Do Your Due Diligence
June 9, 2011 by Damian
Undertaking a due diligence exercise is something every commercial lawyer does over and over again during their legal career. If the exercise is not conducted properly, then it is likely that the end result will not be the best one for the parties involved in the deal.
As such, you would expect that lawyers would carry the same cautious and thorough approach through to their own careers but I am constantly surprised by how many don’t. I can understand that in some cases and for a variety of reasons, some people just want a job and any old job will do. For example, this could be because of financial considerations or to get out of a particulary unpleasant working environment.
However, when not faced with such pressing circumstances, there is just no excuse for not doing your due diligence. Moving jobs is one of the most important (and stressful) things that you can do and should be treated as such. Your due diligence should start even before you make contact with a recruitment consultant or an employer and it should start with yourself. By that I mean, you should be clear on exactly the reasons that you are looking to leave your current role and have a reasonably clear idea of where you want to go and why. Once you have clarified these things in your head, it is then time to update your CV.
Updating a CV can be a really tedious and time consuming task but it is impossible to overestimate its importance. Taking the time to present yourself in the most favourable light will pay dividends later in the process. If your CV does not accurately reflect your skills and experience, you will almost certainly not end up with the most suitable job available. (Writing an impressive CV is a completely separate post which I will get to one of these days).
The next step in the process is to contact a recruitment consultant or to directly approach an employer. Obviously I would recommend using a recruitment consultant and in the context of this post, one of the reasons why is that we can assist in this due diligence process. However, whichever route that you decide to go down, it is imperative that you find out as much about the various roles that are available as possible and only apply to those roles that you feel that you have a realistic chance of getting and more importantly, those roles that you are interested in getting.
Back when I started recruiting (which was in the last century), finding out this sort of information could be pretty difficult but in this internet age, there are all sorts of ways that you can locate information that will help you make the best decision. There are the obvious ways of looking at a website and partner profiles and doing Google searches. However, what you can also do is to try to find out whether you know anyone currently working at the firm or in similar firm, location or practice area and ask them their thoughts on the firm or the partner. As above, one of the reasons to use a recruitment consultant is that we can do some of this leg work for you.
The final place to do your due diligence is during the interview process. Before attending an interview, have a clear idea of what sort of information you need to know to make a fully informed decision if you are offered the job. This could be issues such as opportunities for advancement, what level of supervision you will be offered as well as the obvious ones about exactly what you will be doing and who you will be reporting to. Treat the interview as a two way process where not only are they trying to elicit relevant information from you but you are trying to do the same thing to them.
If you go through the recruitment process without undertaking the due diligence process above, you will almost certainly not end up in the most suitable job for you. However, if you do approach the process with the caution that it deserves, you will undoubtedly find that you get the job that will keep you interested and challenged for the foreseeable future.
Interviewing Your Recruiter
April 12, 2011 by Damian
I have been doing legal recruitment for about 8 years in total and have interviewed literally hundreds and hundreds of candidates. By coming to see me, all of them, to one degree or another, were putting their future career in my hands which is quite a leap of faith on their behalf. They were trusting me to act professionally, to represent them in the best possible light, to respect their anonymity when necessary and to ensure that they get the best job going in the market. If I failed in any of these respects, this could have had significant ramifications for them in terms of their career.
I take these responsibilities very seriously and am always conscious of the integral role that I play in this (at times) life changing time in someone’s life. I work hard to establish a rapport with a candidate and try to convey an honest, transparent and friendly approach. The reason for this is that the recruitment process can get very involved. When a candidate is going through the process, I will be in contact with them most days in one form or the other and you end up getting to know your candidate very well and vice versa as it progresses. As such, it is absolutely vital that, from a candidate’s perspective, they are 100% comfortable in and confident with my approach.
So after 227 words, where am I going with this? Well, in all of my years of recruitment to date, only two candidates have really taken any time to question me about my background and my approach and asked me why I thought I was the best person to represent them. One of them was a senior finance lawyer on his way to the US who knew he could get a job there himself but did not have the time to pursue it. He sat back in his chair with his hands behind his head and grilled me for the first 20 minutes. Once I convinced him that I knew what I was doing, it became about him and the short story is that we placed him with a top tier US firm, he came back to NZ and is now a partner in a leading NZ firm.
The other time happened this week when a junior lawyer came to see me. I was initially a little surprised by his approach. ‘Can you tell me about your background?’ is usually a question I ask, not the candidate. This was not something that I expected from a recent graduate but ultimately it left me very impressed. This candidate wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing, that I knew the market, that I could represent him in the way he wanted, that I was going to be transparent and professional and that ultimately, I was going to have his best interests at heart throughout the process.
On reflection, I don’t know why more candidates don’t want me to establish my credentials before I start trying to establish theirs. I have nothing to hide and am happy to answer any questions candidates have about my background (professionally speaking anyway – I really don’t fancy answering questions about my favourite colour or my favourite footballer ever. To save the trouble, the answers are ‘green’ and ‘Roy Keane’).
If you are not happy with my answers or my approach, go to see someone else who you feel more comfortable with but make sure you ask them the same questions. The consultant/candidate relationship is so important that you need to be absolutely convinced that you are dealing with someone who you trust and get on with. If that means me answering some questions at the start of the interview, then I have no problem with that.
So the moral of this piece is before you let your recruiter start interviewing you, feel free to take some time to interview them. Now I’m going to finish this to go do some interview preparation of my own for the candidate coming in to see me at 3pm today just in case she reads this before she comes in and has some questions for me…
Getting The Job You Want
October 15, 2010 by Damian
It is common knowledge that, although the legal recruitment market is by no means booming, there are, at last, some good opportunities around to consider. In saying that, there are still some talented and experienced lawyers around so the competition for these roles can still be pretty fierce.
So, the question is – how do I make sure that I get the job as opposed to all of the other applicants?
The very simple answer to that question is to convince the employer that you want THAT job, not just A job.
When it gets to interview time, it is a reasonable assumption to make that after looking at your CV and inviting you to an interview, the employer believes that your technical skills are pretty well suited to the role. So, what they will be looking for during the interview is not only the cultural/team fit (which I talk about in a previous post) but also how much you want to work for them, not for their competitor down the road but for THEM.
This will be judged by factors such as how well you have researched the organisation, how knowledgable you are about the sort of work that they have done both individually and as a firm, how well you align your skills, experience, outlook and approach to theirs etc etc. In addition to this, your interviewing style should convey enthusiasm and passion for the role and the organisation. There is no point in saying all of the right things if you don’t say the right things in the right way.
Interviewers will be looking at all of this and their view on how keen you are on their job will form a huge part of their decision making process. To illustrate the point, it is worthwhile giving two scenarios that I became aware of recently.
Both Candidate A and Candidate B are very well qualified, highly educated, confident and personable lawyers who also happen to be looking for a job.
Candidate A was presented with an in-house opportunity which right from the initial conversation ignited a passion in her to get that job. She researched all she could about the organisation, what they did, what their plans for the future area are, watched online videos and basically left no stone unturned in her preparation. Importantly, she brought enthusiasm and passion into the interview. She wanted THAT job and she convinced the employer of that. Naturally then, she got it.
Candidate B was presented with an opportunity which was also of interest, given the skills and experience that she possessed and she very quickly was invited for interview. From the start, however, that passion and enthusiasm for that role was lacking. She did not prepare adequately for the interview, wasn’t aware of some of the recent work the firm had done and had only given the website a cursory glance. From what I can gather, the feedback from the employer was that she could obviously do the job but she did not convince them that she really wanted their job. She was just looking to get out of her current role. So regardless of the fact that she could do the job, she was not offered it.
The message that I am trying to get across is that, in the current recruitment market where it is still not easy to get a good role, it is absolutely vital that your approach from the start is to concentrate on getting that particular job, not any job, just that one. Prepare like it is the only job you are going for (even if it is not) and when you are in the interview, ensure that you convey the right amount of enthusiasm, energy and passion.
If you do that, there is a good chance that you will be made an offer. If you don’t, there is no chance that you will. In this market, getting an interview and not giving it your best shot is a huge mistake as the next role may not come along for some time.
If you are interested in some interview coaching and want to discuss how best to present yourself in an interview, give me a call, I would be delighted to have a chat to you.
Top 3 Interviewing Tips
August 19, 2009 by Damian
I came across this article on the ‘top 3 interviewing tips’ today and thought that it would be useful to disseminate a little further -
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/BlogDetail.aspx?BlogID=837.
It is written by an American so is quite long winded (sorry to any Americans reading – although that is probably quite unlikely really) but it does make some very good points.
In the current market, getting an interview is an achievement in itself and it really is criminal to blow your chance when you get there by a lack of preparation or understanding of how the interview process works.
As well as the three mentioned in this article, there are a few more that are worth noting so if you are preparing for an interview and want some pre-interview hints and tips, give me a call I would be more than happy to offer some assistance.
The Importance Of CVs
July 15, 2009 by Damian
It never ceases to amaze me how little time and effort some people put into their CVs. I regularly see CVs with typos, bad grammar, inconsistent formatting etc. I remember one CV where a candidate wrote that he had excellent attention to detail but he had spelled ‘detail’ incorrectly! This sort of thing is unforgivable and would result in the CV automatically going into the bin.
Apart from your passport and birth certificate, 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 good enough, you will not get the chance to prove this in an interview.
When writing your CV, two things should be paramount in your thinking:
(i) write it from the perspective of a partner/general counsel/hiring manager who does not know anything about you apart from what is on your CV. What information does he/she need to know about you before making a decision on whether to interview you or not? Just because something is obvious to you does not mean that it will be obvious to someone else. Explain everything – if you leave too many questions unanswered, you will not get the interview.
(ii) when you have finished your CV, you must be 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, that is not enough. It must be the best that you can do and that is surely better than ‘good enough’. So in terms of your CV, if you do not sit back and think that you look good on paper, you can guarantee that no-one else will either.
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!