3 Hiring Mistakes to AVOID
Davina Frederick: Hi, everyone,
and welcome back to the wealthy
woman lawyer podcast. I'm your
host, Davina Frederick. And
today I want to share with you
three hiring mistakes to avoid.
If you want to put together a
high performing team for your
law firm business. The reason
I'm sharing these with you is
because I know a lot of you out
there, really wanting to scale
your law firm business. So you
can not only make more money,
but free yourself up for working
in your business on a daily
basis. Many of you have shared
with me that you'd love to have
more time to travel
internationally, spend time with
your kids pursue other interests
or just rest. The only way
you're going to be able to leave
work behind for an extended
period of time and have your
business continue to generate
wealth in your absence is to
hire a high performing team to
support you. And here's the
thing, even if you don't think
that you need to be absent from
your business for more than a
week, and you think that your
existing staff can handle it,
then I want you to ask yourself,
What happens if I become
seriously ill? And I cannot work
for months. And I know we'd like
to think that such things will
not happen to us. I sure hope
they don't. But we need to be
prepared all the same. It is one
of the pitfalls and traps of
being a solo law firm owner. I
cannot tell you how many women
lawyer lawyers I know on their
law firm and they face these
exact circumstances. And every
time they had to scramble around
and look outside of the law firm
for help. Because they did not
have lawyers on their own team
they did not have the right
staff on their team to handle
things in for their extended
absence. So okay, you say
Davina, I'm convinced I need to
hire and but it's just not that
easy to do. And I hear you, as a
business owner myself, I get it.
And I've got you I know there's
a lot going on in the world
right now. That is impacting the
quality of candidates we're
getting, if we're getting
candidates at all, so I get it.
But today I want to share with
you three mistakes I often see
women law from law firm owners
make when they set out to hire
and I'm sharing them with you
because I want you to be able to
avoid them. So mistake number
one is being too passive and
passing the buck. Now, it's so
tempting to avoid the entire
hiring process by passing the
buck off to an assistant or
paralegal. And while you know,
I'm a huge supporter of getting
other people on your team
involved in the hiring process.
You know, I'm all about
delegating, right. In fact, I
think it's imperative. The big
mistake, though, in my opinion,
is when we tell them to do
something like place an ad or
schedule an interview, and then
we don't hold them accountable
for doing it in a timely manner.
You simply cannot afford to sit
back and be passive during this,
it doesn't matter. If you're
super busy. If your staff is
super busy, the only way you're
gonna get out of that busyness
is to get more people on your
team. So you must make time for
this activity. The job market is
far too competitive. And there's
not a lot of qualified people
seeking to make a change your
edge. Your advantage is not
letting grass grow under your
feet. If not having enough good
workers, whether that staff or
associated attorneys is your
number one problem than it
deserves her is level of
attention and action. It can if
you cannot solve it. Ultimately,
the responsibility lies with you
not your assistant who didn't do
what you told them to do. So you
need to take bold, proactive
action to solve the problem. And
don't quit until you do. Mistake
number one is staying in your
feelings about past mistakes or
current ones. Now I see this a
lot. If every time you think
about hiring you jump right back
to telling yourself or others
about the time that you hired a
terrible person and how they let
you down and how that made you
feel that it's time for you to
stop that. What's past his past.
And when we keep harping on it.
It does us no good at all. In
fact, it harms us because it
puts us in a negative state of
mind and keeps us stuck in that
negative energy. And I don't
know about you, but I don't want
to attract my next new hire from
a place of negative energy
because they're probably not
going to be that great. So let
the past go as hard as it may be
do whatever you got to do let
the past go and reset your
mindset
before you start. Start the
hiring process. Everyone who has
ever worked for you has been a
blessing. Yes, that's even the
ones who sucked. Why because you
earned something that you really
needed to know, and could not
have learned any other way. And
it really offers you contrast.
So now you're much closer to
identifying and getting what you
want, because you're super clear
on what you don't want. So send
that person a silent little
thank you for what they taught
you, and then put them out of
your mind. And I'm gonna tell
you a quick little story here.
About this very thing with a
client of mine, she hired
someone who was green, right out
of law school thinking that that
would was the only type of
person she could hire as her
first associate because of being
able to afford to pay them. And
when she hired this green
attorney, it turns out that he
just did not know anything, he
was not nearly at her level, or
what it was that she needed for
the business. And it was a huge
mistake. And she really dwelled
on this mistake for quite a
while she fired it. And then she
kind of stayed in her feelings a
while about how bad he was, and
how that was such a big mistake
and how she lost all this money.
As soon as she let start to let
some of that go and got out of
her feelings about it. She wound
up attracting someone that she
didn't think that she could ever
hire, ever afford to hire,
because she was so experienced
and such a great lawyer. And as
it turns out, she was not only
able to hire that person, but
she she learned that she could
afford to hire a better lawyer.
And she did make that leap. And
now she's thrilled and happy
about that. So that that
experience taught her that maybe
she was settling for something,
and, and she did have the
ability to get the person that
she wanted to get, she just
wasn't confident enough, or
didn't really think that that
was something she could do.
Alright, mistake number three,
is not creating and executing on
a hiring system. So if you feel
like you suck at hiring, it's
likely because you don't have an
effective hiring system. Now, no
system can protects us 100% of
the time. But a good hiring
system can go a long way toward
helping us attract our ideal
employees. So what is a hiring
system, a hiring system is just
a systematic approach to hiring,
that you can replicate time and
again, perhaps with just a few
tweaks based on the position,
right. So when you have a good
hiring system, you are well
prepared for opportunities that
come your way, you can be
proactive and not just reactive.
For example, you already have a
job description, and a matching
ad for each position needed for
your million dollar law firm
business. You already have
interview questions, you have a
process for multiple interviews
and testing that need to happen
during the interview process.
without you being the one to do
at all, you have scorecards for
each candidate. And when you're
ready, you can easily just whip
up that irresistible offer from
your offer templates that you
already have. So those are just
some of the elements that you
might have in a good hiring
system. So that's it for today's
episode, I do hope you've
enjoyed it. If you want to go
deeper into this topic, then I
invite you to watch my new
training, how to hire for your
law firm when no one wants to
work. Because I know it's it's a
belief that a lot of us have,
how to hire for your law firm
when no one wants to work. That
presentation, the link for that
is in the shownotes go grab it
now. Put some time on your
calendar. It is just one hour
and but at the end of that hour,
you're gonna have a much clearer
picture about what you need to
do next to start creating your
hiring system. Plus, I have an
irresistible offer for you. And
so you're going to want to watch
that it's only going to be
available probably for another
week. And so you want to go
ahead and dive in and watch that
if you have not already. And I
thank you again for being here
and being a part of the wealthy
woman lawyer community. I
appreciate each and every one of
you. Thank you so much and we'll
chat soon.
