Trainee recruitment battleground set to continue

As most people are dreading the return to work or study after a nice long relaxing summer, the world of graduate recruitment is looking forward to a (small) rest after the excitement of the summer vacation schemes, assessment centres and training contract interviews before the beginning of law fair season.

This has been another really successful year for Burges Salmon and we are delighted
to have recruited some really outstanding candidates. At the end of each recruitment cycle all those in the process sit down to go through what went right and what could have gone a
bit better.

Overall, we were really pleased, as although the number of applicants appears to be slightly lower across the board, the calibre of candidate we are seeing come through our doors is as strong as ever.

The impact of tuition fees, combined with the rise of ‘bad news’ stories in the legal press over recent years, has definitely had an impact on the number of students considering a career in law. Having said this, there is still an abundance of top-quality candidates who are even more committed to pursuing a career in law than ever.

It does take a lot of determination to succeed as
a solicitor in a commercial firm and, during the recruitment process, you need to be able
to demonstrate that you are committed to the profession. Obtaining work experience to demonstrate that law is a well thought-out career option is really important.

On the other side, students have really impressed us this year with their commercial skills and appreciation of the type
of work we do. The idea that lawyers must be more than legal advisers has filtered down and most who come to us are interested in establishing a career in business as well as having an interest in the law.

Although we have been
very impressed overall, we
did still see plenty of easily avoided mistakes throughout the recruitment process, particularly during the application stage.

Many otherwise good candidates let their application down by not doing enough research on the firm and
really taking the time to tailor applications. Others simply did not take enough time to check them thoroughly and submitted forms with spelling and grammatical errors.

Looking forward, we are growing and we have increased our trainee intake this year by 12.5 per cent. We are hoping to continue this growth over the next few years and, accordingly, will be investing even more into our trainee solicitor recruitment programme.

One of the challenges for us will be the fact that we want
to recruit even more people,
but the numbers of students entering the profession is dropping, meaning recruitment will continue to be very competitive for firms.

This is, however, a great opportunity for aspiring
lawyers and, hopefully, more will be encouraged to pursue
a legal career. SJ