Every day, countless people use dating apps like Tinder and Bumble to connect with others who match pre-defined criteria. With the explosive success of this networking model, one can’t help but question the limitations of its application: if you can swipe right and land your next date, can you swipe right and land your next job?

Several entrepreneurs have begun exploring this very notion, driven by the value they perceive to exist in this differentiated approach to job recruitment. Available in a multitude of regions, app-based solutions are already connecting law firms with legal professionals.

Speed-Recruitment

Given how intense and demanding a lawyer’s schedule can be, a major appeal of these platforms is what appears to be a drastic reduction in time allocation to the recruitment process. By cutting legal recruiters out of the equation, firms deal directly with candidates and vice versa, and each player lets algorithms dictate to whom one’s time should be most appropriately allocated.

How It Works

• Candidates download the app, answer questions and register
• Apps show jobs to candidates based on their location, as well as qualifications and experience established in the setup phase.
• Candidates can sift through job postings and request full job descriptions for any openings that pique their interest
• Candidates remain anonymous as they search through available jobs. Once interested, candidates send their application via email to the firm of their choice

  Once hired, these matchmaking service providers typically charge clients a percentage of a candidate’s first year salary.

At first glance, this appears to be an extremely cost-efficient alternative to recruitment agencies. However, there are several important deficiencies that accompany the lowered expenditure that must be considered to truly appreciate the cost of this speed-recruitment model.

The More the Merrier?

Given the ease of use these recruitment apps offer, law firms will have access to more candidates than ever before. As positive as that statement may seem, it’s worthwhile to note that not all circumstances are compatible with the adage: the more the merrier.

Before getting swept up in the excitement, there are a few key questions to consider :

Does Your Firm Have Time for All of These Candidates?

Firstly, there is no guarantee that an increase in quantity of candidates will correlate with quality. Secondly, there’s no question that receiving more applicants for a given job opening imposes an additional obligation on those responsible for screening applicants, an obligation that must be met to extract any meaningful value from the increased influx of applications.

Failure to tend to these obligations has farther reaching impact, as shown by Career Builder’s Applicant Experience study:-

• 44% of workers who didn’t hear back from an employer when they applied for a job said they have a worse opinion of that employer
• 32% of job-seekers reported they are less likely to purchase a product from a company who didn’t respond to their job application.

  Should this obligation be met with insufficient focus or scrutiny, it’s not difficult to imagine that this would actually result in the selection of a worse candidate relative to one chosen through traditional means. Hiring an unfit candidate will likely result in lowered efficiency of labour, high training costs and high employee turnover.

Considering all this, what is the true cost savings of using a speed-recruiting model for your firm?

Recruitment firms like Shore & Associates typically weed through candidates with inadequate experience, conduct preliminary interviews, and then offer a curated roster of candidates who would best fit the position.

Removing the Personal Element

Anyone who has ever hired an employee knows that what’s written on paper isn’t always indicative of a candidate’s eligibility. CVs typically summarize a person’s professional history, but hardly ever capture a person’s character, personality and disposition.

In fact, HireRight’s Employment Screening Benchmark Report suggests that 85% of résumés evaluated by 4,000 HR professionals contained lies or misrepresentations of a candidate’s qualifications.

By meeting a candidate in an pre-interview, recruiters are able to understand who the candidate is, what their career goals are, and how they’ll fit into their potential firm’s workplace. Committed to providing personalized service, recruitment Shore & Associates ensures that candidates are correctly placed for long-term success.

Through the recruitment process, recruiters not only get to know candidates, they get to understand the work culture of the hiring firm. A candidate’s compatibility with a given firm’s work culture is a critical factor of a candidate’s potential to contribute to the firm’s success.

Professional recruiters have the capacity to not only evaluate professional qualifications and experience, but to determine whether a candidate’s character and disposition will suit their potential workplace.

When using a recruiter, firms can specify exactly what they’re looking for in potential candidates. The recruiter can then tailor the hiring process to ensure those specific people are contacted. By working with a legal recruitment firm, businesses are guaranteed personalized service, dedicated to helping them land a new hire who will perform far longer than the probationary period.

Acknowledging the Limitations of App-Based Solutions

There is no denying just how dramatically traditional tasks and processes have been improved by the entrepreneurial application of new technologies and business models. However — for the reasons outlined in this article — it’s damaging to assume that there is no end to the benefits that can be derived from impersonalized processes.

The job market and hiring process is placing more and more emphasis on compatibility of personality and work culture. Starting new hires off with a personalized hiring experience is a great way for firms to express how invested they are in finding and cultivating new talent.

In short, advancements in tech have the potential to disrupt and change whole industries to varying degrees. However, even the most sophisticated algorithms cannot replace a smile, a handshake and a conversation between two humans.