ILSPA's New Year Recruiting Guide

The New Year is drawing near. This is a time for good intentions, change and new beginnings. People want to take charge of their lives, develop their personal and professional domains and change path towards the direction of their dreams. Recruiters should therefore take note that the New Year is the prime time to advertise new opportunities for those dream-seekers to take hold of. We at ILSPA are here to help, with valuable information on recruitment strategies as well as our own acclaimed Legal Secretary Jobs Board. As you think about your staff requirements for the coming year, keep this guide handy to ensure that the recruitment strategy you employ is attracting the candidates your company deserves.

Evaluate your recruitment strategy

We recommend that companies take the time to formulate a recruitment strategy. This should include your company needs, recruitment targets, methods of advertising, social media plan and time schedules. Calculate, analyse and evaluate your methods based on your desired outcomes. Think carefully about your target audience, where best to find them and how to attract their attention, whilst keeping both cost efficiency and advert effectiveness in mind. Having a written recruitment strategy not only enables you to clearly observe and assess your various aims as a whole, but is also shown to be extremely beneficial within teams to ensure that everyone is working to the same guidelines and towards the same objectives.

Ensure that your company is effectively branded

Branding your company involves developing a consistent vision of your company to present to the public. This includes your overall brand design, your mission statement and general personality of your written content. Creating a strong and recognisable brand ensures that you stand out from the crowd and creates a prominent imprint on the public’s mind, ensuring that every social media post you create is instantly connected to your company without conscious thought. Allowing for your company’s personality to show also allows candidates to resonate with it, and encourages the formation of more appropriate, personable and intuitive working partnerships.

Take advantage of your company website

Your company will naturally have a base of followers and new enquirers who will check-in on your on-going developments and opportunities. Your website, therefore, is one of the most evident places for you to advertise your company’s vacancies. Candidates who apply for a role directly off your website are more likely to already be passionate and interested in your company and resonate with your company’s ethos. If you have not done so already, consider creating a careers section of your website or designing standout adverts to incorporate into your homepage to notify any visitors to your site of upcoming vacancies. If this is already in place, make sure that it is regularly kept up to date and is attractive to potential candidates.

Make your job descriptions attractive

Distinctive, comprehensive and well-written job descriptions attract the most talented candidates. It is important for recruiters to remember how highly sought after valuable candidates are, therefore recruiters must make the effort to show that they care about their value. With this in mind, job descriptions need to be intriguing and appealing, as well as inclusive of all the information relative to the requirements of the role. Taking time to write a good job description gives the candidate a complete impression of the company itself as well as ensuring that they are well informed about what is expected of them within the role. The more specific your job description is, the more refined the candidates who apply will be. Include your company’s mission, ethos and overall personality to allow individuals to personally connect with your company. We also highly recommend that you state the salary within the job description. Recruiters who state ‘market rate’ or ‘dependent on experience’ will really limit their applications. If the salary is not clear to potential candidates, they are likely to move on and look at other job advertisements which clearly state the salary. A big factor in people applying for jobs is the salary offered as they need to know whether it is suitable for their living costs.

Use ILSPA’s Legal Secretary Jobs Board to advertise your vacancies

ILSPA’s niche jobs board provides the perfect platform for your vacancies all year round, being the only jobs board within the UK that is solely dedicated to Legal Secretary employment. By advertising on our reputable website you have exclusive access to a database of qualified, talented and actively looking candidates with the tools to filter them based on location, experience and activity level. We encourage all of our Members to join our jobs board, ensuring that candidates are kept to a high standard. Our database allows you to view a wealth of worthy candidate’s CVs as well as contact them directly. We offer various competitive price plans to suit your needs and it is used by many top legal firms in the UK who trust us to provide them with the valuable and capable candidates that they are seeking.

Utilise social media

It is vital that all companies realise the potential of social media. Every company of the modern age needs to have at least one form of social media outlet accompanied with members of the team that are savvy and adept in utilising it. There is a myriad of social media sites to take advantage of, from Facebook, to LinkedIn, to Twitter. Each site has their own distinctive presence, with their own audience. Each site has its own advantages and specialist features. Sites such as Facebook allow you to be strategic in your candidate search by enabling you to promote your advert to specific audiences based on their particular interests and demographics. Hopeful candidates now regularly use social media as a part of their job seeking process, so it is important to incorporate it into your company’s recruitment strategy. Ensure that your company takes full advantage of every advertisement opportunity available, especially if it comes at no cost to the company. Recruiters should particularly take note of the times of day they are posting and frequency of posts. You may find certain times of day reach wider audiences than others. One of the great benefits of advertising on ILSPA’s Legal Secretary Jobs Board is that we share your vacancy on all of our social media platforms to reach a targeted audience of qualified and experienced Legal Secretaries.

All year round recruitment

Recruitment is an all year round process, with vacancies and talent appearing at different times throughout the year. Whilst you should only advertise a vacancy if you actually have one, companies should remember the importance of staying in the public’s awareness all year round. The more presence your company has, the more awareness the public will have of it, which will allow for top talent to directly contact you when vacancies become available. Taking note of our tips on branding, your website and social media will ensure that you maintain a healthy presence all year long. If you are interested in appearing in the news and advice section of ILSPA’s Legal Secretary Jobs Board by writing a piece about the latest developments or opportunities at your company, please feel free to contact us at info@institutelegalsecretaries.com.

The Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs is here to help you with your recruitment process. For more information on our exclusive jobs board go to our website at www.institutelegalsecretaries.com/jobs/legal-secretary.