Health / Wellness

How Mental Health Issues Can Impact Your Legal Job Search

The recruitment process is murky waters. For mental illness sufferers, the anxiety is unavoidable, the process unpredictable.

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If you’re at a medium or large law firm, you undoubtedly get multiple unsolicited emails per week pitching job openings. Okay, yes, you probably get one from me as well with my mental health newsletter, but at least it’s only once a week.

Those emails are, of course, hoping that they make it to your inbox instead of the spam folder and catch you at that one moment you are considering a job change or at least to plant the seeds of change in your head. Lawyers change firms for a multitude of reasons including ones that impact mental health.

When a lawyer is struggling with stress or anxiety, depression, or problem drinking, it can impact the job search in several ways. I reached out to a legal recruiter to provide her perspective.  Kirsten Nyhus, Esq. is a partner and Director of Legal Recruiting at Nyne Partners.

Brian Cuban: From the perspective of a recruiter, how do you see a job search candidate’s mental health coming into play during the search process?

Kirsten Nyhus: Mental health issues know no boundaries and make no exceptions. They exist on the inside but manifest themselves both internally and oftentimes externally. It’s typically what is observed on the outside that has the most impact in the recruitment process.

As a recruiter, I have two jobs — one is to assess and screen the client and the second is to assess and screen the candidate. Firms can also be quirky, and the culture itself can suffer from its own dysfunction, so it’s not a no-brainer that every candidate will fit in every firm.

Screening the candidate not only to get a better understanding of their background and experience, but almost more importantly, to get a sense of their personality, values, strengths, weaknesses, and interests. It’s basically matchmaking, making sure the initial “requirements” are there and be able to back it up with the desired details.

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The issue arises when the candidate doesn’t present an accurate picture. For those who struggle with mental health issues, their self-esteem is often low, their confidence is monopolized, their stability may be rocky, and their outlook may be compromised.

BC: How has your personal experience shaped your view on how a candidate’s wellness can affect job opportunities?

KN: As someone who personally struggled with mental illness (an eating disorder), I constantly worried about being “found out” or worried that others would find out I was a “fraud” because I wasn’t who I said I was — I wasn’t confident, capable, or commendable.

The can be a barrier between the life you are living and the life you want to live (or the life you want to escape). The concern arises when you portray yourself as one type of person and then running the risk of not actually being that person and subsequently not able to perform the job you were hired to perform as the person you pretended to be.

The disconnect can cause problems. And then that just reinforces to the mental illness sufferer that they aren’t worthy or capable of normal living. The self-deprecation returns with a vengeance. The cycle continues. Now you have to try harder to hide it. To be someone else. Those are the demons.

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Dealing with un-treated mental health issues can be a constant battle of trying to convey on the outside what you want so desperately to feel on the inside. Meeting with a recruiter is somewhat like meeting with a therapist, you talk about who you are, what your background is (what you’ve been through and experienced), what you are looking for and what tools you have to get there.

The question is: how honest should you be? If you tell them what you’re really going through will they hold that against you or deem you unworthy of potential opportunities? Yet if you don’t and you are hired and it comes out, then what?

When you look at the staggering statistics related to lawyers suffering from depression, problem dinking and other mental health issues, it is clear that this is a dilemma some lawyers face when changing jobs and the hard reality is that in many cases, a simple environment change is may not be answer when the problem runs much deeper.

BC: What are some common issues that job candidates deal with regards to wellness?

KN: Say you left a job or took time off to address your mental health issue(s), do you disclose that? Is that relevant? That is a major internal dilemma, some people applaud the courage it takes to regain control of your life while others don’t necessarily want to navigate those waters, or deal with what the ramifications could be. The unknown of who you are dealing with is scary.

BC: How can a recruiter help a candidate who may be dealing with mental health issues?

KN: The benefits of using a recruiter are that they can help you navigate that unknown territory, be a sounding board for your questions, concerns, and fears, and offer you various options as to how to explain your circumstances and give you inside information about law firm culture and expectations so to avoid any surprises.

Not only that, but your recruiter can be your best advocate and confidante, since confidentiality is of the utmost importance, you have someone you can entrust with personal information, someone to go to bat for you and who has your best interest in mind.

We want you to succeed. We want you to overcome and conquer your fears and insecurities. We want you to break free from any barriers that have been holding you back in your personal and professional life. Dealing with mental health issues, you may be your worst critic. We, recruiters, can be your best ally.

The stigma with mental illness is slowly being lifted, but it is far from being uncovered. Especially in the legal community. Lawyers are expected to be the brightest of the bunch, have it all together and definitely not struggle with mental illness because if they do how can we trust them with our legal issues. And why would we trust them? How can they help us if they can’t help themselves?

That’s the thing, for many of us who struggle or who have struggled, helping other people is the least of our problems. It is taking care of ourselves where we fall short. That is the misnomer, we can be all things for all people but for ourselves. We are the happiest depressed people, the strongest weak people, the most confident self-deprecating people, yet we are yearning and striving to be normal, validated, and worthy people.

I once worked with a candidate who seemed to have it all together, went to a good law school, had good grades, and had a job with a reputable firm. Yes, there was a gap in his résumé, but only because he took time off for “personal health issues.”

And that’s a good thing, right? It turns out he was a problem drinker and was fired from his job. He did not disclose this to me. And when I called his references, they only said positive things. Meanwhile, I got this candidate numerous interviews and ultimately a job offer. I presented him as a “top” candidate and one that should strongly be considered. He was hired and fired two months later. He was still a problem drinker. And this did not make me, the recruiter, look good. What more could I have done?

Can I ask someone about their mental health? If they are currently struggling with mental illness or addiction? No, I can’t. That is a sensitive issue in the recruitment process based on the candidate/recruiter relationship.

The recruitment process is murky waters. You never know who you will have to meet with, explain your history, to or convince of your deservedness. For mental illness sufferers, the anxiety is unavoidable, the process unpredictable. Your past doesn’t have to dictate your future, but your present will feed off your passion, and ultimately determine your position (figuratively speaking).

Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

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