Law Practice - May/June 2013

Using data to hire (and fire) better.

yers—the ones who will effectively service clients and add value to the firm as partners in 10 years—right? The decision whether to modify the list of “accepted” recruitment schools is based largely on anecdotal information or internal politics.

Hiring decisions based on gut and intuition are problematic because subjective measures are not highly predictive of actual candidate performance. Ample research across many industries outlines the errors in using one-on-one or interests-based interviewing as the primary selection tool for per-

MONEYBALL ANALYSIS REVEALS UNEXPECTED SUCCESS FACTORS

after conducting a biographical analysis, one am Law 100 firm was surprised to learn that top schools, law review and joint degrees, for example, were not strong predictors of success at their firm. another am Law 200 firm uncovered that out of the four regional schools from which they had been recruiting for decades, only one was consistently generating high-performing lawyers for their firm.

And then, to choose among the candidates at these schools, the firm uses grades as a screening tool and a series of one-on-one interviews as the primary selection mechanism. The unstructured 20- to 30-minute one-on-one interview, which is mostly a free-flowing conversation about shared interests, allows the interviewer and interviewee to “get to know each other.” The interviewer is then asked to complete an evaluation with a checkbox at the end—hire, no hire or hire with reservations. Most of the time, if the interviewers “liked” the candidate, the decision is made to schedule an additional round of interviews or to hire the person.

formance. Studies show that interviewers get it right about 50 percent of the time using an interests-based interview. The same odds as a coin toss. Considering that a bad hire costs about $250,000 annually, these odds are not good enough.

This coin toss-style selection results in a new crop of entry level (and lateral) associates each year. Some are C players from the beginning, while others start strong and falter later because they can’t (or won’t) develop the ever-expanding skills set required at the next career stage. Either way, C players take developmental time and focus away from the A and B players whom the firm desperately wants to advance and retain.