Dateline: 07/13/97

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Selecting the right person for the job is always a challenge, particularly today when the need for bright young up-and-comers looms large against the decreasing talent pool.  Mediocrity in professional services is something every firm wants to avoid.  Here are a couple of ideas that might help you to attract more or better qualified candidates:

1.  Compete against yourself, not the budgets of larger firms.  Many times smaller firms see the big budgets of the larger firms and the gloss and glitter they show to recruits and feel diminished in their own efforts.  Make it your goal to highlight your firm's own unique advantages, and to show well against firms in the same category as yours.  Recruits who want a regional firm or a local firm will be attracted despite the extravagance of the larger firms.

2.  Identify the qualities of your best recruits.  Go back and assess what common threads make your stars your stars.  Find ways to identify the  same qualities in young graduates and then put your best effort behind signing those. Try personality assessment tools that categorize people according to working styles. Use your good recruits to recruit others like themselves. 

3.  Involve your best young staff in recruiting.  Yes, the age barrier is real to young people.   Prospective recruits will perceive that they get the truth about things that matter to them from others only a few years ahead of them, so find a way to let that happen.  Brief your young staff on the messages you want to convey and the qualities you are looking for in new hires, and then let them do the preliminary interviewing. Encourage young staff to join organizations and community groups where they will meet others who would fit well in the firm.  Give younger staff a strong sense of belonging in the organization, and they will give great word of mouth advertising.  Be sure everyone in the firm knows about openings and the qualities or experience you are looking for.

4.  Make it fun!  Recruiting should be fun for the recruiters as well as the prospects.  Younger people are attracted to organizations where they perceive they will have  (1) good experience, (2) friends, (3) fun and (4) compensation they will not be ashamed to talk about with peers.  Host groups in your offices, and alert your office staff that recruits are coming.  Welcoming smiles and sociable chance encounters during the interview process will go a long way toward making prospects feel good about the firm.  Consider inviting clients to recruiting parties, and let your clients tell the recruits what a great firm you have.  Hold casual events as well as formal events.  A light or humorous touch in invitations or personal letters, including an appropriate joke or cartoon, will humanize the organization and make it a good place to be.  Consider having an internal competition to design the best recruiting materials.  You may be surprised at the results.

5.  Woo the ones you want.  Just like sports recruiters, identify your top 10 (or top 50 or whatever a reasonable target is).  Find out what they are interested in and then find ways to show them how a career at your firm will help them to achieve it.  Be creative.  Make special accommodations for them and let them know they are special with one on one chats or meetings.  Emphasize that they will need to be willing to do whatever is needed the first year or two, and be honest about the amount of actual client work they will do.  Avoid telling  them at the first meeting how much time they will spend at the copy machine or running errands for senior partners!

6.  Get your office to participate.  Create a lobby sign welcoming the individuals by name or by group.  Have the receptionist greet them warmly.  Get your secretaries to smile and say hello.  Get your partners to smile and say hello.  Tell people to wave when recruits walk by their offices on their tour.  Put up a banner welcoming a specific school or group in the meeting room. 

7.  Use technology as much as possible.  Get, give and use e-mail addresses.  Incorporate e-mailings into your recruiting program to replace some traditional mailings.  Make a video tape of short interviews with key partners and individuals, and then present or mail that video to key recruits after their interviews.  Use a software program such as E*News that will let you develop a quick and easy electronic newsletter that can be transmitted as an E-mail attachment and opened without special software.   Emphasize how your firm uses technology, how the recruit will be expected to use technology and what kinds of equipment and software and programs are available, including training, for new hires.  If you favor recruits with technology backgrounds, highlight it. 

8.  Find ways to use the technology entertainingly.  Today's recruits are from a generation raised on computers and interactive gaming.  For example, a virtual reality tour of your headquarters office, or games such as ``legal trivia" or ``accounting countdown" or puzzles related to the profession, lighthearted animated looks at the future or history of the profession, or interactive discussion groups on your web site, will show that the firm is on the leading edge.   

9.  Advise recruits that they will be expected to do marketing and sales in order to achieve partnership.  Let them know from the beginning what impact effective marketing skills will have on their admission to the partnership, and how it will affect their partner shares.  Tell them of training opportunities available where they can learn the interpersonal and communication skills needed to succeed.   Give them some ideas of ways to start building personal networks and let them know how the firm will support them--financially or with donated time for pro bono work.

If you spend time up front to identify the qualities and expertise you need, then focus your recruiting budget as narrowly as possible on the individuals you think have those qualities, it should pay off in reduced staff turnover, highly motivated workers, and a cheerful work environment.  Not a bad goal for any firm.

Next week's weekly feature: Dealing With Difficult Partners

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Copyright 1997 by Kaye Vivian (kvivian@cloud9.net).  All rights reserved.  Permission to reprint is granted provided this article is not altered and the copyright notice remains attached