Despite the assertion from certain politicians that the age of boom and bust was over (I wonder if Gordon Brown ever regrets saying this?), it is clear that the next few years the economy is in for a bit of a ride, to say the least.
The legal sector always seems to be more quickly affected than others because of its overwhelming connection to the property market in lots of different ways. Our experience of recruitment is that when the property market booms, law firms’ turnovers increase, regardless of whether or not the firm undertakes property work.
Property Market Downturns Do Not Result in Lots of New Candidates
There is a property connection in lots of different ways, and in good times recruitment can be very difficult because there are very few staff around looking, and in bad times recruitment works in the opposite way, because anyone good will stay firmly put for fear of losing their job if their new firm gets into difficulty, and anyone who works at a firm that gets into difficulty will find it difficult to obtain a new post, because the salaries on offer from firms actively recruiting will be considerably lower than the one they are just leaving.
This means that despite assertions from certain employers that when the market contracts the recruitment market is suddenly awash with high quality candidates they can scoop up to add to their own business, nothing could be further from the truth.
Recruitment Gets Harder
In some ways, recruitment gets harder, because all businesses have to justify the cost of recruitment, and generate money from any new staff member they take on. When markets drop, firms naturally want to pay lower wages, because the prospects of generating income are lower, but employees rarely want to change jobs for less money, and so only do so if they are desperate, which leads on to the never-ending circle of high quality candidates being in short supply regardless of the market, and lower quality (and hence expensive) candidates being available at varying times depending on the state of the economy.
Ten Percent Unlimited Recruitment Services
There is a way to recession-proof your recruitment needs, and that is to consider using the Ten Percent Unlimited legal recruitment service. Ten Percent Unlimited is a fixed price recruitment service that involves paying a low monthly fee in return for as much or as little recruitment as you want to do.
This means two things: firstly, there are no expensive recruitment fees payable if you manage to find someone through the service, because the only price you pay is the monthly fee, and the second point is that if that member of staff leaves or you have need to terminate their employment because work has dropped, you are not left with huge recruitment costs, because no fees have been payable for the placement of a candidate.
The monthly fee simply covers the any recruitment consultancy services you may need, which includes Law Society Gazette and Reed job board advertising amongst others, but more importantly our own vast candidate database over over 10,000 solicitors, which is where we get the overwhelming majority of our placements from.
Established in 2011
We set the service up back in 2011, when we had identified that the legal recruitment market was struggling on the permanent side following the recession in 2008. At a time when the economy was not really doing a lot, we had over 100 law firm members using the service, because they could see the benefit of having access to potential candidates but not having to pay out large amounts of recruitment fees each time they managed to find someone. The service worked particularly well for smaller practices who are simply unable to afford the advertising spend, or the recruitment fees charged by a conventional recruitment business (which we offer as well).
Recruitment is not guaranteed (no recruitment ever is - we are dealing with humans, not robots!), so you may post a vacancy to recruit but not actually manage to fill the post using the service. However, you do get to advertise for as long and as often as you want to, and the service can be used alongside other forms of recruitment if wanted.
Get in Touch
So, if you would like your own recruitment consultant working for your business at a very low monthly fee, please get in touch. We have been providing this service for over 10 years, and it works incredibly smoothly for all our clients.
For further details or to request a quote, please visit www.tenpercentunlimited.co.uk or call 0207 127 4343.
Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a non-practising Solicitor. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment provides online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Licensed Conveyancers, Legal Cashiers, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals. Visit our Website to search our Vacancy Database.
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