Guest Sandrene “Sandy” Ryan is the senior director of recruiting at Level Legal. She’s built a unique process that focuses on quality and creating “the right match” over putting bodies into slots. Culture fit can be more important than a specific skill. You can teach a skill, but you can’t make the wrong person fit your own culture.

Production is the lynchpin of your firm. Acquiring new clients and ensuring profit are the bookends, but we must produce. To do that, we need to recruit.

Finding the right people for your firm, whether it’s a contract hire or a full-time position is, at its heart, marketing. What’s your story? Do you know how to make your firm attractive to new hires. Do you understand what candidates are selling. It’s a two-way street. Learn how to create a process that makes candidates sign on with you, and also do their best work for you.

A quick match can be more of a time waster than a longer, thoughtful process.

You may be surprised at how the COVID pandemic’s shift to remote working created a wider pool of candidates. If someone doesn’t have to be in your office, you’ve got more to choose from. But it comes with new challenges as well. Nothing stays the same.