Major Legal Services®: Employers: Working with Recruiters

In our office, recruiters are more than just "headhunters." And we do much more than send out a flurry of resumes in response to a job order from a law firm or corporation. (In fact, we don't do that at all!) What we do is locate the hard-to-find top quality candidates for positions, perform background screening, introduce your company and opportunity, act as employment advisor as necessary, and facilitate discussions and meetings between interested parties to the employment arrangement. Our goal is to establish mutually beneficial, and long-lasting, relationships with candidates and clients.

Cost-Benefit of Professional Recruiters
In today's legal market, lateral hiring is a firmly-established trend, mostly due to the fact that young legal professionals are more likely than ever to make several moves throughout their careers. This means stiff competition among firms and corporations vying for top-quality candidates to fill their openings. Organizations who are losing good candidates and are unable through their own efforts to attract new ones find themselves in a dilemma and should consider the assistance of a professional recruiter.

Legal recruiters have their fingers on the pulse of the legal community, and there is a great cost-benefit as an employer to avail yourself of this expertise. We contact hundreds of candidates per week -- most of whom are not actively looking, and therefore not scanning the "want ads". We maintain information about their goals and interests in our searchable database. Advertising is placed on an ongoing basis in selected publications and on the Internet to nab those who are looking -- especially candidates from out of state. Our national network of fellow recruiters also brings in referrals of good candidates from outside. The advertising and marketing conducted by most law firms and corporations usually produces a much smaller portion of qualified employees.

Then there is the cost of the advertising, the review of large volumes of resumes from unqualified individuals, and the prescreening of apparently qualified candidates. Professional recruiting companies handle all of this for you. They act as a third-party marketer of the value of your company, and consultant to both parties during the negotiations. The value and benefit of working with a reputable recruiting company is further enhanced if they offer a reasonable replacement guarantee and a discounted fee structure for exclusive arrangements, multiple placements and temp-to-hire recruiting.

Impartial Representation of Employer and Candidate
A reputable recruiter will not represent the candidate more than the firm, nor vice versa. A professional recruiter will impartially act in the interests of facilitating a good fit where there is the potential for one, and will back off when the relationship would not be right for one or both parties.

Retained and Contingency Searches
Typically there are two search options when working with recruiters: retained searches and contingency only searches. In a retained search, the firm pays a retainer to the recruiting company. This shows a commitment to working with that recruiting company and a seriousness of intent by the employer. The recruiting company will typically give that search a high priority. If the recruiter is successful in recruiting a candidate to the firm, the retainer is deducted from the fee paid.

A contingency only search is where the employer pays only if and when a candidate is successfully recruited and placed. Recruiters may give these jobs lower priority if they do not have a relationship with the employer, are unsure of the seriousness of the employer's intent to work with them, feel the employer is merely "shopping around" or on a "fishing expedition" for employees, or knows that the employer has contacted a number of recruiters with the same job order.

Develop a Relationship With a Reputable Recruiter
The best and brightest candidates want to work only with professional, discreet, ethical and reputable recruiting firms. Be sure to check out the recruiting firm thoroughly before investing in a relationship. Look for recruiters who are respected, trusted, and well connected in their field. The best candidates will want to work with them, and therefore, the best candidates will be introduced to client firms and corporations.

The National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC) is a professional national association of legal recruiters that has established a reasonable Code of Ethics to which members must abide. (Please feel free to contact me for a copy of the Code. You will also find it on our web site: www.majorlegalservices.com) Check with other firms and corporations who have used recruiters. Ask what they liked and disliked about their service. Ask for local references from the recruiter. Use the web to search for recruiters, but be sure to check their background, reputation and references.

Recruiting firms that specialize in your profession may have greater resources and knowledge of the industry than those who say they will "do legal placements", but spend some of their time doing placements in fields other than law.

Because good recruiting firms have relationships with peers throughout the country, and because of their constant and high profile outreach to the best candidates, they learn early when these stellar candidates are ready to make a move. If you develop a solid relationship with your recruiter, he or she will keep the ongoing needs of your organization in mind when speaking with outstanding candidates, and can introduce them to you first, before referring them to your competitors.

Spend a Little Time With Your Recruiter
When it is time to discuss the job opportunity with the recruiter, take the time to give them as much information as possible regarding your needs, the ideal candidate's qualifications, the demands of the job, and the personalities of the attorneys and others with whom the employee will work. A good recruiter will do some independent research on your firm or company, but any information you can provide will be helpful -- such as where the firm or company and practice department has been, where it is going, operating philosophy, values, billable requirements, etc. This time will be a valuable investment of your time, as you will waste less time down the road reviewing information about candidates referred who do not fit your requirements.

A personal meeting with prospective recruiters can help you decide which individual recruiter, or recruiting company, you will feel more comfortable working with. Whether it is before or after you select a recruiter, a personal meeting at your offices helps establish a better working relationship, and provides the recruiter with valuable information about you, the workplace and work environment that they can pass on to candidates.

Your recruiter should be able to give you feedback about how realistic the search is considering the current marketplace. They should be able to address any potential problem areas of the profile, such as pay range or benefits.

No Fishing
Expect more effort and return on a "realistic" job order. If your candidate expectations are far out of the realm of the kind of person the recruiter is likely to find anywhere, or your salary offering is exceedingly low for the job and market, you should not expect the recruiter to spend a great deal of time on the search. This is especially true if the search is contingency only. The recruiter may assume you are on a fishing expedition, or that you have no true immediate need but have given them the job order because you have nothing to lose by doing so.

The Fee Squeeze
Discuss fee questions or concerns with the recruiter before he or she begins working on your opening. It is neither professional nor fair to be given full fee disclosure at the outset, only to protest and complain, or pressure the recruiter to reduce their fee after the work has been done. Some recruiters will have you sign a fee agreement to ensure that fees are understood and agreed upon.

Remember, you want to develop a long-term relationship with your recruiter. Over time, their increasing knowledge of you and your firm will enhance their ability to identify persons who truly fit your job requirements on many levels, and represent well what your firm or corporation has to offer.

Track the Time and Source of Incoming Resumes
Track incoming resumes. If you work with one or more recruiting companies you should have a system for tracking when a resume arrived at your office and from whom. That way, if you already have received a candidate's resume you can immediately let the recruiter know, and they should drop any further representation of that candidate to your company.

Professional recruiters always obtain the candidate's authorization to send their resume to you. The candidate thereby controls where their resume is going. This is assurance to you that the candidate is interested in the position, and it allows the job seekers the ability to maintain a discreet job search by having their resumes distributed only to those firms and companies they have authorized. (Some candidates request that special measures be taken to preserve their confidentiality. It is important to respect these concerns and to discuss with your recruiter how distribution of information regarding these candidates should be handled.)

More importantly to you, professional recruiters will not present a candidate once they know that another firm has already presented them to you. This helps prevent the candidate's resume from arriving at your office from more than one recruiter. If you get a candidate's resume from more than one recruiting company you may find yourself in the middle of a fee dispute. Ethical recruiters, conscientious candidates and hiring officials who keep records of when and from whom resumes are received all help to prevent this from happening.

If you receive the same resume from more than one agency, you should immediately notify the agency who last sent the resume that you had already received it. If that agency claims that the candidate authorized them to send it, you may want to speak to the candidate directly. He or she may not have authorized the first agency to present their resume to you. In their eagerness to make a placement, some recruiters will not contact the candidate for authorization to present them. This, as discussed earlier, causes problems for everyone.

He Who Hesitates...
Follow up with your recruiter quickly regarding candidates referred by them to you. Too often our company receives a return call from a hiring official many days or weeks after candidates have been referred to them. The candidate they are most interested in, however, is no longer available. The best candidates, who are ready to make a move and are in demand in the marketplace, will not wait around for a single company to respond. They are resourceful enough to be looking at several opportunities at the same time. If you do not respond to the submission of their resume, they will assume you are not interested and move on to other opportunities.

Feedback on Candidates is Rewarding!
Professional recruiters will spend much more of their time on your job order if you give them timely and thorough feedback regarding the candidates they submit to you. They will know you are serious about this placement. They will work harder for you. They will adjust their search to be more on point to the ideal candidate profile. This will save you time in reviewing material on unqualified candidates. It also bolsters your chances of having the ideal candidate referred. Your recruiter will love you for saving them time and helping them focus their search!

Even if your company is not interested in the candidate referred, a phone call to that effect is a courtesy that both the candidate and recruiter will value highly in their relationship with you. Many a recruiter has lost interest in a search because the employer contact could offer only that the hiring official "didn't like the candidates, but they didn't say why!"

Change is Okay
Recruiters don't mind being given changes in the job description or direction of their search, as long as they are notified right away. It can take the wind right out of a recruiter's sail to be told after much effort: "...we decided that's not the kind of person we are looking for after all. The qualifications we really need are...."

Often these changes occur because not enough time was spent at the outset identifying firm needs or conveying them to the person responsible for acting as the liaison with the legal recruiter. The bottom line here is a change in the job description is easier for the recruiter to accept and act upon if it is a legitimate turn of events, and not a result of a lack of consideration for the recruiter's time and effort on your job order.

A good relationship with a professional legal recruiter can reap for your firm or legal department great rewards of finding and hiring superior personnel. If the recruiter is thorough, ethical and professional in their performance, he or she will make your job easier. The recruiter will work in the interests of both the candidate and the employer. Professional recruiters seek to establish long-term relationships between client and candidate. And if you respect and respond to your recruiter's hard work and diligence, they will introduce you to the best and brightest candidates available!