How you can effortlessly propel your career by linking with a Headhunter

Today we are deluged by people calling us to sell us things: from PPI to accident claims, being cold called from call centres with people treating us simply as commodities to buy things and part with money is becoming the norm. They will say anything and their approach is not specific and targeted. They are literally calling anybody and everybody.

Today lawyers are experiencing this from multiple agents representing themselves as head hunters. The key question is how you navigate between those people who fall into the call centre crowd from those who are experienced professionals who can really help your career and who are often handling exclusive mandates which you would otherwise never hear about.

Frankly it’s hard and below are some key questions you should ask to try and identify who you truly want to meet:

1) Who is calling you? Is it a graduate trying to simply arrange meetings or is the person calling you an experienced recruiter who can verify their expertise and background. Ask!

2) What are they calling you about? Ask. Whilst law firms often don’t want their name revealed over a short phone call, the headhunter should be able to give you more detailed specifics of the opportunity so that you can gauge whether it is truly of interest to you.

3) What do they know about you? Ask them why they have specifically called you.

4) What are they seeking? A genuine headhunter will never want to set up a meeting for you with the particular law firm initially. The first step will be to meet you in person first and this is important not only to be able to discuss the particular opportunity in detail, but allows you to meet and vet the headhunter.

Getting on to a headhunter’s radar can sometimes take time, but once this happens it means that your legal career can often benefit from effortless and impressive career transitions that would otherwise not come on to the open market. Whilst it isn’t always easy to get onto this radar, once you do, investing the time of a coffee and discussion can often prove career defining.

At RedLaw, we are highly consultative and would welcome a confidential discussion to talk about your personal career aspirations and plans for progression and development.