Articles From the Team
What do you do when your new role isn’t working out for you??
What you see isn’t always what you get... isn’t that true with a lot of things in life! Interviewing for a new job unfortunately can be the same – for both parties! Interviews only show you a certain side to any individual – put them in a different/ real life scenario and they may act wholly different to how they were in the interview room. Vice versa – what an interviewee is told at interview can be different to the reality of the day to day office environment.
A bit like Facebook – at interview everyone is selling the positives of themselves/ life.
Thankfully over the past 20 years of being in recruitment I can count on one hand the number of pieces of recruitment that haven’t worked out in a really short time scale and given that over 90% of the lawyers that we place in-house remain with that company for over 4 years we do get it right most of the time.
We actually take it really personally that if the ‘match’ that we help create goes wrong. But sometimes the situation for one or both parties that we assist changes and has a negative effect on the placement.
So what to do if you find yourself in a place that wasn’t what was expected? The 3 main options as I see it are:
• Jump ship immediately • Confront the issues • Start looking for a new role once again
My concern with someone jumping ship immediately is the knock on effect this has when representing someone to the market again. As mentioned there is always a bedding in period – sometimes the honeymoon period turns bad and sometime the initial shock of being in a new place with wholly different processes seems awful… but turns unexpectedly good. Without giving enough time to the commitment that you have made the harder it is to prove that you have staying power and tenacity. This may possibly raise concerns when interviewing with other companies.
Recently a lawyer contacted me with a range of issues that she was finding in her new role. The main two being that she was reporting into a different person that interviewed her and this was not a positive relationship for her – and she couldn’t see it ever being one. The other issue was the work she was promised (and had moved for) was not being given to her. Both issues were really getting her down. With the above paragraph in mind my suggestion to her was that she had to speak up and tell the recruiting manager about her issues. Take evidence and examples as to the good work they were doing and the praise gained from the business with the poor feedback being delivered by the manager and therefore the knock on effect of the work load going elsewhere. By giving the company the chance to improve her situation it would seem to me to be a stage too early to leave. If nothing changes then when it comes to interviewing elsewhere she can at least convey how she has tried to make the situation better.
Start looking for a new is an option – but one that I still think is best holding off until you have extended time in seeing if the problems can be made better. Looking for another role too early obviously has its issues however it can make you feel better that at least you are going to be made aware of another role if this one does not work out.
Should this happen to you, feel free to pick up the phone – a problem shared is immediately a problem halved!
For more information contact Mark Levine at BCL Legal.