Paragon Legal reposted this
President & COO of Paragon Legal delivering the best flex talent for your legal team | super annoying about playing pickleball | big fan of dogs | purposefully will have typos in my posts
Here’s some real talk and an untold truth about flex legal talent. There is a huge misconception that more candidates flex talent providers have in their network, the better. I disagree & here’s why The flex talent game moves VERY fast. I’m talking hiring in days, not weeks and months. So, yes, I concede having a threshold minimum of solid candidates ready to go across a multitude of practice areas is good, but at some point it’s too much because you need to actually know your candidates, have a relationship and trust. At Paragon Legal, in order to maintain relationships and be able to connect with our candidates quickly, we are doing the unheard of — we are purposefully taking people out of our network. Yes, we could keep adding and have a network of tens upon tens of thousands after nearly 20 years in this game, but that’s not helpful. It doesn’t make us move faster. It’s not a collection numbers game. At some point, more is not more. More can actually be less. If hiring flex, or FTE for that matter, were a simple keyword search, then every hire in every position for eternity would be perfect. But we all know it’s not. It’s figuring out the stuff that isn’t on the resume and solving for what would make a candidate successful in one environment, but maybe not another. It’s the boring stuff like a constantly updated database and the real stuff like keeping a close connection. And let’s be real, for flex talent, there is no “exclusive network” to any provider. We all have access to this wonderful platform here. So if it’s not the number of candidates in the network that makes the difference, what is it? It’s being able to quickly identify the right candidates for a role, the specific role at a specific company. It’s the judgement in the match. Oh, and then it’s knowing that making the match just gets you to the starting line and it’s the support for both the attorney & client to make the whole thing a success. Ok, ranty Friday has commenced. #legalops #inhousecounsel
I don't think you have to have the candidate in your network. The key is can you get the candidate into your network quickly. In this client market, client requests are VERY specific. Accumulating candidates in your network doesn't necessarily mean you have covered ALL possible client requests. It's more important to be able to know, we know who some of these people are in our network. At the same time, knowing you don't know those people and going and finding them is better than thinking you do in your network of 50,000 and after combing through them all realizing you don't.
Trust is key to our recruiting job and building our network of highly skilled attorneys on our team. We are not order takers, we are meeting people in highly disruptive/vulnerable times in their lives - facing layoffs, needing to make a significant change to their work/life balance. But our role is to be their advisor and help them find their next move. Interim, consulting roles can be just that perfect fit.
It’s incredibly easy to build a network to a big number. The hard part is knowing enough about those people to match them to the client - and not just through keyword or resume searches, but importantly their preferences and soft skills.
I'd even argue there's a point at which size becomes a massive hinderance to relationship quality. It's hard to imagine knowing 50,000 really well.
Secret Sauce: "It’s the judgement in the match." 👍
Bigger isn’t always better. It’s the quality of the relationships that matter.
President & COO of Paragon Legal delivering the best flex talent for your legal team | super annoying about playing pickleball | big fan of dogs | purposefully will have typos in my posts
2moEven further proving my point, by my rough math, the largest competitor in the space probably only has about 1,000 active engagements in the US in a year (very rough math, assuming that 100% of the revenue is flex talent revenue, but even if I’m off 50% in either direction, the point holds). So, what at some point, more is not even helpful as it nowhere matches client demand. Even if you could maintain each relationship, know each candidate personally, etc etc etc. The math maths