Articles From the Team

Why are certain clients unable to fill their vacancies?

At the beginning of 2014 I commented that in comparison to 2013 “the number of in-house legal jobs outweigh the number of ‘applicable’ candidate lawyers looking for a move – and by quite a margin”.

I went on “In recent months, frustratingly for us and our clients, numerous candidates have pulled out of processes (that they were likely to receive an offer for) due to finding a role elsewhere or deciding that their current organisation offered ‘new’ potential given the stronger economic market”.

Since I wrote the above in 2014 there has been no slow down in the number of opportunities for lawyers wanting to work in-house.

I have written numerous times before about what clients need to do to be sure their recruitment process does not lead them to losing out on their chosen candidates. Now more than ever this advice needs to be taken into consideration. For some time clients have been fishing in an ever decreasing candidate pool.

I paint a fairly bleak outlook for clients BUT there are solutions. Clients need to trust us that the people we show them are worthy of their attention and appointable – even if it means up-skilling them in certain areas in the short term. We DO NOT send clients CVs of people that we do not believe could do or learn the job or be the wrong fit. Clients that do trust us and show some flexibility in their process recruit –the ones that don’t… remain searching endlessly for the perfect person.

A client that we have been assisting just didn’t believe what we had to say. Having still not recruited (the client began the recruitment process in October 2014!) we received the following comment from him today: “ I am just very surprised - given the benefits of working in house as opposed to in private practice I would have thought we would have been over-subscribed”.

Who knows whether he will decide to be flexible and recruit or will still have an open vacancy this time next year!

For more information please contact Mark Levine or visit our website BCL Legal.