Overview of Australian Legal Recruitment Market
November 28, 2011 by Damian
Here is a link to a really good overview of the legal recruitment market in Australia at the moment taken from Lawyer’s Weekly.
Reading through it, it was interesting to note how similar the sentiments that the recruiters had over there are to what I am seeing here in NZ. I will write a separate post soon to give me tuppence on where the NZ market is currently at.
Australian Legal Recruitment Market Update
August 2, 2011 by Damian
Here is a link to an article written by one of the Directors of Burgess Paluch Legal Recruitment in Australia.
http://www.lawfuel.co.nz/features/show-feature.asp?FeatureID=241
We work very closely with Burgess Paluch so if you are interested in heading ‘across the ditch’, get in touch with us now and we’ll see what we can do for you!
Herbert Smith mulls Australia to jump-start global plan
May 17, 2011 by Damian
Here is the text of a very interesting story that I have just come across in The Lawyer. It looks like the Australian market is just about to get even more interesting! Again what ramifications this will have on the NZ market is extremely hard to judge but one certainty is that it will make Australia an even more attractive destination for our top lawyers who will be able to combine work of the very highest quality for an international law firm with a lifestyle that London lawyers can only dream of.
‘Herbert Smith is the latest firm to set its sights on the Australian market with a plan to follow the likes of Allen & Overy (A&O), Clifford Chance and Norton Rose Down Under.
While Herbert Smith has taken a conservative approach to international expansion in recent years, it is now understood to be eyeing an Australian launch.
It is unclear whether the firm is keen to identify a merger partner or whether, like A&O and Clifford Chance, it is planning to cherrypick teams to launch its own base. Sources suggest that it has held merger talks with Blake Dawson and Freehills.
“Blake Dawson has an excellent energy and natural resources practice, just like Herbert Smith,” said a partner at an Australian firm. “One of its main clients is BHP Billiton, so it would be a great fit for Herbies.”
Herbert Smith has long shown an interest in Australia, with the firm hiring directly from Australian law schools for a number of years, but it has upped its focus on the country recently.
A partner at another Australian firm said: “They seem to be paying more attention than ever before. For firms like Herbert Smith, there’s a feeling that if they don’t do something they might get left behind.”
Another partner at an international firm revealed: “In Sydney there’s quite a bit of talk that Herbert Smith will do something in Australia this year.”
Lawyers in Australia have reported a dramatic increase in the number of firms from the UK, US and Canada visiting the country over the past 12 months.
“Most major law firms have an enlivened interest in Australia and are working out what to do here,” said the head of one Australian law firm. “There have been more visitors over the past 12 months and things have taken on a heightened intensity since Christmas.”
This, along with the arrival of a number of UK-headquartered firms over the past 18 months, has led to unease among many partners in Australian firms.
“Quite a number of firms are really feeling the pinch,” admitted another local partner. “I think there’s dissension among partners in the likes of Freehills and to a lesser extent Blake Dawson. They’re both strong firms in their own right, but partners are wondering what the future holds.”
Herbert Smith did not return calls for comment. Blake Dawson denied that it is in merger talks with Herbert Smith.’
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…
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.
Beware The Rogue Recruiter
March 9, 2011 by Damian
From a recruiter’s point of view, I had a pretty scary conversation with a candidate earlier today.
This candidate is a very senior lawyer currently working in a pretty high profile role. He called me up last week to ask about a particular job which turned out not to be suitable for him. During the course of the conversation, I mentioned another role that I thought would be more relevant to his years of seniority. After hearing about the role, he said that he had already heard about it from another recruiter but would think about whether he wanted to apply or not and would get back to me this week with his thoughts.
He called me up today to let me know that unbeknown to him, the recruiter that he met initially had forwarded his CV to the client without his authorisation. This is just unacceptable behaviour on behalf of the recruiter and should never, ever happen. It is one of the central tenets of being a recruiter – never send a candidate’s CV to a client without their express authorisation.
This situation worries me because when other recruiters act like this, it gives the whole industry a bad name as it smacks of a lack of professionalism, honesty and transparency which should be cornerstones of our profession.
From a candidate’s point of view, it is obviously impossible to stop a rogue recruiter from sending your details out without your approval. However, there are a couple of things that you can do. Firstly, only work with recruiters who you trust. If you are unsure about whether a particular recruiter knows what they are up to, do not work with them. Ask to be removed from their database and go and find someone who you do trust. The recruitment process can be a long and involved one. You will get to know your recruiter pretty well. Make sure you like and more importantly make sure that you trust them.
Secondly, when you are in a meeting or on a call to a recruiter who is talking about various options, stress that is absolutely paramount that your CV only goes to pre-approved firms. Emphasise that point. Feel free to ask for a list of proposed approaches and enquire as to how the approach is going to be made.
Thirdly, ask for regular updates on approaches. Your recruiter should be doing that as a matter of course but if you are not getting the level of information that you need, demand it. It is part of our job to give you it.
To finish up the story of the senior lawyer above, thankfully for the agency involved, he was not too bothered that they had sent his CV off without his prior consent and at the end of the day, he did not get the job. However, he could have kicked up a major fuss and probably should have.
Your CV is a very personal document which should be treated with respect by a recruiter. If yours is not being treated with the respect that it deserves – do something about it!
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.
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.
Interesting NZ Law Firm News!
May 25, 2010 by Damian
The New Zealand legal landscape is not known for providing a huge amount of exciting news but in the last week or so, I have seen a couple of very interesting articles that are definitely worth a read.
The first one concerns the standing of DLA Phillips Fox in NZ and whether the firm is going to split off from DLA Phillips Fox Australia
http://au.legalbusinessonline.com/news/breaking-news/45796.
It also mentions a very juicy bit of gossip about where the NZ arm of the firm may end up.
That story is all speculation but a very interesting factual development has just been announced by Minter Ellison Rudd Watts –
http://lawyersweekly.com.au/blogs/top_stories/archive/2010/05/24/minters-nz-taking-on-uk-work.aspx
Minters in NZ “has uncovered a new revenue stream working with UK-based law firms and clients to assist with their legal work at around half the price of UK-based lawyer rates”.
My first thought was that this was quite a strange move for a leading NZ law firm, given the concerns there are about outsourcing, but on reading the article, the work accounts for less than 1% of the firm’s total revenue and is not in the firm’s core areas. So on reflection, I think that it is a very innovative idea for a NZ law firm, taking advantage of the expertise of the its lawyers and the time difference between NZ and the UK.
I suspect that this will not be the last time that this sort of arrangement happens!
The final article of interest concerns Kensington Swan –
http://au.legalbusinessonline.com/law-firms/new-equity-structure-ruffles-feathers-at-kensington-swan/1001/45857.
These sorts of things happen all the time in the UK, US etc so are hardly news at all over there. However, over here, they create a little more of a ripple.
Sometimes, when talking to people about the legal market in NZ, comments are made about how nothing ever seems to change. Judging by these 3 articles, it seems like there is going to be a bit of a shake up down here. AT LAST!