In-House Counsel

Take This Fit And Shove It: The In-House Counsel Hiring Process

HR in the in-house world cares about one thing and one thing only: FIT.

By  
on

I admit it. There are times when I yearn for my Biglaw days. I particularly miss the hiring process. Like all Biglaw firms, we had a top-notch HR department on the payroll, a non-Uggs and yoga pants wearing team (I’m looking at you my current HR business partners, read the freaking dress code, why don’t you? Your department allegedly drafted it).

In anticipation of hiring season, my former Biglaw HR team ran tough mudders and picked bar fights with Chuck Norris and watched the Gerard Butler scene from 300 (you know, the scene) just to make sure they were in the right frame of mind. Careful culling of thousands of résumés of the ivy elite. Rejections for the slightest infraction — the em dash an instant dismissal. Meticulously constructed interview schedules and slick pamphlets on our comp and benefits. Perfectly balanced recruiting lunches of just the right mix of attorneys all pedaling the same, consistent message. The hours are hard, but the pay is unmatched and the opportunities are limitless. Come to the dark side. We have candy.

Because in Biglaw, every single one of us knew that we were only as good as last year’s talent pool, so we had to strive to get the best and brightest. In-house? Not so much.

Now, I’m lucky if I get a 30-minute heads-up before an interview. Maybe the résumé. Maybe not. Sometimes the job description. Sometimes not. Occasionally, the recruiter delivers the interviewee to the correct room. More often than not, I find the applicant wandering the halls in stuffy, formal attire clutching a folder of résumés on vellum and looking desperately lost.

Once in a while, I am offered a set of interview questions. I’ve stopped looking at them since it makes it hard for me to keep a straight face in front of the applicants. One time, a guide suggested that I should gauge the candidate’s pep on a scale of 1 – 5. I was tempted to cross out 5 and write in “Ready to challenge Sandy to a death match for control of those hot, black pants in the end credits of Grease.” Why? Because I’m 100 percent certain HR doesn’t read our notes on whether we think the candidate is qualified, has an actual law degree, or has been flagged as “more likely to aid in a cover-up of an SEC violation than prevent one.” HR doesn’t read. Everybody knows that.

No, no. It’s more than that. HR at my place cares about one thing and one thing only: FIT.

To be fair, past experience isn’t particularly illuminating. Every applicant is completely qualified and equally unqualified for the role. I’m sorry, Biglaw associate, I know you’re aces at running complex closings and drafting debt offering docs, but we don’t do any of that here. What I’m trying to suss out is how you behave at three in the morning when you get the call that the press release going out before market open tomorrow has to be completely rewritten. And an 8-K will need to be filed shortly thereafter. Not that that happens around here either, but I need to know how you handle the crazy. Because there’s a lot of it when you’re in-house and I can’t have you losing your shit and running screaming for the exit.

Sponsored

And since it’s impolite to come right out and ask you how you handle the crazy, a lot of the questions we ask and the answers you give don’t help us either. No really, I’m sure that description of a situation you could have handled better was completely accurate. They never found that first-year associate, did they?

By the way, here’s a hot tip, you Biglaw associate reading this blog and thinking of interviewing for an in-house counsel position: you’re familiar with the classic interview technique where the interviewer asks you to name your biggest weakness, yes? Everybody always says that they take on too much responsibility. That’s a load of crap. And so is your answer to “Why do you want to go in-house?” Honestly, if I hear one more person tell me they’re “tired of being a hired gun at a big firm” and all they’ve ever wanted is to “learn the business as well as the legal side of a company,” I’m going to lose my shit and run screaming for the exit. Try harder. There’s no shame in admitting you’re questing after the mythical “work-life integration” beast.

So apart from a few basic qualifications (do you have a law degree, are you in good standing, have you killed someone in this state in the last five years, etc.), HR has nothing else to hang their hats on other than fit.

In my experience, discussions about fit are endless and inane. These debrief sessions inevitably take place at 11 o’clock on a Monday when I have a metric ton of emails to get through before lunch. Or they’re scheduled during lunch (because HR is a bunch of monsters). HR does all the talking and almost always has a preordained candidate in mind, but they still feel the need to strong arm you into agreeing that on a team like Legal, fit is the most important and sacred thing. Fit is everything. A bad fit can mean the sacrifice of the success of the entire team. Resistance is futile. The longer you hold out, the more HR will drag out words like value proposition and vision and whatever else they have in their bag of tricks to help you see things their way.

Because after all, HR wants a good fit because they don’t want to have to start this process over in six months when when the candidate quits and runs screaming for the exit. It’s a noble aspiration, the shirking of work, but it doesn’t always get you to the right candidate. Sometimes it just gets you to the most likable candidate or in the absence of likable, the least offensive. And hell, we need offensive and defensive linemen on this team.

Sponsored

For what it’s worth, fit is pretty simple for me. Do I think you can do the job without alienating the business in a manner that would cause them to circumnavigate you to get to me? No? Great. You’re a perfect fit.

Do you know when you’re being patently misled by the business and are you gracious about rectifying the situation and guiding it to a satisfactory, risk-mitigating conclusion? Yes? You’re freaking hired.

Now, go get a shovel, there’s a tide coming in and we’ve got to start shoveling.

Kay Thrace (not her real name) is a harried in-house counsel at a well-known company that everyone loves to hate. When not scuffing dirt on the sacrosanct line between business and the law, Kay enjoys pub trivia domination and eradicating incorrect usage of the Oxford comma. You can contact her by email at KayThraceATL@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @KayThrace.

Topics

, , , ,