When hiring legal support staff, most hiring managers quickly discover that targeting education, experience, and certifications simply isn’t enough: any candidate you might seriously consider has these basic skills. Yet experienced hiring managers also know that “any candidate” just won’t do – and finding a candidate with the precise, specific experiences your current staff have may be nearly impossible.
How can you identify and hire the candidates who are best for your organization? Consider taking a closer look at character traits and trainability. With their basic education and credentials in place, legal support candidates who offer a good cultural “fit” in terms of character traits and who have the ability to learn offer significant potential for your organization.
Here are some character traits to prize:
- Enthusiasm for Learning. Look for legal support staff who take it upon themselves to learn new skills, procedures, and information in their field. Look for those who “light up” during interviews when talking about what they have learned recently. These enthusiastic, self-driven learners are not only easier to teach, they’re more likely to go out of their way to learn – picking up the specifics of your organization’s practice areas and client focus more quickly. A passion for learning turns a “blank slate” into a promising candidate.
- A “Sixth Sense” for Confidentiality. Confidentiality is a top concern in nearly all legal organizations. As digital tools continue to expand and information is created, shared, stored, and accessed in various ways, new confidentiality concerns continue to arise. Asking probing questions that deal with communication and confidentiality will help you find candidates who have put thought into the problems and who can expand their knowledge and practice of current confidentiality rules into new situations in thoughtful, effective ways.
- Humility Plus Perseverance. There’s a reason that “what is your greatest weakness?” and “tell us about a time you failed” continually reappear on interview question top-ten lists: The answers a candidate gives can tell you much about how they approach mistakes and failure, how they learn from them, and what they do in order to correct problems and avoid repeating them. Candidates who can face their mistakes, do what they can to fix them, and move on with a constructive lesson in mind, pick up training more quickly, make fewer mistakes in the long run, and become better equipped to teach others how to avoid similar problems in the future.
At Kent Legal, our experienced recruiters can help connect you with people who offer the right cultural “fit,” allowing you to focus on the development of their skills and experience. Contact us today to learn more about our legal support recruiting services in Toronto.