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.
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!
The View From London
July 30, 2010 by Damian
In my last blog post, I commented on how important it is from a recruiter’s point of view not to exaggerate the overall health of the job market. Bearing that in mind, after talking to my colleagues in London during the week about what is happening over there, this is hopefully a realistic overview of the London market as it currently stands.
However, before talking about what is happening now, I think that it is helpful to briefly rewind and consider how things stood this time last year. Basically, it was rubbish. Firms were laying dozens of people off, morale within the firms was at rock bottom, the deal flow dried up and the end of the world was nigh. The chances of an overseas lawyer securing a role in London was as likely as Osama being invited around to Barack’s house for a cup of tea and a chin wag.
Now, however, things have changed. Whether it is a change of government, a change in perception or just the summer sun shining, it looks like the woes of late 2008/2009 are gone and have been replaced with a healthy but cautious optimism.
It is certainly true to say that the law firms over there are hiring again. It just takes a casual look at sites like Totally Legal and Seek to see that. What is interesting is that, in addition to the litigation roles that you would expect to see, there are now corporate and finance roles being advertised, along with roles in more niche areas such as IT outsourcing and competition/antitrust.
What is even more interesting is the type of firms who are recruiting. It is not, as you would expect, the Magic Circle behemoths who are out scouting about, it is firms in the mid-tier such as Travers Smith, Macfarlanes and SJ Berwin who are leading the charge. There is good talent around and firms like these are making the most of it.
So, there are jobs, that is not in doubt. So where does this leave the Kiwi lawyer who wants to go over and drink warm beer and watch the 2011 Rubgy World Cup in a packed overpriced Walkabout pub in Shepherd’s Bush? Well, the obvious formula is that the more jobs there are, the better chance of a Kiwi lawyer getting one. At a basic level, that holds true. However, it should not be forgotten that this jobs recovery is still in its infancy and there A LOT of locally qualifieds around applying for these roles.
As such, if you are serious about getting something in London, you have to remove as many barriers as you possibly can. Firms don’t want to interview you via video-conference and pay you relocation costs so the best idea is to go to London and be available to interview face to face. (I realise that takes the huge leap of faith of resigning from your safe and stable NZ job but this post is about getting a job in London and if that’s what you want to do, then resigning and going to London is your best bet).
If you are around the 1-2 year level, the best advice is to stay where you are for another year or so. The most competitive place to be is at the UK newly qualified level so if you can avoid getting involved in that bun fight, then I would recommend that you stay where you are, get another 12 months + experience and make your move then.
For those candidates who have 3 years plus experience, a visa/passport and are in London to interview, it is fair to say that there should be options for you to consider. However, it is still not going to be easy. The days of having multiple interviews have long gone and even if you do manage to get multiple interviews, this does not mean that any of those will translate into a job offer. The reason is that firms are now interviewing more people than they used to. You may be up against 8-10 people in the first round of interviews. That is a lot of competition. You have to be patient and make sure that you are working with reputable recruiters who are looking after you and giving you the best advice possible.
If you want to talk to someone about this, please get in touch with us now. We have contacts with a very reputable agency in London who will be able to present you with a wide range of options in private practice over there.
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!
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.
“Salaries plateau in 2009 – but for how long?”
June 30, 2009 by Damian
Have a look at this article from the Australasian Legal Business (ALB) magazine (and not just because I am quoted in it!) – http://au.legalbusinessonline.com/news/analysis/salaries-plateau-in-2009-but-for-how-long/35739.
It gives a very interesting overview of the Australian legal market and how the GFC has affected it, especially in relation to salaries.
Whether it is just that NZ firms keep this information quieter or whether they are just in better shape than their Australian counterparts is a point for discussion but it seems like we in NZ have not been hit quite as hard as our friends across the Tasman.
It would be interesting to hear some anonymous views on the subjects of salary freezes in the NZ market so if anyone wants to share some information on this subject, please do!