Increasing Business

April 16, 2019 by Molly McGrath

Looking for a Traditional Law Firm Resume is Hurting Your Growth…and Here’s Why

“This resume is totally unqualified, why are you sending me this candidate?” In our 20+ years in the legal recruiting and staffing industry, we’ve heard this question a lot—most recently about a week ago. The attorney we were working with wanted to hire a paralegal with estate planning and probate experience. Loads of it, to be exact. And trying to get this particular attorney to look beyond the words and qualifications listed on a resume was a bit of a challenge. But, we are hired to help law firms hire the right person for their open position, and so our response—as it always is—was, “Trust us. We are the experts. That’s why you hired us. Show up for the 1-hour interview, and if you’re not seeing what you want, let the candidate know you’ve seen everything you need to see and end the interview. We’ll take it from there.” The attorney begrudgingly agreed.

Part of our legal recruiting and hiring process is that we ask all candidates to call us immediately after their 1-hour interview. 3-hours after the interview was scheduled to end, she phoned. Our recruiter’s first response was, “You failed the test. You were supposed to call us as soon as the interview was over. You’ve lost some points…”

And the candidate excitedly interrupted to say that she had just left the interview. “It went amazing! We already started taking tasks off of his to-do list and putting them on mine. I have my top priorities all sorted out…I start tomorrow!”

Attorneys—and most business owners, really—are easily seduced by a rocking resume. We get emails from entrepreneurs all the time. What About This Resume? the subject line reads, and attached is a resume chock full of fascinating skill sets and experience that jumps off the page. Intrigued by our own process, we’ll give these candidates a spot test, jumping on a call with them for some simple research and development. Within four minutes, we’ll know if a candidate is all wrong. If they’re too arrogant, not vibrant enough, lacking empathy or compassion. If they have a mindset of victimization.

Yes, we can tell all of this within just four minutes. And we can determine if the candidate is a poor fit, without knowing what position they are being considered for, or the details of the job description.

Another recent example, we placed an absolute superstar candidate into a position at a boutique law firm in Maine. But initially, when we sent the resume to the attorney, the response was, “I don’t want to waste my time meeting with this candidate, her resume isn’t impressive and I have no idea how she even made the cut to get in front of me.”

“Trust the process,” we reassured.

After the interview, I received a phone call from the attorney. “I have no idea how this candidate made your cut, or why you would even call her solely based on her resume, but I must have her.” Our process had clearly worked. “She is now the standard for every employee I will ever hire going forward.”

It is now this candidate’s third year at the firm, and I still get emails from the attorney saying things like, “I still don’t know why you called her, but thank you. She is amazing! I finally feel like someone has my back, and I can let go and just focus on billable work and growing my firm!”

The point of all this is simple: the skills that are listed out on paper are irrelevant until you get clear on the human side of hiring.

Hiring your first employee is a huge leap of faith and one of the scariest things that an entrepreneur can do. You want a guarantee that this new hire will be a profitable asset and not a financially-draining liability. The problem is that new hires don’t come in a box with a guarantee on it. And what’s worse, more often than not, entrepreneurs don’t get the superstar employees they need, which pushes them to the mindset that “good people are hard to find.”

But you don’t want good people. You want GREAT people. Superstars. Rockstars. People who come “batteries included.” And there are hundreds…maybe even thousands…of really, really great people out there. And they’re waiting to work very, very intentionally for you. And the promising news is that these really, really great people are being overlooked by recruiters because their resumes aren’t flashy…

So, how do you find these people? If you are truly curious and want to learn:

1. How to write a compelling ad that attracts healthy candidates with the mindset, core values, and emotional intelligence you need—all while weeding out the weak;

2. What to look for in a resume that indicates that a candidate knows exactly how to do what you need them to, and eliminates the “I need a job and will be asking you for a raise before the end of the year” candidates;

3. How to conduct empowering face-to-face interviews that create the kind of dialogue that gets to the fundamentals of their motivating factors, mindset, missions and values…

Email [email protected] today. Let’s connect and discuss your firm’s recruiting and hiring challenges. Our process works—we’ve got it dialed in, and have been using it to help solopreneurs and boutique firms hire amazing people for over 20 years now. Your people should be your most profitable asset. We help make that happen.

April 4, 2019 by Molly McGrath

How Your Lack of Accountability & Tracking is Sabotaging Your Revenue

People call your law firm because they are ready to hire you. But time after time, when I speak with law firm leaders about their struggles, I hear the same old bologna: “They were unqualified leads.” “They were just shopping around; they weren’t ready to write a check.” “They weren’t a good fit for our firm.” “I don’t know what happened, I just never heard from them again…”

Bologna.

In many ways, the small law firm has the advantage over those big, corporate firms with hundreds of associates and dozens of partners. I don’t know about you, but I will always choose a more intimate “mom and pop” experience over being a faceless name in a sea of thousands of other faceless names on the client list of a massive corporation. But I’ve noticed something: for all the times I pick up the phone to call a small business, I rarely receive a follow-up phone call or email if I don’t make an immediate purchase. I—a qualified lead who is ready to make a purchase—am rarely nurtured through the sales funnel. And if we’re being honest, the only reason I failed to follow through and make a purchase in the first place is because I’m busy being an entrepreneur and a wife and a mom and probably got sidetracked somewhere in between client meetings and getting my kid to karate practice. Failure on the business’s behalf to follow-up with me sabotaged their sale…

…and it’s how your firm is sabotaging its own revenue.

The likely story is that the small business probably isn’t staffed enough to execute a regimented follow-up plan, and that’s the likely story for your firm, too. Who would be responsible for checking-in on leads consistently and strategically. Certainly not you. You’re busy doing what you have to do to keep your firm competitive, sustainable, and profitable.

But those lost leads are valuable, and they’re slipping further away with every day you fail to follow up with them. So, here’s how to follow-up for dollars and reclaim the revenue you’ve lost on account of your lack of accountability.

How to Follow-Up for Dollars

This is a simple “how to” system, designed to fill your calendar with appointments and your business account with money. It’s a tried, tested, and proven system for bringing old and prospective clients back to your firm…for $500/week or more.

Step 1: Hire
This is a receptionist caliber position; you could start out with a 20-hour/week or 3-day/week position, but we encourage you to hire someone full-time, since this system is ineffective if, when someone contacts your office, no one is there to answer their call and schedule an appointment. Take the leap of faith and hire someone full-time.

Choosing the right person for this position is crucial. Rely on “Kolbe” recommendations and follow best practices for hiring based on personality

Step 2: Create the Campaign
Identify a list of lost clients or prospects, organized by year, starting with the most recent year and working back to your firm’s inception. Include:

• Contacts who never took the next step
• Contacts who attended a workshop or joined a webinar, but didn’t move forward
• Cancelled appointments
• Maintenance clients who never renewed

Once you’ve compiled your contact lists, call them, send them an email, or mail them a letter of re-engagement. You may include a special offer in this letter, or you may just re-introduce your firm and the various services you offer.

Step 3: Call
This process takes, on average, 12 minutes. You make the phone call, send a follow-up email (step 4, below) and update your database. Your new hire should be able to make about 40 calls/day and, trust us, you WILL see a return on this position after one month.

The script for the phone call is below:

“Hello ___ ,

This is ___ calling from ___ Law Firm. Real quick, I am calling today to follow up with you regarding your ___ (call, workshop attendance, etc.) on ___. It has been ___(days/weeks/months) since we last spoke. We know how important it was to take the first step and contact our office and we want to make certain we have done everything to support your family’s needs and goals. We’d like to extend an offer to you to come in for a complimentary Vision Meeting with attorney___ , as I am certain a few things have changed in your family since ___. Would next ___ or ___ work better for you?

Step 4: Email
Send an email immediately following each unanswered phone call. Time-saving tip: save the email into a Word document or other text file and copy and paste it into the body of each email). The contents of the email should read:

“Hello ___,

I hope this message finds you better than well today. Real quick, I wanted to send you a quick email to let you know that I just left a message on your answering machine, as I was reaching out today to follow up with you regarding your _____ (call, workshop attendance, etc.) on ___. It has been ___(days/weeks/months) since we last spoke. We appreciate how significant it was to take the first step and contact our office and we want to ensure we have done everything to support your family’s needs and goals. We like to extend an offer to you to come in for a complimentary Vision Meeting with attorney ___, as I am certain a few things have changed in your family since ___. Would next ___ or ___ work better for you? Let me know what works best for you and I will be certain to get this reserved for you.

Step 5: Letter or Flier
The last step in this process, after the phone calls and emails have been made, is to send a letter via mail. These letters should be sent out every week (we suggest you send them every Friday). The letter should read:

“Hello ___,

I hope this finds you better than well today. I am reaching out to follow up with you regarding your ___ (call, workshop attendance, etc.) on ___. It has been ___(days/weeks/months) since we last spoke and I appreciate how significant it was to take the first step and contact our office. We want to ensure we have done everything to support your family’s needs and goals and extend an offer to you to come in for a complimentary Vision Meeting with attorney___ as I am certain a few things have changed in your family since ___. Would next ___ or ___ work better for you?
Let me know what works best for you and I will be certain to get this reserved for you.

Also including a flier for a new “Value Add” workshop, for example, a Social Media for Law Firms workshop, will drive even more engagement in your response.

There is no reason your law firm should be struggling to generate revenue—not with so many untapped resources just waiting for you to get back in touch! Everything you need to grow your law firm is already in place—you just need better tracking, better follow-up, and more accountability.

Ready to Hire that Rock Star Receptionist?

If you’re ready to get the RIGHT person in the door—and you’re ready to turn a rock star receptionist into revenue—contact us! Our Smart Hire Solution has been helping law firms find, recruit, hire, onboard and train amazing team members for over 20 years! We’ll save you time and money by hiring the right person, right out of the gates. Email [email protected] to learn more today!

March 12, 2019 by Molly McGrath

Ready to Turn Your People into Profit?

Every member of your team is different…so, why are you using the same “canned” program to coach & develop them?

Employees care—deeply—about career growth and development opportunities. A recent Gallup poll reported that almost 90% of employees valued the opportunity to be coached and developed…but only 40% feel that they are consistently learning new tools and techniques at work.

Strong leaders know how important it is to develop their team members. They know it’s not just to improve employee engagement and retention, but also to benefit their firm or business’s bottom line. At the end of the day, effective leaders develop effective leaders. When team members are educated and empowered to step up and lead, it makes a real, measurable difference.

But you already knew that.

Did you know, though, that another thing strong leaders do is customize their team coaching and development approach based on the needs of each individual team member? In our 20+ years of experience training and developing law firm leaders and their teams, the firms that truly excel are those where each employee is coached based on their unique strengths and weaknesses. We do this in our Team Empowerment Academy. We assess each member of the team using the Kolbe employee assessment, and then determine the best way to assist each team member in developing new skills, all the way down to which skills they need to develop to become a more well-rounded employee, capable of making a big impact at their organization.

But strong leaders should be going above and beyond what we offer, taking the extra step in personalizing their approach so that it’s aligned with the characteristics of their various team members. And here are 5 ways they can do that.

1. Create a personality spreadsheet. Create a column for each employee, and make note of such information as: KOLBE, Strengthfinder 2.0, Enneagram, what you believe their full potential is; any feedback they give you about your management style; how he or she prefers to work; what their motivators are—money, time, public recognition, etc.; ways in which you believe you could advance his or her career; their goals; or any feedback you’d like to give them about their performance.

2. Actually USE your spreadsheet. Allot 15 minutes at the end of each week to reference and update your spreadsheet. If you have trouble remembering the interactions you’ve had with each team member over the course of the week, consider keeping track in a notebook.

3. Analyze your spreadsheet every month. As the leader of your firm or business, time goes by fast. And employees typically don’t speak up. Take time at the end of each month, over a cup of coffee, during your planning time to check in on where you are at with your people and performance. Invest in the dedicated time to assess your spreadsheet in order to determine which employees are steadily developing, which may need some additional direction or coaching, and what you can do to accelerate their performance.

4. Make time for informal “feedback sessions” with your team members. As you manage your spreadsheet and start to see patterns unfold, make sure you find the time for quick, informal, impromptu conversations with each employee. Show that you see what they’re doing and that you know what success looks like to them. These conversations will become a cornerstone of the way you work with each team member. Trust me, they mean a lot to your employees!

5. Use your spreadsheet during formal evaluations. If you’re making time to regularly touch base with your team members, then your “formal evaluations” will be less of a dreaded conversation where employees demand more money and you have to tell them why they’re not worth that much money and everyone walks away feeling misunderstood, underappreciated, and frustrated. Your spreadsheet can help guide your evaluation conversation by reminding you of the nuances that make your employees so great, as well as where they have room for improvement.

With Q1 nearing its close, now is the ideal time to evaluate your team, turn your people into profit, and intentionally invest the time to customize your firm’s approach to employee training and leadership development. And we can help with that—when you’re a member of our team, your time investment in all of this will feel much less overwhelming. Your people are your most important assets…and they can also be your most profitable assets, when properly coached and developed. Don’t let “but I don’t have time” stand in the way of developing your firm’s most important assets. Invest in your law firm. Create a firm where employee love to work, clients are delighted to hire you, and referrals send consistent business your way.

Contact Us to Learn More

Let us know how we can help bring your firm to the next, more profitable level. Use the brief form below to tell us about your challenges, and we’ll contact you to brainstorm potential solutions.

November 14, 2018 by Molly McGrath

Hold Your Team Members Accountable…to Each Other

If you are micromanaging your employees, please stop! Now. It is literally debilitating to your law firm or business. Micromanagement prevents your business from evolving with the times. It thwarts innovation. It pushes strong team members out the door, hinders workflow, disempowers staff, closes communication channels, and turns “teamwork” into a four letter word.

Shall we continue?

Micromanagement could be the biggest nail in your firm or business’s coffin. Do you find it difficult to delegate responsibility to team members, taking an if-you-want-something-done-right-you-gotta-do-it-yourself approach instead? Do you have high employee turnover, or do you get the feeling that your team members are walking on eggshells around you? Are you the only person at your business responsible for making decisions? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, well, we’re sorry to say it, but…you might be a micromanager.

But there is hope! Many a micromanager has been able to turn their leadership technique around and create a workplace environment rich with empowerment. Here’s how:

1. Hire the right people. The #1 reason why leaders micromanage is because they don’t trust their team members. Hiring quality people who you truly believe are capable of delivering the caliber of work you expect will reduce the need to micromanage them. One of the best pieces of advice we were ever given was this: hire people who are better than you. Put your ego aside and think about that for a minute. Hiring people who are better than you only stands to benefit your firm in the long run.

2. Hold your team members accountable…to each other. Nothing ensures quality control more so than peer pressure. Allowing your staff to provide anonymous feedback about the performance of other team members and departments will create a sense of ownership, and can help you implement systems that keep your team satisfied and productive.

3. Be clear about what you expect. If your staff doesn’t know what you expect, then how can they work towards it? So many times we see micromanagement emerge as a response to poorly communicated expectations. Be clear, give your team specific benchmarks and objectives, and eliminate the need to micromanage them!

4. Empower your employees. Providing your team members with the freedom to engage—meaningfully—in decision-making processes will help them “own their role” at your firm. They’ll be willing to go above and beyond because they know you won’t be sweeping up behind them, changing everything that they’ve done. They’ll be excited about their job, and will take the success (or failure) of your business personally.

5. Recognize your own bad behavior. So the saying goes, the first step is admitting. Once you recognize your own micromanaging tendencies, you can begin to change them. Working with a management consultant or executive coach can be a huge help for those with the tendency to micromanage.

No matter how you look at it, micromanagement is a huge problem that needs to be stopped before it destroys your firm. You want—no, you need—empowered employees who aren’t afraid to step up and lead. Forget about the robots who need to be told what to do, and how to do it. Hire cream-of-the crop-employees, empower them, and you’ll find there is no need to micromanage anything (or anyone) anymore.

Schedule a FREE Discovery Session

Is your firm or business struggling with micromanagement? Are you confident that you have hired amazing people? Are you confident that you have communicated your process for holding your team accountable…to each other? Maybe it’s time to hire your next (or first) superstar hire and empower them to take ownership of your business. Hiring & Empowering Solutions specializes in legal staffing, and offers the only Team Empowerment Academy (TM) in the country. Schedule a 30-minute discovery session with our co-founder, Molly Hall, today. Find out how we can support the evolution of your firm, and ensure its viability today and tomorrow.

November 5, 2018 by Molly McGrath

Increased Productivity and an Improved Bottom Line are Just Secondary Benefits Next to the Cost Savings of Retaining Your Employees

Losing an employee is expensive. The process of finding and training a replacement can cost twice as much as your former employee’s salary. Then, once your new hire is properly trained and onboarded, keeping them engaged and loyal is the next challenge. And it’s a big one…

Companies are usually shocked to learn that financial incentives are not the secret to employee retention. In fact, a 2018 LinkedIn survey reports that an incredible 94 percent of employees admitted they would stay in a position longer if their employer invested in their training and development. Ironically, these employees also claimed that they didn’t have time to continue their educations independently.

The solution? Make employee training and development part of their day-to-day jobs.

The same LinkedIn survey showed that both executives and employees agree that soft skills are highly important: leadership development, communication skills, and team collaboration were just a few of the skills that survey participants identified as instrumental to their careers. And wouldn’t you know, empowering your employees with these skills can—and will—make a magnificent difference in your company or firm’s performance. What a win-win.

Of course, implementing an out-of-the-box training program isn’t enough to yield results for your employees or for your firm. Here are a few tips to help align your training program with the wants of your employees and the needs of your business:

1. Set learning goals. Each member of your team will have his or her own educational objectives. Identify where their goals intersect with the goals of your firm—and voila! You’ve got a mutually beneficial goal that will keep your employee engaged while reaping rewards for your business.

2. Go with the workflow. It doesn’t matter how solid your training and development program is—if it’s not teaching skills that integrate seamlessly with your firm’s operational processes, employees won’t be able to leverage their new skills in a real-world environment. Try to align learning processes with the actual tasks your employees manage on a day-to-day basis. Your employees will be able to feel the improvement in their performance…and your bottom line will feel it, too.

3. Reward your employees for a job well done. It’s simple: employees who feel appreciated and valued are more motivated to perform at the top their ability. When your employees reach their learning goals or measurably improve their performance, reward them however you are able: give them extra flex time or a paid day off, take them out for a nice lunch, grant them the most coveted parking spot for a week. It doesn’t have to be a grand reward—just some way of showing them that their hard work has been noticed and is appreciated.

Increased productivity and an improved bottom line are just secondary benefits next to the cost savings of retaining your employees. Training and development programs are undoubtedly a win for your business and a win for your employees…as long as you find the right program.

Our Team Empowerment Academy is a virtual training program designed to equip leaders and employees with a wide range of hard and soft skills. With over 200 tools and techniques, plus weekly master classes focusing on a variety of subjects, members of our program typically generate measurable results after just eight modules. We help take the guesswork out of employee training and development.

Schedule a FREE Discovery Session

If you’re tired of a revolving door of employees wasting your firm’s time and money, we can help. Whether your challenge is finding and recruiting top talent, training and developing your team, or retaining employees for the long-term, Hiring & Empowering Solutions can help. Schedule your free 30-minute discovery session with Molly today.