Look past the resume
The first step in building a winning culture is to hire people that
fit into it.
Van Cleve says academics are important when considering a
prospective new employee, but statistics should not be the sole
determining factor when deciding whether or not to hire a particular person.
“It’s not a formula where you say, ‘This person is in the top 5 percent of their class, and they had a good academic record otherwise, and we check all the boxes, and we’re going to hire them,”
Van Cleve says.
“It’s about whether we think they can fit into our organization.
Lawyers are smart folks, and they are independent, but we work a
lot in teams here. It’s about attracting people and evaluating people who we think will work well in teams. They understand it’s not
about them. They can buy in to an overall vision that our group
arrives at, and they are willing to sacrifice at the appropriate time
for the team goal.”
You need to take the time to get to know the person behind the
resume and evaluate their personality and how it might fit with
your organization.
“Ask them for examples or experiences in their lives where
they have worked in teams and if it has worked out for them,”
Van Cleve says. “You can learn a lot about a person by examining their past experience and asking for specific examples.”
One of the ways to see different sides of a job candidate is to
have the person interview with multiple people in a variety of settings.
“There are the people who really like to challenge the interviewee,” Van Cleve says. “There are people who are like, ‘Tell me the
biggest challenge of your life and how you overcame it.’ And there
are people who do interviews that are very laid back and you’d
hardly know they were interviewing them. One of the keys … is to
try to delve into that person’s life and ask them for examples that
I think are going to work well at Bryan Cave.”
Get together a variety of people from your company to handle
employment interviews. The varying styles will help you get a
broader picture of what the person is all about and how they might
fit in at your company.
“We have a whole variety of people on our recruiting committee
doing those interviews who are everywhere from first-year
lawyers to our senior partners,” Van Cleve says. “They all have a
different view and understanding of our culture and are measuring
that person as to how good a fit they will be.”
