Antal International News

This article explores legal and accounting ‘Global’ recruitment, its current trends, the vacancies vacancies competing with your firm even at home, the high packages now on offer and how to beat all this and still win experienced recruits.

What’s changed?
Strategists know that only a long term view allows one to spot the real trends.  Short term views have too many confusing ‘blips’ in the graph.  A 20 year view is more likely to provide a realistic picture of change.  Thus strategists look back 10 years and pick up the long waves before projecting forward.
So what changes over the past 10 years form long term waves?  Most obvious is the rise of the new economies, notably China.  Beginning quietly these economies were first of all noticed by the West’s public when they encountered falling prices for many types of manufactured goods. 
What is not apparent to most people even now though is the sheer scale of development.  The UK adds housing developments; maybe an acre or so of brownfield land is built on.  The emerging world is on an altogether different scale which includes whole cities being built in the UAE.  Even that is dwarfed by infrastructure developments in China, a country which is sucking in raw materials for its own consumption at an unprecedented rate.
It is obvious now that the distribution of the world’s economic clout has changed. 

What does this all mean and what problems does that create?

All economies require the services of large numbers of commercial/corporate lawyers to facilitate business transactions.  Moreover, other sectors of demand include compliance, project finance and (due to sophistication of new financial products) financial markets.
Fundamentally it seems that experienced talent is in short supply within the emerging economies.  Their demand for skills cannot be supplied by home produced legal firms and lawyers.  Thus lawyers with overseas law degrees and bar admission with strong language skills are currently in high demand both from law firms and multinational corporations.  Lawyers with only local qualifications tend to have limited experience with poor language skills and, therefore, aren’t suitable to work at foreign corporations (there are exceptions).
In emerging economies those lawyers that do have foreign law qualifications tend to remain with one employer for a period of 1 or 2 years before moving to obtain a higher compensation package.   What that does is increase attrition rates as well as costs for hiring the wrong individual. 
This is a candidate driven market meaning that those few exceptional individuals who are suitable can more or less dictate their own terms of employment.
A trend which our legal practice has seen therefore is the demand for lawyers willing and able to live and work abroad.  In certain countries the benefits packages are well above UK levels.  The UAE for example (with over 50 unfilled senior legal positions) tends to match UK basic pay but, with zero income tax, net packages are much higher. 

An interesting trend towards in-house lawyers:

“Put simply, professionally trained lawyers no longer have to work from dawn until dusk, they are looked after as people, and they have a career rather than a ‘track’.”

This in itself is nothing new. The interesting angle as the market develops is that many leading international companies are presenting employment opportunities to lawyers within their companies as more attractive opportunities than private practice positions: Not just in terms of working hours, but companies are now starting to compete when it comes to salary, and clearly offer substantial opportunities to engage in the training and development, promotional and management-track schemes which are already offered by the best international businesses. Put simply, professionally trained lawyers no longer have to work from dawn until dusk, they are looked after as people, and they have a career rather than a ‘track’.

Most in demand

Whilst growing economies are moving fast the demand this places on experienced hires needs to be viewed in perspective.  Firms in London are seeking over 300 lawyers from various specialties at present.  UAE requires around 50, which is a lot given the size of the respective economies.  Figures for China & India are not readily available.
If you are recruiting in London, this is what is against you, by number of competing vacancies, right now:

In the growing economies the demand for UK qualified and experienced staff is strongly biased towards Corporate, M&A, Contracts, IP, TMT, Banking, Construction, Real Estate, Projects, Commercial and Finance. 
It goes without saying that areas such as Private Client, Tax, Family & Employment, and Litigation have limited international demand as the country specific laws will apply.

So what does all this mean?

Super salaries to employ in-house attorneys, super salaries for law firms to retain their best talent (which most largely fail to do)? Yes possibly. But maybe there is another solution:

Think before you hire.
In a recent survey conducted by the Antal International group, over 68% of hiring-managers admitted that they did not keep close enough to the process when hiring new managers.  A further 72% admitted that they had, in the last 3 years, made hiring decisions too lightly, in a rush dominated by other business matters.
The results of our survey also highlighted the following as problems in their hiring processes:

• Lack of a clear & transparent hiring process
• Lack of access to a professional hiring consultancy
• ‘Interviewing on the hoof’ rather than considering a specific, well researched shortlist of candidates
• Lack of use of psychometric testing in the hiring process
• Lack of alignment with corporate and personal goals
• Dishonest resumes where time had not been taken to verify the accuracy of information
• Delegation of hiring process away from the line manager to admin/support staff
• Lack of advice of external consultants

Antal International
Founded in 1993 and headquartered in London, UK, Antal offers recruitment solutions to local and multinational clients globally. Our network comprises over 50 physical business units in 27 countries and has sourced and placed executive talent in over 75 countries worldwide across a broad range of functions and industry sectors. Antal International is ranked in the Top 10 Global Search & Selection organisations by the Herald Tribune and achieved ISO 9002 accreditation in 2001.
Many organisations focus recruitment on short term issues and miss out on attracting those individuals who can make them really competitive.
If you want access to the entire labour pool rather than just the best of who is looking, then employers should think about paying the fees for professionals to segment the market to seek out those high calibre individuals.  These individuals are unlikely to be actively looking for a new opportunity and need to be carefully enticed away by a third party who has the skills to do this.
These individuals who have been “headhunted” need then to be treated in a certain way by clients.  It is essential that if you want to recruit such a person that you must sell the benefits of working for your organisation i.e. where the succession planning and growth opportunities are and how individuals are expected to have an impact on the future of the business.

The cost of such a hire must be weighed against the cost of hiring an inappropriate individual who may not add the value you desire or put your organisation in a position to compete. 

lchopping@antal.com