Feature

posted 16 Nov 2005 in Volume 8 Issue 6

Recruitment turnaround

It may seem sensible to implement streamlined recruitment processes in law firms, but success will be limited if the market has inadequate or misleading preconceptions about what the firm is really like.

By Andy Keith, SJ Berwin

Recruiting in a tight marketplace is always difficult and often made harder because the preconceptions of the candidates can put organisations at a disadvantage even before the candidate and employer meet. How does a firm change views that could be outdated or even just plain wrong, when they may be completely external to its control?

We felt we were in the position where our reputation polarised our target talent pool and reinforced the status quo. We could attract people like us, but we found it difficult to broaden our appeal, as those who perceived us as being different to them felt no attraction to our offering, even though they had never met us.

We wanted to change this so that we would feel comfortable that we were attracting our fair share of the diverse talent we wanted to work with us.

Developing the project

The first thing that was needed was to understand what the market was saying to us. This meant that we undertook internal and external surveys, conducted focus groups, and sought honest and robust feedback from our recruitment consultants. The results informed us of what we had to do to change what potential candidates thought of the firm when they were going through the recruitment process. It also gave us a baseline to measure ourselves against, should we go ahead with the project. One of the most interesting aspects that came out of the research was that the more people had personal contact with us (for example, through the recruitment process, friends at the firm or set pieces such as work experience or vacation schemes) the greater the level of compatibility. What we needed to do, therefore, was let people find out about us and get to know us earlier in the process.

After some careful thought, we decided upon a three-pronged approach:

To challenge people’s perceptions of us through a bold and vibrant advertising campaign;
To ensure that our processes were adding to the value chain;
To retool our skills so that any interaction with us was positive and engaging.

From there, it became clear that there were five key goals that needed to be delivered:

To review our agencies, and renew and deepen our relationship with
a carefully selected number;
To redesign our recruitment-advertising image;
To upgrade our technology;
To develop and deliver a high-impact skills-improvement training programme;
To re-engineer our processes.

Concerns

There were a number of concerns to overcome before we could implement the project. The first was cost. It is not cheap to buy software, publish a glossy recruitment brochure and buy a large amount of space in the newspapers. The firm felt, however, that if we could deliver on this project, the benefits would outweigh the costs.

The second concern was whether we would be able to recruit the number of staff we needed if we reduced the size of the recruitment pool by using fewer agents. Although analysis had shown that about 90 per cent of placements were through about 20 per cent of the agents used, it still needed quite a change in mindset. Happily, the firm was willing to be persuaded.

The third concern was whether we could find an advertising concept that matched our expectations. We did, thanks to the creativity of the design agency.

The fourth concern was whether the adverts were too radical. We went with it anyway (but not before getting the approval of the senior partner).

Benefits

We wanted to deliver the following benefits:

To attract a wider pool of talent to our firm;
To improve our recruitment process;
To achieve better results with less time spent on non-chargeable activity.

Implementation

Having obtained the approvals we needed, we started the project with the agency review.

Agency review

When we started this review, we had about forty agencies sending CVs to us. We felt this had to change as we were unable to develop a close relationship with any agency, which meant we were unable to effectively use them to convey our message to market.

We conducted an analysis of the performance of each agency to try and differentiate between those that had taken a random-selection approach and those that had shown some thought and insight. Through this we identified eight agencies that we felt had recently provided us with candidates and provided a service that was more tailored to our needs. These eight were invited to tender for our business. We made it clear that we wanted to hear how they felt they could help us improve our reputation, the level of commitment they were willing to put in to building a really close working relationship and how bold they were willing to be with terms and service levels. Five rose to the challenge. They made up our preferred-suppliers list and had exclusive access to us and our vacancies. It was also important that we spent a lot of effort in explaining to those that did not make the list what we were trying to achieve and why we had chosen the route we had started upon.

The successful recruitment agents were all given access to the senior partner, recruiting partners and assistants. We invited them in to undergo part of our induction where the finance, HR and marketing directors explain the workings of the firm. This would give the agents a full understanding of how we, as an organisation, worked: what we did well and what we wanted to improve upon, and our strategic business aims. We took the view that if the agents were to represent us effectively, they needed to understand what we stood for in as much detail as any of our staff. Furthermore, we sent our agencies all our press releases and other information, and published a recruitment brochure for their use when briefing candidates about the firm. The intention is that each interviewee is given a copy prior to the interview.

In turn, as the agents to get to know us better, they are able to pass on that knowledge and understanding and are thus able to provide us with good quality candidates who have been properly and cogently briefed on us and our culture, and who were willing to engage with us to define their career aspirations.

Recruitment advertising

At the same time that we were working with the recruitment agents, we had instructed a creative design agency to deliver an advertising concept that would challenge people’s perception of the firm and encourage applicants to find out more about what we are really like by visiting our website or talking to our preferred suppliers. We decided on a campaign that was vibrant and eye-catching, which used a number of styling clues that reinforced our brand image (see figure one).

It was critical that the adverts challenged people to think again about what they had heard about the firm.

We also put together a suite of web images for use as advertising banners on a number of the job boards in the market. These banners either linked to our revamped website or to micro sites we had developed within the master job board. The intention was to align our iconography across a variety of media while funnelling online traffic to sites under our control.

This campaign is running across many legal journals and recruitment sites.

Software

We invested in new recruitment software to manage the process more efficiently. The software allows us to screen applications online and to run the whole process from application to offer electronically. We were keen to allow candidates and agents to apply for jobs online to facilitate the workflow. This reduces paper and improves process visibility, as candidates and agents are able to view progress on their applications.

The software allows much clearer management reporting, which allows us to benchmark ourselves as well as the agencies. We will now be able to track cost per hire, time to fill, acceptance rates, agency performance, recruitment costs per agency and a host of other metrics that we can use to review the preferred-supplier list as well as set ourselves stretching performance goals.

New process

While we were mapping the process for the software, we took the opportunity to re-engineer significant parts of our recruitment process, specifically the decision-making loops that were slow and almost too consensual. By redefining responsibilities, as well as setting achievable time lines, we feel that we have significantly enhanced our competitive standing. We are now capable of achieving CV to offer in ten working days and this includes at least two interviews with two interviewers at each. We are also getting close to achieving this level of activity in about 80 per cent of cases. We feel that by being very slick and candidate focused, we will meet people that are impressed by us and know that we are interested in them. We also hope that by getting our offers to the candidate while our competitors have not even screened the CV, we will get more than our fair share of first-class lawyers accepting our offers of employment.

Skills update

We also knew that those on the front line of the process had to have the skills to identify those candidates who would thrive and add value to the firm. We therefore offered all recruiting partners the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with the art of competency-based interviewing. We have now run three sessions and, encouragingly, the take-up of places is growing. A comment from one of most senior partners was that the course provided a host of extra tools for his interviewing skills. In line with the skills training, we wrote a number of crib sheets so that each interviewing partner had the facts, figures and message at his or her fingertips so that we were achieving a greater level of consistency.

Results so far

We wanted to change market perception to broaden our appeal. We did a PR campaign; we bought some software; we did some training; and got on side with the recruitment agents. We did a few things a bit better; and the results? This year to date we have seen:

We are spending 60 per cent less time on screening and interviews to achieve the same level of recruitment;
We estimate the above has saved £160,000 – more than twice the
cost of the project;
We calculated that fully factored (reduced cost of turnover, increased fee-earning headcount etc), the value to the firm is 18 times the cost of the project;
We have also seen a 500 per cent increase of traffic on our recruitment site from direct applicants (based on the website statistics in the month prior to the start of the project);
Anecdotally, we are hearing that when people are asked if they want to be put forwards to the firm, more people than before are keen to find out about us.

We are yet to do our close-of-project survey of the market to see how we match up to the one we did at the start of the project, but we are feeling confident that we will achieve our aims.

Andy Keith is senior HR manager at SJ Berwin. He can be contacted at andy.keith@sjberwin.com