Summary: Harrison Barnes warns attorneys why they should avoid legal recruiters and hire placement professionals instead.
For any attorney wanting to switch jobs, encountering a recruiter is inevitable. However, encountering a recruiter that truly understands the legal profession and job market is a lot harder to find.
Harrison Barnes of BCG Attorney Search expressed his own frustrations with legal recruiters in his post, “Why You Should Never Use a Legal Recruiter.” In the past, when he had been interested in switching law firms, he was disheartened by the “aggressive” recruiters he met who seemed more interested in a quick sale than in actually helping his career. Furthermore, he was shocked by their lack of professionalism—document typos, lack of response, lack of knowledge, etc. that didn’t give him much faith in their work.
That’s when Barnes realized there was a difference between legal recruiters and legal placement professionals. Recruiters are sales-driven and opportunistic. Legal placement professionals are motivated by connecting with their candidates and law firms. He stated that it is imperative for attorneys looking for work to distinguish the two types because the former is not going to help one’s career.
So how can attorneys spot the difference? Barnes said that these were the 14 traits of a legal recruiter to watch out for:
How to spot a legal recruiter:
- Motivated by quick and easy commissions
- About filling job orders
- Salespeople who follow the money
- Opportunistic and defined by short-term thinking
- Lack depth and substance
- Know about a few jobs in a limited region
- Manipulative and chase resumes
- Talk a good game and use tricks and games to get people to do things they should not do
- Produce poor quality work, including written work riddled with misspellings
- Lack interest in candidates and do the work because they think it will lead to easy money
- Forget candidates when placements do not work out and fail to return phone calls
- Often work from home with limited technological resources
- Unaccountable to anyone
- Fail to accomplish much of anything
In his post, Barnes goes further into detail about these 14 points, and he also explains the 14 traits of a legal placement professional.
To learn more, check out Barnes article here.
Source: BCG Attorney Search
