So, you have determined that your current firm will not be your final resting place and want to shop around. You could be motivated by a variety of factors; you wanted to be working on different assignments, your boss is a nightmare or you simply want to explore other opportunities. How do you move elsewhere? I am here to help.
Within about six months of starting as a BigLaw associate, you will receive mass emails from headhunters offering to place you with a different firm or as an in-house lawyer. In most cases, you do not pay legal headhunters; your future employer will pay them a finder's fee once you are hired. Such a fee tends to be a percentage of the newly hired employee’s salary.
First, forward the recruiter’s email to your personal account and respond from there. For general inquiries, you could reply with something like the below. In other cases, headhunters will email about specific job opportunities that catch your eye. In that situation, tailor my sample message to the details they provided in the email for the position of interest. It could also be useful to ask colleagues who have recently switched positions for the contact information of the headhunter they used and liked.
“Hi [sender’s name], thank you for your email. I am currently a Xth year associate at [your firm] LLP, working primarily on [your specialty/group] matters. I am interested in exploring other opportunities. Please let me know your availability to speak further on this. Looking forward to it!”
If you email a headhunter and do not hear back within a few days, try another one. Between LinkedIn requests you have probably received and emails from other headhunters, you should have plenty of options.
Most headhunters will ask to speak on the phone for about 15-30 minutes to get a sense of what you are looking for (and to suss you out). Before you speak with a headhunter, have a general idea of what you want your future position to look like and resist the urge to bash your current employer. Do you want more exposure to high profile work? Do you want to switch to a practice that lends to more predictable hours? Do you want to develop skills marketable for a potential future in-house position?
After your initial consultation, the headhunter will then look into potential matches for you. They should revert with a list of relevant openings and unless you agree otherwise, will ask for your permission to apply to those places on your behalf. If you have not heard back from your headhunter for about a week after your initial consultation, email them for a status update. If nothing still, email again and professionally convey that you no longer wish to work together and that they should not apply to additional opportunities on your behalf. While this back and forth could be a bit annoying, it is important to find someone responsive. Headhunters are helping you make a decision that could alter the trajectory of the career you worked hard to build.
Should you work with more than one headhunter at once? In some cases, it could be beneficial to have multiple people in your corner. If you choose to go down this route, meticulously keep track of where your headhunters have applied. You do not want multiple applications sent to the same firm or company on your behalf, it could make you look disorganized and reflect poorly on you as a candidate
Finally, when deciding on your final destination, remember that the headhunter is not unbiased. One firm/company could have offered the headhunter a larger cut for your acceptance of their offer. Take a trusted headhunter’s advice seriously but ultimately go with your gut. Your headhunter does not need to live with the decision you made everyday, but you will.
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