March 9, 2006
Law Firm Recruiting: Can They, Will They, Do the Job in Our Environment with Our People
I previously posted concepts that involved individual achievement, and the post was received with its share of critics. Some were looking for motivational concepts and didn’t find what they were hoping for. Concepts like “Pros Play Hurt” convey expectations for excellence rather than provide inspiration. It takes both inspiration from the top and individual accountability among team members to forge a truly great organization. Great leaders understand what best ignites the passions of its people but they start with the best materials, outstanding team members.
The notion that what we are is determined through the eyes of those who judge us isn’t always a welcome concept, nor is the opportunity wedge. While people can always make decisions to expand the opportunities available to them, the failure to make such decisions has the opposite effect of denying to the individual those would-be opportunities. These are basic notions of personal accountability. Some people believe in life’s great lottery rather than the concept that we are accountable for and the product of our own decisions and actions. Does luck play a role in life? Are some of us born with superior abilities or advantages? Sure, but never forget that “chance favors the prepared mind.” You can possess a great talent and have enjoyed great advantages without benefiting from them in the end. There are inspiring stories of those who have overcome adversities to achieve great things in the eyes of others.
Morepartnerincome.com takes the perspective of law firm owners, not that of associates or non-owner employees in the law firm. Those associates and employees are the key to the firm’s success. As Jim Collins says, “first get the right people on the bus.” Mentoring of associates is an important asset-building function, and it should include an approach that encourages motivation aligned with the organization’s objectives. Mentoring is team building. It is cultivating the future partners or leaders of the firm. But law firms are only a finishing school. The finishing process starts by hiring people who have the training and knowledge to do the job. They have to have within themselves the motivational drive to do the job. Business recruiting is about playing the odds that new additions will be a success. You want to hire people who “can and will do the job in your environment with your people.” The difficult part of this hiring process is determining the “will they” part.
Everyone is motivated. They are not, however, all motivated the same way or for the same thing. There are seven life choices among which a law firm’s team member can allocate their energy and time: job, family, religion, civic activities, health, recreation and self-development. Each of those choices competes against all others. How an individual chooses to allocate their time depends on their individual values. Firms that make the “best place to work” list tend to be those that are most accommodating to individual goals. But even among the most accommodating there are limits. It is usually the failure of law firm management (or the inability of the firm in pursuit of its own objectives) to accept an individual’s unique priority of values that results in demotivation and eventual separation from the firm. Harmony has to exist between the superior “goals” of the firm and the secondary “goals” of the individual.
Every individual has their own pattern of strengths and weaknesses, and each allocates his/her interest differently among the seven life choices. No sound law firm is looking for a team of stepford people. Strength comes from diversity of personalities. But when you net it all out, the individual’s pattern of strengths and weaknesses and their individual goals must come together in such a way as to make them a positive contributor to the organizational goals of the law firm. Individuals with behaviors that send them off in a different direction from the firm, that endanger the firm, or that obstruct the success of others should go elsewhere.
This brings us to the issue of hiring professionals–recruiting at both association and lateral level. What separates a sound addition from a bad one is the individual—the candidate. The facts are that 60% of lateral additions usually turn out badly. Truth be told, most law firms do not have any better batting average in the selection of new graduates. It usually takes 18 to 24 months to move a mistake out of the organization. Hiring failures are costly and they are distractions to other members of the professional team and to the pursuit of the organization’s goals.
Many commercial organizations hiring at compensation levels equivalent to that of a new associate or an experience lateral use professional testing services. They use testing to identify the personality traits of candidates in an effort to determine if they have the motivational drive to meet the “will they” test. Likewise, testing before hiring can increase the odds that your selection will meet the “with our people in our environment” test. Professional skills are the easiest to determine, and they will not assure that a candidate will be a successful addition to your law firm team. You start by considering only those candidates with the requisite training and experience and then narrow your selection to those who “will do the job with your people in your environment.”
I contend that successful candidates will be the candidates who understood and accepted that they are always judged by others. They will be the candidates motivated to achieve excellence in the eyes of those who judge them, including the law firm’s clients.
Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com
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Filed under HR by Tom Collins