Hire Right
By Sangeeta Agrawal
Senior Legal Recruiter, Davidson Legal Staffing
"I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."
- Maya Angelou
The same is true of hiring the right talent for your firm. To find the right employee one has to look beyond the interview room. What goes on in the interview room is a mock exercise and is often a rehearsed performance.
Updating your hiring process with some innovative approaches can provide you valuable insight and enable you to hire right.
Fit vs. Skills
The first step in the hiring process is to determine your needs - not just job skills such as duties/responsibilities, education, etc. By meeting with the Attorney and/or practice group you can develop a candidate profile based on values, personality and attitude that will give you direction on designing unique screening questions that go beyond the typical interview.
Lesson Learned
Give candidates some homework before the interview. This may be a detailed behavioral questionnaire, a review of your website and their comments or asking them to write a paragraph about how they see themselves fitting into your firm/position. People often reveal something important about themselves if they are given opportunities not part of a "typical" interview format.
Update your Application
Try adding questions that evoke thought - e.g. "What did you like most about your last position?" or "What were your major contributions at your last position?"
Innovative Interviewing
Create unique questions based on your profile of the ideal fit. Try switching your traditional questions to situational questions - e.g. "Describe a time when you had to handle a difficult situation." The goal is to get unrehearsed responses to gain better insight into the candidates' personality. One of our clients asks off the cuff questions like "Under what circumstances is it okay to be late for work?"
First Impressions
Always ask the first person who met the candidate to give his/her first impression. Receptionists, particularly, get the good and the bad when candidates first walk in. This is great insight to who they are before they show you their "game face."
Attitude Trumps Experience
In the tight labor market today - statistics indicate the unemployment rate is at a very low 3.5% - it behooves you to look at candidates who may not meet all the specifications but impress you with their "can do" attitude. Training can be a minor investment with a big payoff for the firm.
Consider the unconventional when evaluating an employee for hire. The more often you can set a scenario that a potential employee will not expect or could find to be an unusual method of interviewing, the better. It will give you a chance to see the true potential of the candidate. Even more importantly, trust your instincts. If you have planned ahead and have all your ducks in a row, there is less likelihood of you landing that nightmare employee.
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Sangeeta Agrawal is a Senior Legal Recruiter with Davidson Legal Staffing, with offices located in Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the East Bay. Prior to joining Davidson Legal Staffing, Sangeeta worked with non-profit agencies on the East Coast and in South East Asia.