When you locum it is sometimes the case that the assignment you thought you were working on changes and the client shifts the goalposts quite dramatically. This doesn’t happen that often, particularly where a client has spoken directly to the locum to discuss the role beforehand, but it does happen. Recently we have come across…
Every week we get lots of permanent vacancies and locum assignments from solicitors’ firms and in house legal departments. They’re often looking for a specific type of solicitor, with sufficient experience to do a specific job. Lets take a recent example. A firm in the South East of England are looking as follows: Permanent, Full…
Advice This is a STAR competency based interview question. STAR stands for “Situation, Task, Action and Result” and this particular question is a strong example of where using this technique is so effective. Firstly it is probably almost impossible to answer this type of question without having thought about it before attending the interview. It…
Advice This type of question is competency based and involves using the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Manna from heaven for any Six Sigma practitioners or business change managers. For everyone else it is a very difficult question indeed as the majority of professionals do not spend their working lives dealing with conflict in…
Summary – An Uncertain Market Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the political uncertainty. In February 2019 we saw an increase of 52% in new permanent vacancies compared with February 2018.…
Here are the Ten Percent Legal Recruitment top tips for becoming a lawyer in the UK. Firstly, bear in mind that there are quite a few different types of lawyer working in the UK, including barristers, solicitors, “non-qualified fee earners”, legal executive, licensed conveyancer, will writers and paralegals. In case it assists, a “non-qualified fee…
Interview Question 14 – Describe a time where you had to drive a team through change. How did you achieve this? Advice A difficult question if you have not had a very long managerial career or this question is asked at a time in your career when you have not really had to deal with…
Demonstrate an understanding of underlying organisational issues. Advice A very difficult question if you are not used to dealing with managerial speak! This is a question involving the STAR technique of firstly identifying the situation, secondly identifying a specific task, thirdly identifying your action as part of that task and finally confirming what the result…
Summary Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the political uncertainty. In January 2019 we saw a decrease of 52% in new permanent vacancies compared with January 2018. The number of new…
The first thing to say in relation to interviews for in-house roles is to expect the unexpected, because every company is governed by its HR department. If you have never worked in house before you will find that some HR departments seem to govern just about everything and come up with the most complex recruitment…
“I don’t want to do that type of law, it’s boring” Unnamed Mental Health Law Paralegal, December 2018. This topic of conversation could keep law students and lawyers going for years to come, but today we had an email from a paralegal who was enquiring about a job. He asked what specific area of law…
Advice This question is probably more relevant to some professions and posts than others but in essence the answer has to be the same. You need to have at least 3 different examples of different types of audience you have had to speak to. For example a useful selection would be probably the workforce, the…
Advice A very common interview question and a fairly easy one to answer. There is only one answer of course which is yes as anyone who is unable to work under pressure is unlikely to get offered a job in any situation or profession. You can perhaps give specific examples of times when you have…
Summary As ever we undertake a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference, particularly with the current political uncertainty. In December 2018 we saw an increase of 58% in the number of new permanent vacancies registered compared with December 2017.…
A recruitment consultant is, at base level, someone who a potential employer consults to go through the process of recruitment a new employee or member of staff. A recruitment consultant will assist the employer, source, select and employ the right member of staff and in doing so, receives a fee. Over 99% of all recruitment…
We have recently been approached by a law firm based in Abu Dhabi asking us to assist them in the provision of barristers or solicitors to work in their law firm. The tone of the email is very straightforward, the firm sound a very nice practice to work for, and the person who has emailed…
You probably expect that an author of such an article on a subject like this with close links to the recruitment industry would give an answer to say ‘yes of course you should’, but it does really depend on the circumstances. There are of course a lot of honourable and decent people in the world…
When you write a CV of any kind, particularly in the area of work we are based in, which is for the legal profession, it is important not to exaggerate any detail on the CV, regardless of how irrelevant or insignificant it may seem at the time. Exaggerating can come back to haunt you at…
Advice This is a particular type of question where you need to have a number of examples of work you have undertaken in the past or present that can be tailored according to the question asked. You need to think of specific examples where potentially you have completed a task well. However because this was…
I don’t know about your business, but in ours on a daily basis we have to deal with some really pompous arses. I don’t like using bad language when writing articles, but there really is no other way of describing some of the people we come across each day. The definition of a pompous arse…
Advice Although this is a closed question with potentially a simple yes or no answer, it does give you the opportunity to get over to the interviewer how you are quite comfortable working on your own and to demonstrate specific examples of times you have perhaps introduced new methods of working or increased sales through…
We recently had an instance where a solicitors firm interviewed three or four different solicitors for a role, which was relatively well paid and required a particular level of expertise. The partners saw four candidates at interview and made a decision after the interviews to recruit one of these. They immediately emailed the unsuccessful candidates…
Recruitment rule 223: Never, ever return to an employer you have just told that you will be leaving. Here’s the scenario; you get despondent at work and decide to look around for a new job. A firm offer you a role after you have attended interviews, you like the look of the new company, they…
Summary As ever we undertake a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2017 to see if there has been any difference, particularly with the current political uncertainty. In October 2018 we saw an increase of 47% in the number of new solicitors registering compared with October 2017. This is…
Advice This is a question involving the STAR technique and another example of a question where you need to have specific projects and incidents stored in your brain ready to be adapted to answer these questions. The author of this article thinks that this approach to interviewing is not particularly good or effective. The technique…
Summary In recent months there has been a lot of political uncertainty and we were curious to see whether this had been reflected in the legal job market. Each month we undertake a comparison with the same time period in 2017 to see if there has been any difference. The job market was busier in…
Advice Preferably you will have been asked this question with just the well as opposed to the badly bit as it is a general rule in interviews that wherever possible you try to avoid any negative comment or thought about anything. It does make a difference to the perception of the interviewer if you focus…
Advice This is a loaded question and one you need to be very careful about answering. If you are applying for a junior post, for example a training contract with a solicitors’ firm, you really should not be giving any indication at this stage of an interest to specialise in. You simply do not know…
Advice This question really depends on the circumstances of the interview. If you have been headhunted, are currently in employment and not particularly looking until you were approached then it would be perfectly acceptable to give a straightforward answer. If not, you need to consider your response very carefully. If you give an affirmative answer…