Hire for future growth
When you hire, you’re adding new employees today with the hope they’ll contribute to growth tomorrow. To make that transition smooth, measure them on both aspects to see how they’ll fit your company now and in the future.
First, consider how candidates will mesh with your current focus and culture.
“You want to have people who are compatible with the rest of the folks here,” says Vincent, who tries to detect a sense of humor in addition to the obvious requirements — legal skills and integrity. “If you don’t have a sense of humor, the day’s awful long and it’s hard to interact with folks.”
When Vincent hires new lawyers, it’s not as simple as adding another body to the ranks. In most cases, new hires come with specialized practice areas and existing clients in tow, so he’s not just evaluating individuals. It’s more like vetting tiny self-contained businesses.
Similarly, you have to compare candidates’ strengths with your company’s core. Vincent stacks their expertise against his firm’s existing practices and also considers requests for additional services that clients have made. If you can match an incoming supply of employees with existing client demand, your growth is automatically tied to future customer satisfaction.
That takes you to the second half of the vetting process, in which you look at the candidate in relation to your company’s future.
“You want to bring in people who you think will succeed longer term, who will be able to utilize our platform to expand their practices and will be able to ideally use other services that we can provide that their [previous] firm didn’t provide,” Vincent says.
It’s important that employees care about improving their own careers. To get a glimpse of their personal drive, just ask where they see themselves in 20 years.
“You can’t predict the future,” Vincent says. “But you’ve got to decide whether the people you’re talking to have the drive and the passion to succeed and to take their practice further than it’s previously gone.”
If a candidate has a vision to grow and succeed, he or she will feed your company’s vision to do the same. But you need to make an effort to tie the two together from the very beginning. Explain your firm’s outlook so you can see how the candidate matches up.
“Let’s talk about your vision for your practice,” Vincent tells candidates. “How can we make 2+2=5? How can we be accretive to each other?”
