Executive Recruitment for the Legal GRC and Forensic Technologies industry, now and post COVID-19.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shifted a lot of company’s attitudes and decisions on how their business should be operated day-to-day, their technology infrastructure, size of premises and extending the invitation of the new normal of working from home or soon to be split/hybrid WFH and office plans. And things are still shifting, transforming and  causing disruption because the power is in the candidate’s hands right now particularly in our markets.

Part of this decision making is including the recruitment of new and/or replacement staff across the board but crucially Senior Leadership, Partnership, C-Suite or Executives are where roles can affect great change or even loss. This decision is not a decision which can be made quickly, lightly or even cheaply. And as such, is incredibly important in the areas of Legal Governance, Risk Management and Compliance to find head-hunters that realistically understand the market.

This is done with a pre-existing reputation and network to support doing so which APT Search has with a combined 25+ years in eDiscovery and Legal & Investigations related technology talent solutions & recruitment operating in 25+ countries.

This for clarity includes eDiscovery, Forensic/Fin Crime/Risk & Fraud Analytics, Cyber Security & Incident Response (DFIR), Forensic Accounting, Cloud Operations, Software Engineering and also legal operations staff.

I don’t want to drill over the same details of the positives of using ‘Executive Recruitment Head-Hunters’ in our specialist areas but rather more importantly, what happens if the person you hire doesn’t work out the way you hoped? And how does it affect the business on a larger scale? A couple of good examples are:

• Dr Brad Smart was quoted saying from his book ‘Top Gradin’ that the average cost of a mis-hire at Executive level could be as much as 27x the base salary. So, for context ‘$250,000 per year and things don’t work out. According to Smart, that could be a $6,750,000 mistake!’ For us in the UK by the way that could equate to £182,097 as a salary and a mistake cost of £4,916,644.
• A very well-known example in the Forensic & Investigations community (and beyond) is the Enron case, in 2000 declaring revenues of $111b and by the year after declaring bankruptcy. This was realistically down to Senior Leadership willing to commit fraudulent activities that actually brought the company down and auditing firm Arthur Andersen.

And a simpler summation from the perspective of all roles even from a base line consideration of the costs included in replacing or adding staff you’re looking at:

• Recruitment Costs
• Salary
• Bonuses/Draws/Shares
• National Insurance/Pension
• Travel Costs
• Training
• Office Space & Equipment/Remote Set-ups
• even other costs involved such as Holiday, Holiday Cover, Maternity/Paternity Cover, Sick Days, Company Cars & Corporate Benefits, Software Licenses and more

This is a real emphasis point in why getting it right is so paramount. It's not just the salary and bonus but everything! Even time has a cost, hence the billable hour.

What the above should highlight is the need and benefits to using a head-hunting agency for your hires which have a significant impact on your business from their decisions on day 1.

The benefits of hiring the right person at Exec level are endless from their abilities to motivate others and drive success from the get-go, their understanding of market trends and how to move the current both within the Economy and Technology, being able to see the best skills in others, enhance those skills and where there are vulnerabilities, plugging the gap of course to strengthen the wider unit.

Which leads me on to say please don’t be fooled at the moment in terms of hiring in the current climate, whether you’re a client or candidate from Associate level up to Partnership/Exec level. There will always be roles for those which are talented, and businesses will always carve out positions for someone which brings value to them.

There is a consensus and momentum building from leading experts across the Big 4, Law Firms, Tier 1 Banks, Vendors and other clients of ours that things are gradually rising, and this isn’t going to stop. The need for services across the Legal GRC perspective will remain healthy and growing and the need for good talent will become even harder.

At TRIA Recruitment we can support this and would certainly encourage having a no obligation and confidential chat on how we structure our Talent Solutions process from requirements gathering, mapping, vetting, shortlisting and leading all the way through to placement with a sincere and genuine confidence that you’ve made the right choice whilst saving your internal HR teams money and time.

If you’re a candidate wanting to have an exploratory conversation on your options and how we will utilise your profile to find you the best next step, we can do this too.

Please reach out to me on Jamie.Myles@triarecruitment.com or WhatsApp/Signal me on +44 (0) 7534 178 417 to have a chat.

Disclaimer: This is all my own opinion & experience and isn't reflective of the views of my current or previous employers.

About Jamie: 10 years’ working in consumer focussed industries via both B2C & B2B environments. My current role is working with a large team and recruiting for some of the world’s largest consultancies, law firms, banks, vendors and SMB’s focusing on eDiscovery, Forensic Data Analytics, Digital Forensics, Big Data, Cyber Security, Tax & Global Trade and finally Competition Economics. Previous to this, I worked with one of England’s Royal Warranted luxury retail businesses.