In the first of a two-part Brand Building in 15 Minutes series on recruiting and retention, Builden Founder Jocelyn Brumbaugh showed how firms can come out ahead of the Great Resignation by strengthening their marketing infrastructure processes.

Jocelyn outlined the importance of understanding the mindset of associates as they navigate their job search and ensuring a firm’s digital presence tells the right story about the firm.

Watch the full webinar here:

This series continues with Part Two on October 26, 2022 when Builden’s Legal Operations Consultant Grace Ko will discuss operations best practices for recruiting and retention.

The Brand Building in 15 Minutes webinar series gives attorneys, marketers and legal administrators practical tips for efficiently executing marketing and business development efforts in a bite-sized timeframe. The program topics focus on process-driven best practices that raise law firm profiles.

Builden is changing the way law firms think about marketing by turning random acts of marketing into strategies that drive business development. Our seasoned team of legal marketers help firms of all sizes better engage with clients, prospects and talent.

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Video Transcription

Jocelyn Brumbaugh (00:00):
Welcome everyone. We are very excited to see you all today. We are back – Brand Building in 15 Minutes. We are so happy to have you here today. Brand Building in 15 minutes: This is where we take law firm’s biggest marketing and operations challenges and we show you ways to make meaningful change on them in just 15 minutes. I’m Jocelyn Brumbaugh. I am the founder of Building Partners and we’re so happy to have you back here after our summer hiatus for brand building. The good news is summer was lovely. The bad news is it’s still really hard to find talent, but that’s what we’re here to talk about today and we are starting to see the tide turn just a bit for our AM law firms, but mid-size firms are still really feeling the crunch about how hard it is to find top talent. But that’s why we’ve got a two-part series for you today.

(00:52):
Today we are going to talk about how to win the recruitment battle from the marketing side. We’ll talk about how building your marketing infrastructure can be your secret weapon in your recruiting efforts. And then next month, October 26th to be precise, Builden’s legal operations consultant, Grace Ko is going to join us and she’s going to talk about how to pair what we talk about today on the marketing side with operations best practices that can improve your recruiting and retention. But first, you know us, we are Builden Partners. We do marketing strategy for law firms and only law firms because you’re awesome. We serve as an outsourced marketing department for firms with 15 to 150 attorneys, and then we also help am law firms and other large law firms fill their marketing gaps. And how do we do that? Because our senior team is awesome. We all grew up at large law firms, so we get it.

(01:51):
Alright, so let’s jump in. So if you’ve been having trouble recruiting associates, you are not alone. The unemployment rate is low. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are two job openings for every job seeker and now the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, so it’s possible that the worst is behind us for those of us who handle recruiting. But attracting top talent has always been really hard in the legal industry. And these headlines, they tell you exactly that, a bunch of headlines from the legal press over the past few months. It’s not a super rosy picture for folks who handle recruiting. So let’s talk about how associates find out about their next job. There’s really three main ways online postings, primarily LinkedIn, through recruiters, and through friends. And there is a world beyond LinkedIn, right? In fact, I was talking to Adam Hrejsa here in Chicago at the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin last week and he told me that their job postings board is up 200% from this time last year.

And what I think is the most interesting is the biggest complaint he hears from folks who post is that they are getting zero resumes. It’s not that they’re not able to find the quality talent, it’s that people aren’t even applying to open their open positions. And why is that? So for AM law firms, associates likely already have some impression of your firm, right? Maybe you are a litigation powerhouse, maybe you do a lot of government work. Maybe you’re that collaborative law firm. But for better or for worse, midsize firms don’t always have that built-in narrative. So associates may not have heard of your firm before and it’s up to you to make sure that the best possible story unfolds for associates when they start to get to know your firm online. Because once you get to the interview process, you got this right. Your attorneys are smart and fun and they’re talented and the work is interesting and you pay market rates, you’ve got all that. But how many associates are you missing because they’re not even applying to your firm because they don’t know enough about your firm? My guess is a lot. So let’s talk about what an associate’s process looks like when they come across a job opening at a firm that they don’t know much about.

(04:18):
So starting up here at 12 o’clock on the cycle, they find out about the firm, right? Whether it’s LinkedIn recruiters, friends, the next thing they do is they Google the firm. So what happens when they Google your firm? Do you know there’s a way to find out, right? Because a lot of firms, we Google their firm names and the name partners that show up on the Google My Business list on the right are not the same collection of name partners that they have right now because there was a change a few years ago and they didn’t bother to update that. Maybe on the news section when we Google them it talks about a big partner departure. These are things you need to consider because potential candidates are also considering them. So the next thing they do is they go to the firm’s website and what do they see when they look at the firm’s website?

(05:06):
Again, there’s a way to find out when you go there, does it look like the website of a place that you would’ve wanted to work if you were earlier in your career? Does it say why this firm is different? Does it accurately list the practices that this firm practices? Are the headshots flattering? If you’re trying to attract diverse associates: Are there women and people of color who are highlighted within the website or is it a lot of one type of person sitting around a conference table? So a smart associate next is going to look at the firm’s news page. What sort of victories does this firm have? Who and what do they highlight? What are they involved in? What does this firm think is the most important thing the firm has done recently? Because even more than what it says in the About Us section, the news page tells them exactly what this firm values.

(05:59):
It shows what this firm is proud of, what’s important to them, what they took the time to highlight by putting it on the news page. So from there they go to the firm’s LinkedIn page and why do they do that? Because they want to find out who they know at your firm and who from their law school already works at your firm. And this is such an important part of the recruiting puzzle. I talk to so many mid-size firms who tell me that they’re having a hard time recruiting, and I say, “so where are you posting your jobs?” Oh, they’re posting it on LinkedIn and then I look for their firm on LinkedIn. And there’s nothing. They have no presence, no firm page, the partner profiles look terrible, they don’t care whether or not their associates are on LinkedIn because they don’t want them spending time on social.

(06:43):
I get it. But this is the process that potential candidates are using and they’re looking at LinkedIn to see who they know at your firm to get an in or to see if they can talk to someone there or talk to somebody that they know about what it’s really like to work there. And you’re making it really hard for them to find out anything about your firm if you don’t have a strong LinkedIn presence. So to attract associates, you need to think like an associate, right? You need to put yourself in their shoes. Where are they going to look to figure out if they should apply to your firm? So a lot of what we’re talking about today goes back to Builden’s five-step marketing infrastructure model, which those of you Brand Building regulars, you know this very well. So the marketing infrastructure is what tells your story to the world when you’re not there to tell it.

(07:35):
It’s how you shape your firm’s digital presence, which in a post COVID world is your whole presence. And so if you’ve been on these a lot, you know that about the magical step four, circulating the good news internally here at Builden, we call that the “money step” for all the magical things it does for a firm. And when I talk about step four as, sort of, part of the whole life cycle of the five steps, I talk about how beneficial it is for associate retention, but that sometimes gets lost in all of the other things that are beneficial from step four. So I want to break this down for a bit. So the marketing and infrastructure model helps with associate retention and recruiting because your associates want to work at a firm that is winning. They want to work at a firm that is growing and they do work there.

(08:22):
You just don’t always tell them about it. So they want to work somewhere where the partners are respected in the community and are considered thought leaders and are winning awards and are doing cool things. But unless you do step four, or you just happen to have a really strong internal communications protocol, unless you do step four, your associates rarely hear about the good things that are happening at your firm, and their friends who are associates are on social all the time and they’re liking and sharing all the cool things that their firms are doing. And your associates want that too. They want to feel good about where they work. You just forget to show them all the time why it’s a great place. So it’s really important to do step four and all of the other steps, of course, as part of your making your marketing infrastructure, your recruiting secret weapon, and here’s what that looks like.

(09:18):
Okay? So these are the top four things that you need to do. One, you need to showcase news that highlights what your firm values. Associates are checking out this page, so make sure it’s talking about the initiatives, the events, the awards that you want them to see. Two, you want to add your associates contacts to your mailing list. First of all, this is a great business development habit to get them to start now, right? Having their contacts added into your firm’s large list, but in addition to that, it keeps your firm front and center with all of their smart friends. Three, you want to train your associates on LinkedIn best practices. And part of this is making sure that your partners are practicing LinkedIn best practices. They need to be normalizing and to be celebrated for liking and sharing and commenting on the good news that you post about your firm on LinkedIn.

(10:10):
Associates need to see that that’s a good thing for them to do. This trains them to be ambassadors of your brand in a place where you know other associates are hanging out. It’s LinkedIn. And then four is step four. Make sure to use step four to keep your associates engaged. Make sure that you give them the tools to be proud of the firm and the things that the firm are doing. Step four is just such an easy low cost way to boost morale and to boost engagement with the junior team. It really is worth all the hype that we give it here at Builden.

Okay, so that is it, right? Well under 15 minutes this time we’re gifting you a few minutes to go enact some of the things that we taught you today. And then you can join us next month, Wednesday, October 26th to be precise for part two of this. When building’s legal operations consultant, Grace Ko is going to pair what we talked about today on the marketing side with operational upgrades that you can make to improve recruiting and retention. We’re looking forward to that. And if you like a lot of marketing tips crammed into a very small timeframe, you will also like our newsletter. So, shoot us a note at hello@buildenpartners.com and we’ll sign you up for that. Thanks so much everybody, we will see you next month.