Your Next Great Associate Hire Isn't Applying — Here's How to Find Her Anyway
You posted the job. You watched the applications trickle in. Then you opened your inbox and felt your stomach sink at what had shown up.
Your next great hire is not applying to your job posting. She isn't scrolling the job boards at all. She's busy doing excellent work somewhere else; she's respected where she is, and she isn't unhappy enough to go looking. The only way you get her is if the right opportunity finds her.
In this episode of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer® podcast, I explain why the job board is the wrong pond. There are two kinds of candidates swimming in it, and I'll describe both of them so you'll recognize the resumes in your inbox immediately. Your ideal associate is in neither group.
What works instead is a recruiting network, and the key to understanding it is that it isn't a project you complete the week you decide to hire.
It's infrastructure. The firms that never scramble to fill an attorney seat didn't get lucky. They built the pipeline months or years before they needed it, and they kept building it during the stretches when they weren't hiring at all.
It's infrastructure. The firms that never scramble to fill an attorney seat didn't get lucky. They built the pipeline months or years before they needed it, and they kept building it during the stretches when they weren't hiring at all.
I walk you through the three places to build one. Inside the profession, through your bar association, the law school in your region, and the attorneys you've already faced across a hard-fought case. Inside your own firm, through your team's networks and the people who worked for you and left on good terms. And through the presence you keep online in the months when you have nothing to advertise.
Some specifics you can act on this week. Why a $200 referral bonus moves nobody and what number does. Why the associate who left for a clerkship two years ago belongs on a list you keep. And why the post that fills your pipeline is a photo from your team lunch rather than a job listing.
Then I put two firm owners side by side. One of them is out in her community constantly, in person and online, because she enjoys it. When she needs an associate, she makes a few calls. The other is so buried in the caseload that she needed help yesterday, and she's scrolling at midnight without engaging, so nobody knows she's there. You'll know which one you are before I finish describing them.
Unemployment in the legal field is running around one percent right now. Waiting is getting expensive.
The best time to start building your network was probably years ago. The second best time is now.
The best time to start building your network was probably years ago. The second best time is now.
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Do you know you need to hire, and have you been putting it off because it sounds like too much work or you aren't sure where to start? Book a call with me. Go to wealthywomanlawyer.com and click the Apply Now button at the top of the home page, complete our practice growth assessment, and then schedule a time to meet with me or someone on my team. Inside our programs, we teach you how to build your own hiring system, so you have something to turn to the next time instead of starting over from scratch.
