How To Improve Your Recruitment Strategy In 2024
An effective recruitment strategy is vital to your firm’s success and growth. After all, a weak or ill-thought-out recruitment strategy essentially gives your biggest competitors a head start, as you’re ensuring that the top talent applies to their vacancies instead of your own.
Conversely, an effective recruitment strategy will help you to win what many have described as “the war on top talent,” putting your firm in a great position moving forward.
With that in mind, here’s exactly how you can improve your recruitment strategy in 2024.
1. Understand the challenges faced by law firms in recruiting top talent.
Understanding the most common hiring challenges a law firm faces allows you to update your recruitment plan accordingly so that you’re prepared for all eventualities.
While there are many challenges when it comes to recruiting in the legal sector, one of the most pressing is a lack of understanding of employees’ wants and needs from recruiters or talent managers. For example, in the hyper-competitive field of law, many senior partners believe that recruits should be willing to work unsociable hours or respond to emails on their day off. After all, this was how the legal industry operated for a long time, earning itself a somewhat notorious reputation in doing so.
More recently, however, there’s been a clear shift. Younger lawyers and recent graduates want a better work-life balance, with clearer boundaries in place to protect their well-being. Failing to mention your firm’s attitude towards this or demonstrating your commitment to employee well-being could mean that your vacancies remain unfilled for longer.
2. Build a strong employer brand.
Small to mid-sized law firms often lose out on top talent to more recognized firms or businesses. However, one way you can remedy this is by building a strong employer brand of your own. Candidates should be able to read your job advertisement and gain an understanding of what it would be like to work at your firm.
To achieve this goal, you should:
- Outline your firm’s values and the steps you take to uphold them within the workplace.
- Discuss opportunities for in-house development, such as mentoring schemes.
- Touch upon company or workplace culture.
3. Put together a compelling job advertisement.
It takes, on average, 42 days to fill a vacancy. However, you can considerably speed up the process by ensuring you’re putting together a compelling job advertisement.
This begins with writing a good job description. It should clearly outline the role in question, alongside any necessary qualifications or professional experience. This can help attract the right candidates while dissuading applications from those who may be underqualified.
You should also include the salary (or salary range) within the job description, as this can often encourage people to apply for the role if it falls within their expectations. Omitting this information, however, could cause them to disregard your listing altogether. In fact, 85% of graduate job seekers claim they are less likely to apply to a role if the salary is not included in the listing.
4. Collaborate with legal recruitment agencies.
Running a law firm is a complicated and time-consuming task, which means you may not have the time in your schedule to spend on recruitment or your recruitment strategy. In this case, you may wish to collaborate with recruiters that specialize in the legal field. This way, they can deal with the technicalities of the recruitment process, bringing in top talent for interviews and saving you a considerable amount of time.
Final Thoughts.
Updating your recruitment strategy is paramount to your success in the coming years, especially if you’re looking to scale your law firm. However, it’s also worth noting that this is not the only way to ensure you’ve got the best professionals working under your name.
Outsourcing specific roles, especially those that fall outside the legal remit, can also help you grow from strength to strength. For example, the money you save outsourcing an accountant, as opposed to hiring a full-time staff member, can be invested into other areas of your business.
At FinOp Group, we’re on hand to assist with all things accounting. Get in touch today to find out more!
