New generation: trainee recruitment is no longer just about succession planning

A recent employer survey by BPP suggested that a majority of employers were having difficulty filling vacancies due to 'employability skills' of graduates and school leavers and that only 2 per cent were happy with the business skills of new starters. It is unclear from the survey just how many of the 127 responses came from legal service providers but either way in this climate, I do not believe this statement accurately represents how employers feel within the legal industry.

With regards to filling vacancies, the position has steadily improved for law firms in recent years. We have seen the never-ending oversupply of readily available law graduates on the one hand, coupled with a reduction in demand in the form of fewer training contracts, on the other. The latest annual statistics report from the Law Society stated that training contract numbers are down to their lowest level since 1999. Fine if you're a law firm looking for trainees, not so good if you're a law graduate.

But what do we mean by 'employability skills' and 'business skills'? Employability has become a buzz word used by employers to describe whether graduates have the ability to undertake a particular role in today's market with many stating that graduates do not possess the necessary employability skills when entering the work place.

The difficulty in trying to generalise the graduate market in this way is that 'employability' should be both industry and organisation specific. An employability skill which one organisation believes to be critical may be less important for another employer, particularly in a different industry. In the BPP survey, the employability skills employers felt graduate recruits were lacking more often than not included 'business skills' and 'customer understanding'. If our graduates are lacking such skills, the question should be, who is responsible? Should responsibility for employability skills fall firmly at the feet of educational institutions, employers through various training initiatives and on the job experience or the individual themselves? The answer is all three. Certain fundamental skills, such as basic literacy and numeracy undoubtedly fall within the remit of our educational institutions.

The fact that we still produce graduates, including those who have successfully completed the GDL and LPC who lack some of these basic skills is both unbelievable and inexcusable. But employers must accept that they should not be seeking the 'finished article' in a graduate, with skills such as customer understanding and project management skills requiring development once graduates come on board.

However, some of the most vital traits such as maturity, common sense and emotional intelligence - the ones that can't necessarily be taught and that a graduate must either develop or simply possess - are the ones that single out an exceptional graduate from an average one. The difficulty is that these sorts of qualities are difficult to get across in a CV or application form. The result is that all too often, excellent candidates slip through the net, particularly given the hurdles and filtering processes legal graduates have to overcome before they even get a chance to demonstrate these important qualities.

Changing profession

Graduate recruitment in the legal industry is a unique and strange beast. Where else do you find firms trying to predict what their trainee requirements will be two to three years in advance, let alone what their newly qualified needs will be five years in advance. Is it really right to say that those who secure at least ABB at A level followed by a 2:1 at university are destined to become great solicitors and those who miss a 2:1 by 1 per cent need not apply? Understandably, firms have had to introduce rigid filtering systems into their recruitment processes simply to tackle the huge volume of applications they receive, but most will admit that this is not necessarily the best method to use, acknowledging that valuable candidates are failing to get a foot in the door.

Having said that, clearly the legal profession has in many ways, got it right. We have after all managed to develop and maintain one of the most respected legal professions in the world. Something I hope the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) will bear in mind when it publishes its recommendations later this year on ensuring that, education and training requirements in the legal sector are fit for purpose.

Without doubt we are experiencing significant shifts in the legal industry and although in some ways these will threaten the way many of us work, they will also bring with them opportunities to remove some of these inefficiencies making our business models more sustainable. In short, service offerings and recruitment strategies must adapt in line with these changes particularly given the evolving role of solicitors within the legal profession.

Historically, taking on a trainee solicitor was all about succession planning and for some this is still very much the case. However, given the increase in lateral hires across the industry, the continual rise in the attraction of a career in-house rather than private practise as well as the shift in the aspirations of our future lawyers, this is no longer the default position. You only have to look at the statistics in many firms of just how many of their trainees actually go on to make partner, or the number of between two and five-year PQE job positions, to spot that many solicitors consider moving on to their next role around this time.

Firms therefore need to adjust their recruitment strategies to ensure these shifts are taken into account with the focus moving away from just, "will this candidate become a future partner of the firm" to "does this candidate have the necessary skills to help take our business forward over the next five years?" These additional skills include an ability to promote themselves through networking and social media, adaptability to changing work environments, business development and marketing skills, as well as the all-important commercial awareness, with an ability to understand not just the needs of clients but also the strategy and business needs of the firm itself.

These qualities and level of maturity suggest that a second year law graduate should not be the only class of graduate firms should be looking at but rather they should concentrate on introducing a far more diverse range of individuals into a trainee cohort who will bring with them a wider range of experience and skills.

Identifying excellence

There is no shortage of candidates seeking a training contract but to identify the very best, you need to be willing to put in significant time and effort. In my business, for instance, the selection procedure is open all year around with interviews and assessment centres taking place every month. Of course, we have this luxury, as identifying the best candidates for clients is our primary focus allowing us to be less rigid in our selection procedures and spend more time evaluating each candidate as a whole. Unfortunately, not all firms have this luxury, or indeed have a dedicated graduate recruitment team who can take this pressure off partners and senior associates.

When deciding what the ideal candidate would look like for you, obviously the recipe will be slightly different for each firm. Ask a partner or associate what makes a great trainee and the response will be a bit different every time. In addition to the qualities mentioned already, along with the typical culprits such as organisational skills, communication skills, initiative, work ethics, teamwork, confidence (not arrogance), professionalism, determination, and attention to detail. Candidates must wrap this up neatly and pull it all together with an overriding sense of maturity, common sense and shrewdness. Finally they must top this off, not with a cherry, but by getting across to an interviewer that they're just a really great person to work with.

Once you've decided which competencies and skills are most important to your practice and organisation, the next step will be putting together an appropriate recruitment strategy making use of some of the multitude of tools available such as competency based interviews, situational judgement tests, telephone interviews, presentations, group exercises, in-tray exercises, psychometric testing, written exercises - the list goes on. Whichever strategy you opt for, it's critical to ensure your chosen methods are actually enabling diversity among the profession and not in any way hindering it through rigid selection procedures or insufficient allocation of time and resources.

Undoubtedly, excellent candidates demonstrating all the employability skills and competencies the legal profession asks of them are certainly out there but it would serve the future of our profession well to be more open-minded and innovative about the ways in which we identify them.