Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 3 Hiring Mistakes to AVOID

Transcript

3 Hiring Mistakes to AVOID · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:06
  Davina Frederick: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the wealthy
• 0:08
  woman lawyer podcast. I'm your host, Davina Frederick. And
• 0:11
  today I want to share with you three hiring mistakes to avoid.
• 0:15
  If you want to put together a high performing team for your
• 0:18
  law firm business. The reason I'm sharing these with you is
• 0:21
  because I know a lot of you out there, really wanting to scale
• 0:26
  your law firm business. So you can not only make more money,
• 0:29
  but free yourself up for working in your business on a daily
• 0:33
  basis. Many of you have shared with me that you'd love to have
• 0:37
  more time to travel internationally, spend time with
• 0:40
  your kids pursue other interests or just rest. The only way
• 0:46
  you're going to be able to leave work behind for an extended
• 0:49
  period of time and have your business continue to generate
• 0:52
  wealth in your absence is to hire a high performing team to
• 0:56
  support you. And here's the thing, even if you don't think
• 1:00
  that you need to be absent from your business for more than a
• 1:04
  week, and you think that your existing staff can handle it,
• 1:09
  then I want you to ask yourself, What happens if I become
• 1:13
  seriously ill? And I cannot work for months. And I know we'd like
• 1:17
  to think that such things will not happen to us. I sure hope
• 1:21
  they don't. But we need to be prepared all the same. It is one
• 1:25
  of the pitfalls and traps of being a solo law firm owner. I
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  cannot tell you how many women lawyer lawyers I know on their
• 1:36
  law firm and they face these exact circumstances. And every
• 1:41
  time they had to scramble around and look outside of the law firm
• 1:46
  for help. Because they did not have lawyers on their own team
• 1:51
  they did not have the right staff on their team to handle
• 1:54
  things in for their extended absence. So okay, you say
• 1:58
  Davina, I'm convinced I need to hire and but it's just not that
• 2:01
  easy to do. And I hear you, as a business owner myself, I get it.
• 2:05
  And I've got you I know there's a lot going on in the world
• 2:07
  right now. That is impacting the quality of candidates we're
• 2:13
  getting, if we're getting candidates at all, so I get it.
• 2:17
  But today I want to share with you three mistakes I often see
• 2:21
  women law from law firm owners make when they set out to hire
• 2:25
  and I'm sharing them with you because I want you to be able to
• 2:28
  avoid them. So mistake number one is being too passive and
• 2:33
  passing the buck. Now, it's so tempting to avoid the entire
• 2:38
  hiring process by passing the buck off to an assistant or
• 2:42
  paralegal. And while you know, I'm a huge supporter of getting
• 2:45
  other people on your team involved in the hiring process.
• 2:48
  You know, I'm all about delegating, right. In fact, I
• 2:52
  think it's imperative. The big mistake, though, in my opinion,
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  is when we tell them to do something like place an ad or
• 2:59
  schedule an interview, and then we don't hold them accountable
• 3:02
  for doing it in a timely manner. You simply cannot afford to sit
• 3:07
  back and be passive during this, it doesn't matter. If you're
• 3:11
  super busy. If your staff is super busy, the only way you're
• 3:15
  gonna get out of that busyness is to get more people on your
• 3:18
  team. So you must make time for this activity. The job market is
• 3:23
  far too competitive. And there's not a lot of qualified people
• 3:27
  seeking to make a change your edge. Your advantage is not
• 3:32
  letting grass grow under your feet. If not having enough good
• 3:36
  workers, whether that staff or associated attorneys is your
• 3:39
  number one problem than it deserves her is level of
• 3:42
  attention and action. It can if you cannot solve it. Ultimately,
• 3:47
  the responsibility lies with you not your assistant who didn't do
• 3:50
  what you told them to do. So you need to take bold, proactive
• 3:54
  action to solve the problem. And don't quit until you do. Mistake
• 3:59
  number one is staying in your feelings about past mistakes or
• 4:03
  current ones. Now I see this a lot. If every time you think
• 4:08
  about hiring you jump right back to telling yourself or others
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  about the time that you hired a terrible person and how they let
• 4:16
  you down and how that made you feel that it's time for you to
• 4:19
  stop that. What's past his past. And when we keep harping on it.
• 4:24
  It does us no good at all. In fact, it harms us because it
• 4:29
  puts us in a negative state of mind and keeps us stuck in that
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  negative energy. And I don't know about you, but I don't want
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  to attract my next new hire from a place of negative energy
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  because they're probably not going to be that great. So let
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  the past go as hard as it may be do whatever you got to do let
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  the past go and reset your mindset
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  before you start. Start the hiring process. Everyone who has
• 4:52
  ever worked for you has been a blessing. Yes, that's even the
• 4:57
  ones who sucked. Why because you earned something that you really
• 5:01
  needed to know, and could not have learned any other way. And
• 5:05
  it really offers you contrast. So now you're much closer to
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  identifying and getting what you want, because you're super clear
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  on what you don't want. So send that person a silent little
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  thank you for what they taught you, and then put them out of
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  your mind. And I'm gonna tell you a quick little story here.
• 5:27
  About this very thing with a client of mine, she hired
• 5:30
  someone who was green, right out of law school thinking that that
• 5:34
  would was the only type of person she could hire as her
• 5:38
  first associate because of being able to afford to pay them. And
• 5:42
  when she hired this green attorney, it turns out that he
• 5:47
  just did not know anything, he was not nearly at her level, or
• 5:52
  what it was that she needed for the business. And it was a huge
• 5:56
  mistake. And she really dwelled on this mistake for quite a
• 5:58
  while she fired it. And then she kind of stayed in her feelings a
• 6:03
  while about how bad he was, and how that was such a big mistake
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  and how she lost all this money. As soon as she let start to let
• 6:13
  some of that go and got out of her feelings about it. She wound
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  up attracting someone that she didn't think that she could ever
• 6:24
  hire, ever afford to hire, because she was so experienced
• 6:27
  and such a great lawyer. And as it turns out, she was not only
• 6:32
  able to hire that person, but she she learned that she could
• 6:38
  afford to hire a better lawyer. And she did make that leap. And
• 6:44
  now she's thrilled and happy about that. So that that
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  experience taught her that maybe she was settling for something,
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  and, and she did have the ability to get the person that
• 6:58
  she wanted to get, she just wasn't confident enough, or
• 7:02
  didn't really think that that was something she could do.
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  Alright, mistake number three, is not creating and executing on
• 7:09
  a hiring system. So if you feel like you suck at hiring, it's
• 7:14
  likely because you don't have an effective hiring system. Now, no
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  system can protects us 100% of the time. But a good hiring
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  system can go a long way toward helping us attract our ideal
• 7:27
  employees. So what is a hiring system, a hiring system is just
• 7:31
  a systematic approach to hiring, that you can replicate time and
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  again, perhaps with just a few tweaks based on the position,
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  right. So when you have a good hiring system, you are well
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  prepared for opportunities that come your way, you can be
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  proactive and not just reactive. For example, you already have a
• 7:49
  job description, and a matching ad for each position needed for
• 7:54
  your million dollar law firm business. You already have
• 7:57
  interview questions, you have a process for multiple interviews
• 8:01
  and testing that need to happen during the interview process.
• 8:05
  without you being the one to do at all, you have scorecards for
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  each candidate. And when you're ready, you can easily just whip
• 8:11
  up that irresistible offer from your offer templates that you
• 8:15
  already have. So those are just some of the elements that you
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  might have in a good hiring system. So that's it for today's
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  episode, I do hope you've enjoyed it. If you want to go
• 8:24
  deeper into this topic, then I invite you to watch my new
• 8:27
  training, how to hire for your law firm when no one wants to
• 8:31
  work. Because I know it's it's a belief that a lot of us have,
• 8:35
  how to hire for your law firm when no one wants to work. That
• 8:38
  presentation, the link for that is in the shownotes go grab it
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  now. Put some time on your calendar. It is just one hour
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  and but at the end of that hour, you're gonna have a much clearer
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  picture about what you need to do next to start creating your
• 8:52
  hiring system. Plus, I have an irresistible offer for you. And
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  so you're going to want to watch that it's only going to be
• 8:58
  available probably for another week. And so you want to go
• 9:03
  ahead and dive in and watch that if you have not already. And I
• 9:06
  thank you again for being here and being a part of the wealthy
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  woman lawyer community. I appreciate each and every one of
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  you. Thank you so much and we'll chat soon.