Articles From the Team

Are you serious??

Are you serious about recruiting? It seems that nearly every day we are being asked by companies to help them find a lawyer to join their business. Great!! I am not complaining. However the candidate pool is at an all time low. This means that we need to spend a huge amount of time sourcing and then ‘selling’ our client’s roles. Many clients have tried to resource the roles directly themselves through the likes of LinkedIN but have failed to attract the lawyer of their dreams. They then ask us to assist.

There are numerous reasons why the UK is so short of transactional lawyer candidates right now.

- During a recession very few NQs qualify into commercial disciplines. We are feeling the effect of this now with very few junior lawyers on the market with corporate/ commercial skills. - During a recession people tend to ‘stay put’, not daring to be last in, first out in a new place of work. - However since 2012 when the market got steadily better there has been a lot of people playing catch-up with their career and many have moved roles in the past 3 years. - The majority of lawyers tend to stay in a role for c4 years, therefore 2016 is proving one of the hardest markets to find good people looking for a move.

So surely everyone is serious when it comes to filling those gaps in their team/ business… In my experience actions speak louder than words. Below are some points worth thinking about before embarking on a recruitment campaign:

• Come to the market with the right salary and package – this is not the market to hope you will get someone on the cheap.
• Be flexible as to the skills you must have – better to recruit an individual who has some of the skills and spend then next 6 months training them up as opposed to waiting for the perfect skill set to arrive… You will be kept waiting!
• Enlist the help of a recruiter with history of working in your sector/ location. Then trust their advice and act on their suggestions.
• Run a smooth and efficient recruitment process.

If you are serious about finding a lawyer to join your business we look forward to working tirelessly to find the best available lawyer in the marketplace for you!

For more information, please contact Mark Levine at BCL Legal.