiency), by sending me meaningless (and tardy) two-and-three word e-mail responses to my requests for information about my candidate’s interviews. Post-interview feedback was, needless to say, non-existent.
Yes, yes. I hear you saying that our clients are human and people make mistakes. But my response to this is that the firms that are winning the recruiting game do not ever make these mistakes – and if they do, they catch their mistakes quickly and take steps to mitigate the damage. These folks did not. And yes – they are all AMLAW 200 tier firms.
And yes – my candidate is accepting an offer from another AMLAW 100 firm – a firm that showed remarkable efficiency and creativity involving the input of partners in multiple offices. One of the winners.
*UPDATE*
It doesn't stop. It just gets worse.
- Firm E called me today to ask whether my candidate was still interviewing and whether she was still available. When I replied that she had accepted another position, the response was "Why didn't you tell us". To which my response was "why were you ignoring my repeated e-mails about her during the time when she was interviewing and available? Needless to say that my client was nonplussed.