How To Write A CV
September 9, 2011 by Damian
I was asked to write an article by the Wellington District Young Lawyers Committee about how to write an effective CV. They asked for somewhere in the region of 500-1000 but breaking the cardinal rule of keeping your CV as brief and concise as possible, I went a bit over the limit. (Also is it plagarism to use some of one of my own previous posts which I have done here?)
Anyway, here it is:
Writing or updating a CV is a job that just about every working person hates doing. We will find all sorts of excuses for not opening up that Word document and asking ourselves all of those horrible, nagging questions such as:
‘What is it that I actually do? Should I include a photograph? How long should it be? Should I include Personal Statements, Objectives, Interests? What size font should I use?’ etc etc.
Quite often, there are so many questions to answer that we decide to put it off until tomorrow or the next day or the day after that until all of a sudden, we see a job that we want to apply for and there is a mad rush to update the CV to get it in before the closing date for applications. If it gets to this point, you can rest assured that your final product is not quite as good as it should be.
Apart from perhaps your birth certificate and passport, your CV is probably the most important document that you will ever have. You may be the best lawyer with the best personality but if your CV is not strong enough, you will not get the chance to prove this in an interview. This will result in you potentially losing out on that dream job to someone who may not be as good a lawyer as you but who has sold themselves better on their CV.
So the first piece of advice that I would give is to truly understand the importance of your CV. It is not a document that should be thrown together at the last moment. It should be something that you continually think about, update and improve upon. You should regularly revisit it and contemplate whether it accurately reflects where you are in your career. If you treat your CV as a ‘living document’, your CV will be ready to go when that dream job does come up, thus alleviating all of the stress involved in starting from scratch or updating the CV that you used when you applied for your first job.
Secondly, never forget that your CV is actually a sales document. You are, in effect, pitching yourself to a potential employer. You are saying to them – ‘take me; I’m the best person for the job’. Therefore, like any other sales document, you need to make it very obvious that you have the skills and experience that they are looking for. Your CV is not a place for you to be modest. It should leave the reader in no doubt whatsoever of your suitability for the role.
Another important consideration which people tend to forget is that you are writing this document for someone to read who knows absolutely nothing about you. Consequently don’t assume that they will know anything about your previous employers, clients or cases that you may have worked on. Try to imagine what a partner in a law firm or General Counsel would want to know about your background and what potential questions he/she will have. Explain everything – if you leave too many questions unanswered, you will not get the interview; you will just straight into the rejected pile.
Before moving on to more specific points, it is important to state at this juncture that there are a lot of different opinions on what should or should not go into a CV. The points that I make below are therefore my own opinion only but they are based on years of reading excellent and frankly terrible CVs as well as from feedback from dozens and dozens of clients on what they like and hate to see.
So in no particular order:
You don’t need a photograph. It adds nothing to your application and is therefore unnecessary.
Try to keep your CV as concise as possible. However it is not a hard and fast rule (at least in New Zealand) that it should only be two pages. Therefore it is OK if you go onto a third or perhaps even fourth page, as long as what you have included is relevant and interesting.
Never use fancy fonts. How it looks on the page is not as important as what it actually states. (In saying that, make sure that everything is aligned and consistent). Use a reasonably well known font, keep it in black and make it easy to read by choosing a font size of around 11 or 12.
Personal Statements, Objectives – include them or not? This is probably the area that generates the most debate. My view is that knowing what your personal statement or vision is and having a career objective is fundamental to you getting a job but outlining these is best left to an interview. Your CV is there to convince the reader that you have the technical skills and experience to do the job. The interview is where you talk about your personality, strengths, vision, career goals etc. It is much more important that you use your CV to give a thorough run-down on what you have done in your career to date, outlining the cases or transactions that you have worked on, clients who you have worked for rather than stating that you are a ‘people person’, ‘are results focused’, ‘have excellent interpersonal skills’ etc. You may well be all of those things but reserve talking about them until your interview.
The next point should go without stating but unfortunately it has to be mentioned. Make sure that your CV does not include any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. It never ceases to amaze me how many CVs come across my desk that contain mistakes. Spell check is there for a reason – use it! Read and re-read your CV before passing it to a friend or colleague to read again before sending it to an employer. A simple spelling mistake will probably result in your CV going into the bin.
Finally when you have finished your CV, you must be really impressed by it. If you are not, then no-one else will be. I remember being at a seminar and the speaker said: “good enough is not good enough”. What he was trying to say is that if you do something and you think that it is ‘good enough’ to get the job done and nothing more, that is not enough. It must be the best that you can do and that is surely better than ‘good enough’. So when you have finally finished your CV, if you do not sit back and believe that this is best that you can look, then it is probably time to start again!
Writing a CV is a very difficult and time consuming thing to do. At Simply Legal, we can help you put together the best CV possible for you. If you want some information on how to do this, give us a call now or drop us a line. We would be delighted to help!
Lawyer’s Weekly Guide To Overseas Legal Markets
March 24, 2011 by Damian
Here is a link to a Lawyer’s Weekly article which gives a really good overview of the oveseas legal recruitment markets – http://bit.ly/fbfTZ0.
It contains a really good guide about which markets are more receptive to overseas lawyers than others. On the whole, I think that the opinions outlined in the article are spot on although they do mention that Belfast is a better destination for overseas lawyers than Dublin. I’m not quite sure how they came to that conclusion as my wife (Kiwi lawyer) was the first NZ lawyer ever to be admitted in Northern Ireland back on 2003!
What I also found amusing is that when they are discussing the merits of Scotland as a destination, one of the downsides is that it is ‘very cold’ but this is not mentioned in the discussion of the pros and cons of moving to Russia!
Very interesting reading though and if it does spark any interest in investigating your options overseas, give me a call or drop me a line. I would be keen to discuss your chances.
Is Australia the New London?
September 27, 2010 by Damian
After eighteen months or so of pretty stagnant international recruitment and of candidates sitting tight and not investigating overseas opportunities, it seems as if, at last, people are now starting to move offshore.
As everyone knows, the usual route is to do some travelling through south-east Asia on the way to sleeping on some old mate’s floor in Earl’s Court or Clapham, drinking in The Church or The Outback, constantly checking out Easyjet and Ryanair for cheap European weekend getaways and hopefully getting some work with a reputable UK firm between weekends away and following the ABs on their annual end of year tour.
Although there are still a large number of people heading to the UK, I have detected a larger than usual number of people not wanting to go quite so far away and as opposed to drinking in some faux Australian bar in Covent Garden, they are looking to drink in a real Australian bar in Darling Harbour or St Kilda with weekends spent back home in NZ rather than in Estonia or Croatia.
The question that this has raised in my mind is – ‘why are more people now thinking about Australia rather than London’?
I think that there are a variety of answers to this. One of the main ones is simply a perception (and reality) that there are more opportunities for NZ lawyers in Australia than there are in London at the moment. The Australian economy has weathered the financial storm better than most and as such, after some headcount trimming in 08 and 09, most employers appear to be in expansion mode, albeit cautious expansion mode.
Secondly, the Trans Tasman Mutual Recognition Act which means that NZ lawyers can practice in Australia without taking any further exams (and vice versa), makes the transition a lot easier for both candidates and clients. Consequently, employers are much happier to take a NZ qualified on than perhaps any other classification of overseas lawyer and some candidates are delighted that they can effectively just get on a flight and start practising straight away. This development is not a new one but in these days of cautious hiring strategies, taking someone on who does not have any visa or requalification issues is a real advantage to an employer and as the UK tightens up on its visa quota system, it is becoming harder and harder for candidates to get a role over there without a EU passport or ancestry visa.
Another recent development that has, in my view, made Australia a more attractive destination is the arrival of some of the big UK brands into the Australian market. Both Allen & Overy and Norton Rose have entered the playing field (along with constant rumours of other international firms establishing a presence) so it is no longer necessary to go to the other side of the world to secure a role in an international law firm. The threshold to get into these firms is very high, meaning that only very highly skilled and experienced NZ lawyers will make it into one of these firms but their arrival is a signal, if one were needed, that the Australian legal market is one of the most sophisticated markets in the world, staffed by top quality lawyers where you can really grow and develop your career.
As well as the above reasons, I have detected a feeling that the recent economic turmoil has made some people reconsider what is important to them and some have decided that in difficult times, perhaps it is better to be a little closer to home than on the other side of the world. Perhaps, as a result of the GFC, London has lost some of its lustre for people and the ability to move out of NZ but be only a three or four hour flight away is more of a draw card than warm beer, dodgy pies and grey skies.
A stint in a law firm in London is always going to be on a lot of young lawyer’s ‘to do’ list but at the moment, there are more and more people thinking that a stint in a leading Australian law firm is as attractive, if not more so, than a move to London. Whether this trend will continue is anyone’s guess but my view is that as the Australian market becomes more internationally focussed, it is now a genuine alternative to the UK OE and one very worthwhile investigating.
If you do want to have a chat about opportunities in Australia, please get in touch. I would be delighted to talk to you about it.
Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder
September 3, 2010 by Damian
Sorry – it has been a long time since my last blog but just in case anyone is interested, the reason is that there has been a very recent and delightful addition to the Hanna family which has taken up quite a lot of my and more of my wife’s time!
Anyway back to recruitment. Recently, I have been working with two candidates whose individual experiences, I think, highlight the unpredictability of the job seeking process and how regardless of how good your experience is, the intangible ‘team fit’ can be the most important criteria of all.
Without going into too much detail, these two candidates – Candidate A and Candidate B – have very similar backgrounds. They have roughly the same amount of pqe, come from comparable firms, have experience in broadly similar areas and have the same reason for wanting to move roles.
Luckily for them, I had two good roles for them to consider and both decided to apply for both roles. Based on their CVs, both managed to secure first interviews with both firms and here is where things started to get interesting.
With Firm X, both candidates interviewed with the same people but came out with completely different feedback. Candidate A found the partners to be really warm and friendly, Candidate B thought that they were a little standoffish and distant. Candidate A really liked the sound of the work and Candidate B wasn’t sold at all. Candidate A wanted to progress and Candidate B did not really care whether they made it through or not.
The feedback from the firm mirrored the candidates’ feedback. They really liked Candidate A. They commented on his pleasant and engaging personality and thought that he would be a great addition to the team and moved him through to 2nd interview. The feedback on Candidate B was positive but in the end, it was felt that the candidate just wasn’t a ‘good fit’ for the team and they decided to end their interest there.
On to Firm Y and the situation was almost completely the reverse. Candidate B was much happier with the interview than Candidate A and Candidate B made it through to 2nd interview and Candidate A was not taken any futher, again for reasons of ‘team fit’.
So in the end, the result for both candidates was a positive one in that both managed to secure the job that they wanted over one that they were not so keen on. The question is, given that both candidates were so similar and both interviewed with the same people, why the divergence of opinion from both candidate and client on whether to hire them or not?
The answer to this question is easy to state but very difficult to elaborate on. The answer is that certain people warm to particular people more than others. There is a ‘connection’, a ‘click’, an instant rapport that is struck up with some people and not with others. If this connection or click happens in an interview, you invariably know it and you come out feeling confident and keen to progress. It is equally as noticeable if it is absent which leads one to think more negatively about the role and the employer – a feeling which is almost always felt by the interviewers as well.
What this ‘click’ or ‘connection’ is, I do not know but I do know that it cannot be manufactured or faked. All the interview preparation in the world is not going to matter if that connection is not established. Similarly, some candidates whose experience may not be that strong ‘get over the line’ because the interviewers really liked them and thought that they would be a ‘good fit’. If asked to quantify what a ‘good fit’ actually was, most employers would not be able to give more of an answer than – ‘it’s just a gut feeling that I have’.
The upshot of all this is that no matter how good your experience is, how well you prepare for an interview, the reality is that you will not get every job that you apply for. This is not because of something that you have any control over. It is just because some people get on better with particular people than others do. However, what this also means is that if you miss out on one opportunity because of a lack of a ‘good team fit’, you will almost certainly get the next one for exactly the same reason!
As the situation with the two candidates above highlights, beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder as what one interviewer likes, another may not. The key is to keep searching until you come across the organisation that is going to see and appreciate your inner beauty over someone elses!
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!