The Dream Job. Are you ready if it knocks on your door?

You are happy  in your job.  But let’s face it.  It’s a job.  A means to an end.  But what if your dream job was right around the corner.  What if an employer was proactively seeking their next superstar and that star was YOU?   Would you be ready? Here are some ideas on how to prepare yourself, fine-tune your personal brand and be job ready when your dream position comes knocking: 1. First things first – your CV. If you’re content in your current position (or even if you’re not), it’s likely you haven’t touched your resume in a while.  But it’s time to blow the dust off and spruce it up.  The resume is often your key chance to get your foot in the door.  What does it say about you?  Is it current?  Are your most up-to-date volunteer and projects represented?  What about ongoing education, presentations or additional training?  Take some time with this one.  Ensure the resume reflects you and your experience accurately. 2. Social media can make or break you. Gone are the days of separating your social and professional world.  Employers are actively reviewing social media tools their candidates are using.  A recent CareerBuilder survey stated that nearly 40% of all hiring managers are screening candidates based on their online personas – and nearly 70% of those candidates were ruled out due to questionable personal content online. Review your social profiles and delete any inappropriate photos or language or complaints about your current job or employer.  Are your accounts representing a well rounded, polished professional with strong communication skills? Now is the time to manage your virtual reputation. 3. Stay connected. Your references should be your biggest fans. You’ve probably provided their contact information over the course of your career, but when is the last time you had a conversation with them?  Are they aware of your current employment situation? If it’s been awhile, it might be time to re-evaluate who you are providing as a reference.  Are there more current or relevant contacts that can speak on your behalf? Update your list.  Give them a call.  Make sure they are ready and able discuss your background and experience. 4. Be prepared to discuss your individual or team accomplishments. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day to day of doing your job, but when is the last time you reflected on your successes.  Could you name a few if you were asked?  It’s time to take stock of the individual positive contributions you’ve made in your roles.  Make a list.  Identify the outcomes.  Have you led successful teams? The same is true of this scenario.  Can you speak to successful team outcomes?  Be prepared to do so. Future employers want to know that you’ve demonstrated successes throughout your career. 5. Strengths vs. Weaknesses (or Opportunities for Improvement). Everyone’s got them. Not unlike identifying accomplishments, being asked to articulate strengths and weaknesses is common in the interview process.  Yet many interviewees have a difficult time pinpointing these areas.  Be prepared to discuss them.    In addition, have examples ready.  Interviewers want proof.  Can you validate these areas?  How have you utilised your strengths or overcome your weaknesses? How do you, in fact, know these are true areas to highlight?  While it’s not easy to expose some of these vulnerabilities, most employers value this level of transparency and self-awareness. 6. Continuous Improvement. It’s not just a cliché. What are you doing to ‘improve’ yourself, meaning, what is your professional development plan?  How are you expanding your skillsets?  Too many candidates rely on their employers to provide and resource their professional growth.  For many organisations, this simply isn’t a focus.  Or they are cutting or shrinking these budgets.   It’s time to recognise that gone are the days of employer-funded or directed growth and development. Be intentional.  Own your career path and growth plan.  You are in charge of your development, not your employer. 7. Be proactive.You probably have a job description.  Do you follow it closely?  Do you draw a hardline on tasks outside of your job?  Or are you open to expand your skills outside of your defined role?  An individual who is willing to take on additional responsibilities becomes a more desirable candidate every time.  Not only does this approach highlight someone who is a team player, it also illustrates someone who is proactive, seeking to better themselves and their organisation. 8. When opportunity knocks, open the door.  You may have few chances in your life to change your trajectory.  Don’t miss them. For additional career advice, contact Jason Elias on [email protected].

Keep your lawyers happy!

Retaining top talent should be a priority for every firm. Turnover is costly in terms of training time, lost work, employee morale – not to mention unhappy clients. With the candidate market for lawyers increasingly tight, it is more important than ever to keep your lawyers happy! By providing a clear career track and support to enable their best work can only be to the benefit of your clients and your firm. Here are four approaches to consider in ensuring your firm culture is optimised to retain your top performers. 1. Focus on employee experience Considering the employee experience is essential to keeping your lawyers loyal and happy. Susan Peters, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at General Electric, defines the employee experience “simply as seeing the world through the eyes of our employees, staying connected, and being aware of their major milestones and the physical environment our employees work in, the tools and technologies that enable their productivity, and learning to achieve their best at work.” Essentially, focusing on employee experience ensures that a firm goes beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to hiring and culture and caters a career track suited to maximizing the potential of each employee. This may mean understanding the differing needs of baby boomers, Gen-X/Y and millennials. 2. Prioritise employee engagement throughout the organisation According to research by Gallup, only 13% of employees globally are engaged at work. This presents a significant cost to employers. Gallup’s research, which included nearly 1.9 million employees, confirmed a strong connection between employee engagement and key performance outcomes, including: customer ratings, profitability, productivity, turnover (for high-turnover and low-turnover organisations), safety incidents, shrinkage (theft), absenteeism, patient safety incidents and quality (defects). Engagement is all about empowering managers and employees to effect positive change to their workplace. “It should go without saying, if the person who works at your company is 100 percent proud of the brand and you give them the tools to do a good job and they are treated well, they’re going to be happy,” Richard Branson told Inc. magazine. 3. Recognition costs nothing This might seem obvious, but showing appreciation for a task well done, a client kept happy or a crisis averted is cheap, easy and needs nothing more than a word of thanks or an appreciative email. Some employees prefer a public accolade – a mention during a meeting, reflecting validation in the eyes of their peers – while others thrive from a quiet word of thanks in private. Public praise, however, serves the additional purpose of demonstrating to the team what kind of initiative is useful. 4. Provide workplace flexibility Outcomes matter, not time in the daily grind. Offering employees the option of working remotely, working around school hours or only coming in when necessary can mean you retain a top talent while still achieving the results the business needs. As the global workforce shifts towards contingent and contract workers – the ‘gig economy’ – flexible workplaces will increasingly become the norm. Like so many other workplace practices, it’s vital not to be left behind – especially with NewLaw emphasising outcomes-driven work and flexible work practices. The cost of unhappy employees The costs of not keeping good employees happy are high. A study by the Society for Human Resource Management suggests that employers need to spend six to nine months of an employee’s salary to find and train their replacement – for a lawyer on $150,000, this equates to a cost of $75,000 to $112,500 for the firm. Optimising the employee experience will be an easier shift for smaller firms and businesses. However, with the candidate market tight, employers will need to prioritise keeping employees happy more than ever. Talk to us today about how we can assist you in finding top talent to fill your next role, email [email protected] or phone (02) 9555 5711.

Have the best jobs come to you!

How to position yourself for headhunting. A few touches to your mobile phone and your groceries, an Uber or a pizza come to you. So why not a job? Many of the best jobs are never advertised so how do you hear about them? Good employers know that the best lawyers are so busy running their practices that they don’t have time to trawl through job ads. They also like keeping strategic hires out of the public eye so the marketplace doesn’t catch on to what they’re doing and where they’re headed. That’s why, when it comes to bringing in the big guns, they’ll use third party headhunters to track down, sound out and snare the best talent for themselves. Headhunters don’t use a scattergun approach. Once they’ve been briefed they usually put feelers out via networks, compile a longlist, then research those candidates to see who’s likely to be a good fit. By the time they approach someone, they pretty much know who they are, what they do and what their reputation is like. So, if you want to be in their sights, there are six things you should be doing. 1. Social networks – make LinkedIn work for you Review your LinkedIn profile, make sure it clearly articulates your skills, experience and area of practice. Highlight projects you’ve worked on and the value you contributed (without of course breaching client confidentiality). Headhunters want to have a good understanding that you’ve worked on similar kinds of matters to those their client has briefed them about. Don’t be shy about blowing your own horn. 2. Be known as an industry expert You’ll never be headhunted if no one has ever heard of you. So, if you’re not already building a profile for yourself, start now. Put yourself forward to present on your areas of expertise wherever possible, especially for industry events or CPD. As an example, check out Bulletpoints for content. Write about important issues and hot topics affecting your work and share these – not just via your firm’s newsletters but directly with your contacts on LinkedIn and other social media channels. To ramp things up, join LinkedIn groups of like-minded people such as Australian Legal Community and start contributing to the conversations. Consider publishing in industry journals – or better still, form relationships with journalists to expand opportunities of being quoted in business or mainstream press as an expert in your field. 3. Releasing subtle signals If you are considering making a move, it’s a good idea to start putting your feelers out there. You can even change your LinkedIn settings to discreetly show that you are open to new opportunities (not viewable to your employer). Also check that your Inmail settings allow you to notify users that you are open to ‘career opportunities’. 4. Make contacting you easy, not a mystery While gatekeeping receptionists can be great at shielding you from overseas telemarketing calls, they can act as a block for headhunters who want to sound you out. So make yourself easy to contact by including your mobile number and personal email address on your LinkedIn profile. If a headhunter struggles to reach you, they may bypass you and run the opportunity by the next person on their list. And, if a headhunter calls and you can’t speak freely, set a time to chat when you’re out of the office. This also gives you a chance to check out their LinkedIn profile to see whether you want to deal with them. 5. Remain professional, don’t breach etiquette Don’t tell anyone in your firm – and that means anyone – about your plans to move, even once you’ve been approached. If the headhunting process isn’t handled discreetly, you’re likely to jeopardise your current position as well as any new opportunities. If a headhunter alerts you to an opportunity never approach the employer directly. Not only will your overtures be met with blank stares, you’ll be seen as disloyal. They’re using a headhunter for a reason. 6. But don’t be afraid If you are approached by a headhunter, you can benefit from their expertise. It never hurts to know the state of the market and have a trusted source of intelligence, especially around salary review time. Besides, even if the specific opportunity they wanted to talk about isn’t right for you at the time, something may hit their desk in the near future. Finally, if you’ve noticed that they’ve looked at your LinkedIn profile, drop them a line to find out why. Headhunting can be a slow dance of missed calls, profile views and unnoticed messages sitting in your personal email account. So, if you’re open to a move, make sure you stay alert and responsive to any headhunter approach. If you are interested in finding out more or hearing about new legal opportunities, contact Jason Elias on (02) 9555 5711 or [email protected].

Does your firm’s website pass the test

Your website reflects your brand and personality. Not only do potential clients view it when searching for legal services, but potential candidates as well. Be sure to make a favourable first impression. Below is an article from Zaliet (our guest blogger), the only global provider of personalised websites for small law firms. Today they are sharing with us the 10 and 30 second website test. A law firm website that looks good can still be an ineffective marketing tool. As more lawyers realise the importance of a website in their marketing strategy, more websites pop up every day. Most of them look great – modern, clean and professional – but many are indistinguishable from one another. When digital marketing was new, having a great looking website was enough to convince a prospective client to engage your firm’s services. However, clients are now much more business-savvy. They know you have the qualifications. They want to know why, in a sea of qualified competition, they should choose you. The 10 and 30 second tests can help you know if your website works. Prospective clients look for a few things in the first 10 seconds of visiting a law firm website: A contemporary-looking, easy-to-use website. A clear explanation of what the firm does. A clear statement about what sets the firm apart from others. Call this ‘the pitch’. The pitch is important. It tells prospective clients why they should choose you over anyone else. It could be because you are specialists in an area of law. Or perhaps you offer excellent client service. The pitch shouldn’t be buried beneath other content. It needs to be clearly visible when a prospective client visits your website. If your website passes the ‘10 second test’, the prospective client will stay a little longer. Now you have about 30 seconds to convince them to choose your firm. At this point, people are looking for: Proof that supports your pitch. If you claim you are highly experienced in an area of law, now is the time to justify that claim. Relevant, fresh content such as a blog. You could cover frequently asked questions in your area of law, or the latest legal developments. This free and valuable content entices people to stay longer on your website. It also boosts their confidence in your expertise. Information on your lawyers. Interesting bios can help a prospective client connect with you on a personal level. That may be the final push they need to contact you. A call to action. You have your pitch, which tells people why to choose you. The call to action is where you tell the prospective client to do something about it, like contacting you for a free consultation. Easy, intuitive-to-use contact details that are clearly displayed. Aim for multiple contact options: a phone number, email, a map of your location, a quick and easy contact form or a chat bot. Does your website pass the test? Want to discuss your firm’s website? Reach out to Zaliet, as they have over 8 years of experience creating thousands of personalised websites. Until 31-Aug-17 they are offering readers a 15% discount on Zaliet subscriptions with the code ELIAS15.