Are We At A Crossroads?
June 17, 2010 by Damian
One phrase that keeps cropping up when I am talking to clients and candidates at the moment is that it is an ‘interesting time’ in the legal recruitment market. What is happening in the recruitment markets is always ‘interesting’ because it is a good barometer as to the overall health of the economy. In other words, if employers are looking for staff, things must be going pretty well.
Over the vast majority of the 8 years that I have been in recruitment, it is been reasonably easy to discern trends and subsequently give informed and accurate advice and information on what the status of the current job market is. What makes it especially ‘interesting’ at the moment is that no real trends are emerging.
The very general perception is that the market is improving and that is undoubtedly true, thank goodness, but we have to remember that we are coming off the historically low base of the last 18 months or so.
So, are there more jobs around? Yes there are but if you look a little closer, there are still not that many. In private practice, the majority of the ‘big firms’ are still recruiting very selectively, the mid-tier firms do not seem to be recruiting much either and the small firms are mostly still trying to keep the doors open as opposed to taking on new staff. Some firms have a ‘watching brief’ for suitable candidates (which is a good sign) but when it is a ‘watching brief’, the candidates need to be really, really good to be hired.
However, if one took a look at the amount of roles in the public sector, you would be surprised with the amount of opportunities available. Similarly, the number of in-house vacancies has definitely increased in the last 4-6 months. Why this is when the general talk is of cost cutting in the public sector and headcount freezes in the corporate world is an article all of its own so I will dwell no further here apart from to say that for candidates looking for a new role, it would be foolish to rule out the public and in-house sectors at this stage.
So, if we can take it that there are still not a huge amount of roles around, can we take it that there are hundreds of hungry job seekers going after every role? Again, for some roles, ‘yes’ and for others ‘no’. To give an example, a very well known public sector legal team advertised and got nearly 100 applicants for the role. (That is what you get when the job spec can apply to nearly everyone who has a commercial background). However, a very reputable financial institution have been looking for an intermediate solicitor for a number of months now and have not been able to fill the role despite advertising very heavily. Similarly there is a property role in Auckland that the client just cannot fill, despite the perception that there would be loads of property lawyers desperate to get out of their current roles due to lack of work.
So are people going overseas now? Again, yes and no. Some people who have put their OE off for 12-18 months have just decided to pack it all in and take their chances offshore. However, it seems like there is a large group of lawyers who have decided not to move offshore at the moment and are looking to progress their career here and travel offshore during extended holidays or have put it off until a lot later in their career. As such, the trend that, for years, nearly all Kiwi lawyers with 2 years experience will leave to go offshore is just not apparent at the moment.
Clients are also displaying some very interesting behaviour from a recruitment standpoint. Some clients, who historically shied away from using recruitment agencies, are now happy to avail of our services. These clients have taken the view that even though there may be a lot of candidates around, those good candidates are still really hard to find. Others have made the call to keep all of their recruitment in-house, presumably in order to save agency fees, as opposed to ensuring that they get the best candidate around. (Don’t they realise that some of the best candidates are too busy to check job-boards and look at legal magazines and enrol with people like us to do that for them?) What these employers will do when the market inevitably tightens up further will be very, very interesting.
So, all in all, the only trend that I can see is that there is no real trend around. The recruitment market is in a real state of flux with an obvious disconnect between the perception and the reality of its health. Hopefully very soon a trend will emerge where good candidates will find good jobs – that is the sign of a healthy and ‘normal’ recruitment market. I, for one, will be happy to leave these ‘interesting’ times behind.
Around The World (In Just Over 1100 Words)
April 14, 2010 by Damian
Sorry for the delay since my last post but sometimes life gets in the way of blogging and we have to deal with more important things than legal recruitment. However, I am back on board now and think that it is a good time to give an overview of what is happening in the recruitment markets worldwide at present.
I have seen one of my competitors advertising that London law firms are now receptive to approaches by NZ lawyers. After speaking to my colleagues over in London last week, my view is that this is not quite the whole truth. It is the case that more jobs are coming on to the market in London. As a consequence of this, firms will not quite have the same pick of top quality candidates that they have had in the last 12-18 months and as such, they may have to reconsider who may or may not be suitable for their particular roles. As the locally qualified talent pool becomes more diluted, employers will have no choice but to look at overseas qualifieds to fill the gaps.
However, what is outlined above is not the reality just yet. Sure, I have heard anecdotal evidence that NZ lawyers in London are securing interviews. The caveat to that is that they are probably being interviewed along with 6, 8 or even 10 other people. In the candidate v law firm power struggle, the firms still hold all the power. Firms are still being very discerning about who they employ and they are willing to take their time to find the right person. As I write this in April, it is still going to be a rare occurance that that ‘right person’ will be an overseas qualified lawyer.
Don’t get me wrong – the market over there is improving. There is a general consensus that the worst is gone and that it is now time to look at and plan for the future. This forward planning, however, will be cautious and gradual but as it continues to take shape, opportunities for top quality overseas lawyers will come about. It is fair to say that those who are in the UK with their visa status secured will be at the vanguard of this trend. It is also fair to say that the most attractive prospects will be those with 3+ years experience. Candidates with less than that will struggle due to the enormous amounts of locally qualified junior lawyers who have fallen victim to the GFC over the last 12-18 months.
Looking further afield, the bottom has dropped out of the offshore markets completely. A search this morning on Seek for jobs in the Cayman Islands turned up one job and there is not one job being advertised for the Channel Islands. Compared to 2 years ago, this is an astonishing drop off in demand. Judging by what I have heard, it will take a very long time indeed for these markets to pick up from a recruitment point of view. The current economic crisis has fundamentally affected these economies and until these jurisdictions work out what place they now occupy in the economic world, opportunities in these island paradises will be very scarce.
The Middle East seems to be at an interesting juncture at present. It had the most spectacular fall from grace of all as dozens and dozens of lawyers were retrenched or made redundant. The simple fact is that the whole region was massively overlawyered and when the work dried up, there was very little for anyone to do. It is very doubtful that the Middle East region will ever be quite so attractive as it was a few years ago but it is showing some signs of recovery.
Some of the larger firms in the region have started undertaking some major projects and have consequently started to look for staff again. The catch is that they are being absolutely inundated with quality applications. However, if the big firms continue to be busy, it is likely that activity among other firms will start to pick up, thus increasing opportunities for lawyers to come back again. How long this takes is anyone’s guess but I would suggest that we are at least 6-12 months away from there being many options for NZ lawyers in the Middle East.
Which leads us on to Asia – the shining light, it seems. My colleagues in Hong Kong say that the place has gone ‘gangbusters’. A lot of this activity has been in the insolvency/restructuring area but they are starting to receive instructions from firms on the look out for corporate and finance lawyers as well. China is obviously behind a lot of this activity and opportunities are opening up in China and surrounding regions as well as in HK.
With every bit of positive news comes the sobering news. Yes, there are positions in Asia but employers are now looking foremost at people with language skills or some ties to the region. It is not to say that it is impossible without either of these but it does make life a lot harder if you don’t speak the lingo or have a particular reason to want to move there.
Finally, to our good friends across the Tasman. The media has painted the picture that Australia is in great shape and is back to normal. Having spoken to people over there, it seems, again, that this is not quite the case. The economy is improving but this has not translated into large numbers of new jobs yet. Yes, firms are starting to recruit again but as in the UK, they are being overwhelmed by the amount of quality applications and are in no rush at all to fill the roles. Locally qualified lawyers are still the most attractive so, even though NZ lawyers can practice over there, Australian employers will still favour Australian lawyers if given the choice.
So, where does all of that leave the NZ lawyer desperate to head offshore? Well in summary, the legal recruitment world is in better shape than it has been since mid 2008. Confidence in the future is up and firms are generally making positive noises about increasing headcount in the coming months. However, at present, competition is fierce, employers are still in control and locally qualifieds still are the most attractive option.
If you can hang on for another 4-6 months, I think that you probably should. However, if you can’t stand it any more and you just have to move, then my advice is to be flexible as to what you will look at, be patient as the process will take a long time and when given the opportunity to attend interviews, make sure that you perform to the best of your ability.
I look forward to looking back (if you know what I mean) at this post at the end of 2010 and comparing how things are like then to what they are like now. It will be an interesting comparison!!!
Where It’s At
March 2, 2010 by Damian
‘Where it’s at’ is not just one of my favourite songs (by Beck incidentally) but is also a variation of a question that I get asked at least once a day. Everyone wants to know what the job market is looking like now and what it will be looking like over the coming weeks and months. So here is my two cents (or 50 cents to continue the musical theme) worth on where it’s at.
A very unscientific analysis of last week’s activity on the various job sites indicates that there are a lot more vacancies around at the moment than there have been for at least the last 12 months. From Monday 22nd – Friday 26th, there were 125 jobs added to Seek. Obviously, quite a number of these are duplicates and others are for vacancies that have been around for a while but it does contain a significant number of new vacancies across private practice, public sector and to a lesser extent, in-house. For the first time in a long time, the roles also traverse a wide range of practice areas including corporate, finance, litigation, RM, employment, family and so on.
So it should be easy to get a job now? No. Easier? Yes. Even though there are now more vacancies around, employers are not going to drop their standards and take someone for the sake of it. The advantage for the job seeker now is that there is not as much competition around so their CV will be more closely scrutinised than it was previously but if your background is not good enough, you will not make it across the line.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, the great unknown in the debate is when the overseas markets will return to some degree of normality. It is a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ and when it happens, we will see even more vacancies here with even fewer candidates applying. The majority of these vacancies will be in the traditional 2-5 year bracket but I suspect that we will also see a number of senior lawyers leaving to either return to the UK or there are some who will be going for the first time. Either way, employers should be bracing themselves for some serious going away parties over the next 6-9 months.
So where is it at? In summary, my view is that the outlook is definitely improving (from a job seekers point of view) and will continue to gradually improve throughout the rest of the year. However, I would refer to the point that I make earlier that even though there may be more opportunities does not mean that it will be easy to get a job. It is never easy to secure a new position and nor should it ever be. You still need to have a good CV, good grades and present well at interview. If you can manage that, then you can be confident that something suitable will come along in 2010.
To specialise or not to specialise?
December 11, 2009 by Damian
From years of experience in overseas recruitment, the main feedback that clients give me about NZ (and Australian) lawyers is that one of the main reasons that they are so employable is because of their versatility.
Due to the nature of the market down here, few practitioners are what UK lawyers would call ‘specialists’. For example, there would not be one finance lawyer in NZ who would be dedicated to only doing aviation finance. My own legal career in the UK (for what it was) was purely in tobacco litigation – I did nothing else. This degree of specialisation just does not exist in NZ firms.
Until now, allowing practitioners to specialise in London has worked. The deals are huge, sophisticated and specific so people with detailed knowledge of the subject matter are necessary. One unforeseen consequence of the GFC, if the Linklaters’ plan as laid out in The Lawyer article below works, may be that the specialist lawyer may be a thing of the past in London -
http://www.thelawyer.com/1002837.article?nl=TL-LND.
If the way of the future for London lawyers is to become generalists rather than specialists, this could have some effect on the employability of NZ lawyers in the future. If that point of difference is taken away, it will be up to NZ lawyers to come up with another selling point to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market.
Any ideas?
Employers Beware – This May Be As Good As It Gets
November 27, 2009 by Damian
As I have said in other posts, 2009 has been a funny old year in many respects. One of the biggest differences from previous years is that employers now hold the upper hand in recruitment matters for the first time in a long time. Contrast this to the state of affairs a few years ago when HR people spent the majority of their time on recruitment, fending off partners who desperately needed staff but were unable to find them.
I am sure that employers are enjoying the current situation. When they need someone, they can be very confident that they will be able to find someone with relative ease. As an example, the HR Manager of a very desirable employer told me that when they put out a vacancy recently, they had 29 applicants. 18 months ago, for the same vacancy, they received 1 and that person was unsuitable!
However, I think that employers should make the most of the current situation. At present, even though more and more vacancies are coming on to the market, there are still relatively few new roles around. Coupled with this, there are some very talented people around who are looking for a change and thus, some employers are managing to secure the services of top quality candidates who they would never get in a more crowded job market.
My view is that this state of affairs is not going to last much longer. The overseas markets are starting to bounce back, salary reviews and bonuses will be negligible this year and some people will just have had enough of their current situation. The consequence of this is that regardless of whether the NZ economy improves or not, there will be a lot more movement in the market early in 2010 than there has been in all of 2009.
Employers need to be aware of this and be planning for it. Those that are will continue to attract good talent but those who are putting their head in the sand and thinking that their staff will stay relatively loyal next year and if they need someone, they will be able to easily find them, are going to be in for a shock.
As an aside, some employers seem to have become complacent in their recruitment and are taking far too long to shortlist, interview and make decisions. In a different market, it will not be possible to take so long. If they do, the best candidates will have already gone to someone who has a more streamlined and candidate focussed approach.
So for any employers out there reading this, my view is that if you are thinking about taking someone on, do it now before it is too late. If you wait too long, you may find that the problems that you faced 18-24 months ago in attracting good staff will be back on your doorstep again. Now may be as good as it is going to get.
It’s A Funny Old Time
November 2, 2009 by Damian
It’s a funny old time in the world of recruitment at the moment. There is definitely more of a sense of optimism around and for the first time in quite a while, there have even been a number of options for junior lawyers. I have recently met quite a few younger lawyers who, after sticking things out for the annus horribilus that has been 2009, have said ‘stuff this, I’m off to London’.
Whether it is the onset of summer, the prospect of a new year which will hopefully bring a new beginning or just people being fed up with being pessimistic about things, it seems that the tide has turned and to borrow a phrase from one of Ireland’s most over-rated performers D:REAM – “things can only get better.”
So with this in mind, I opened up the latest edition of (the very good) NZ Lawyer magazine to see who was advertising, only to find a total of 3 job advertisements in the whole edition. Back in the heady days of 2006 and 2007, there probably would have been 20-30 and it seemed as if the whole publication was one big recruitment fest with some articles thrown in to break up the ads.
Historically, Seek would have 300-400 legal jobs. As I sit here now, it has 223 legal jobs in NZ, quite a number of which are different agencies advertising the same job. (Yes, we do do that!)
So where is the truth? Is it getting better or worse?
My opinion, which I’ve outlined in earlier posts, is that the worst is behind us. I believe that people will start moving jobs, if only because they are sick, sore and tired of what they are currently doing. This will create some fluidity in the market which will result in the current stagnant market unraveling somewhat. Hopefully in conjunction with this, the law firms will feel confident enough to start making some positive hiring decisions and will be considering how they should be staffing up in anticipation of the wave of people who will leave these shores when the overseas markets pick up.
However, it will be a slow process. Employers will (and should) exercise caution for the foreseeable future and it will take a long time until the NZ Lawyer carries 20/30 job ads and Seek carries 400 jobs. The reality of the situation is that it will be the candidates from the larger firms or those with the broadest experience or best academic records who will secure the first number of jobs that come on to the market. It is only when these people are comfortably ensconced in new roles, should the the rest of the profession be confident of finding something new.
The first 3 months of 2010 will probably still be pretty quiet. The second quarter, I feel, will set the tone for the rest of the year, one way or the other.
It is a funny old time indeed!
“No Employment Market Recovery For Lawyers Until 2010″
September 23, 2009 by Damian
Have a look at this link to a very interesting article on the issue of how long it might take for the legal recuitment market to return to ‘normal’ again – http://au.legalbusinessonline.com/news/analysis/no-employment-market-recovery-for-lawyers-until-2010/36880
To be honest, the tenor of the article makes a lot of sense to me and if it is correct, then we are looking at around March/April next year before things can confidently be seen to be ‘normal’.
Much as I would like to disagree with this assessment, I think that it is probably reasonably close to the mark. Although there is an increasing amount of optimism around and a few more vacancies coming on, the market is nowhere near showing any real fluidity or new activity. To add into the mix, remember that we have the traditional Christmas/January slowdown to come as well which always puts the brakes on things.
So although the worst may be behind us, it could be another 6 months or so until we are completely out of the woods.