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- [00:01]
Host (Rise Up Media Advertiser)
Are you tired of the marketing guessing game? Does your website feel more like a digital billboard than a client magnet? If you're nodding along, you're not alone. And it's time to stop the uncertainty and start getting real results. Let's talk about your marketing spend. Are you just shelling out money every month and crossing your fingers? Do you ever wonder what impact your marketing is really having on your revenue? Well, it's time to take the guesswork out of the equation with Rise Up Media. We been working with them for over a year and the feedback from our fellow members has been fantastic. Rise Up Media is here to take your marketing to the next level. They'll even perform a full audit of your online presence, giving you the good, the bad, and even let you in on what your competition is up to that you're missing out on. And the best part, there's no obligation, no catch, no pressure. If you decide to work with them, their contracts are month to month. That's right. No long term commitments tying you down.
- [01:01]
Tyson Mutrix
So what are you waiting for?
- [01:02]
Host (Rise Up Media Advertiser)
To learn more about how Rise Up Media can transform your firms, visit riseup media.com max law and rise is spelled with a Z. Riseupmedia.com max law
- [01:20]
Bill Farrius
this is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix.
- [01:30]
Tyson Mutrix
So, Bill, it's kind of interesting. Not too long ago, you made this pretty fundamental shift in your thinking and, and instead of treating hiring as more like the sporadic need that a lot of law firms do, you began viewing it more as a system similar to, you know, client acquisition. And so it's really kind of, that's, that's, that's the reframing that you, you posted about. I want to, I want to start there. So before I read the post, what wasn't working before you made this shift and what, what was it that made it finally click for you that recruiting needed to be treated differently?
- [02:04]
Bill Farrius
Well, I don't think it was anything necessarily that wasn't working as much as just coming across this concept in a book called Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson. She was an executive at Google and str, really smart lady, is pretty much an expert in building and managing teams. And that's where I got this idea from. And so I started thinking of building a team, building a pipeline from this perspective. And I have to say this is a work in progress. I am still actively working on this and there is still a lot of work to do, but it is, I think, a helpful framework for me.
- [02:50]
Tyson Mutrix
Was it a struggle for you to kind of reframe it? This way because I know a lot of people struggle with change. And was. Was that a struggle, just getting the mindset shift?
- [02:59]
Bill Farrius
No, not at all. I actually find it really fascinating because the comparison is a great one and the analogy is a great one. And at the end of the day it still is marketing. It's just a different type of marketing. So it was actually a pretty kind of smooth fit and transition. And I didn't find it difficult to start to think about it this way and to start to build out the systems accordingly.
- [03:28]
Tyson Mutrix
All right. And so to give people some context, this was your post was from like October, so it wasn't like a recent post. So you do have a little bit of time between the actual episode and when you posted this. So I'm going to read this post and you say, for a while I was struggling to find good candidates. Once I started treating it as marketing problem, things got better. Still plenty of work to do in this area. This line from the book Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson and you put in parentheses, Google Stripe puts it best talent acquisition is marketing and sales, what we call growth or performance marketing. You need to invest in your talent, brand lead identification and outreach in order to direct traffic, job views and applicants into your funnel. Then you need to have the means to assess lead quality and optimize conversion. I do think that is a drastically different approach than what most people do. If, when you, when you hear that now that you, when you reposted that, think about what you were doing before and, and compare what you're doing now versus what you were doing before.
- [04:38]
Bill Farrius
So now that you reread it, apparently there was more of a struggle than what comes to mind now. And, and that does make sense. I think our pipeline is better now, our systems are better now, and we generally have a stronger culture because of it. I think we've been able to make better hires. So the way that I think about this is I think about it as in regular marketing to try to bring on clients, right? You always hear, and we experience as business owners that a strong pipeline solves a lot of problems. So if your marketing is working, it is way easier to deal with adversity, to deal with the issues that come up day in and day out in business because you can rely on bringing in these clients, bringing in that revenue, and revenue is not the solution to everything. But having that money can help you solve a lot of problems more effectively and more efficiently. And so the shift in mindset was instead of being reactive, and at least this is how I interpreted it, is at the most fundamental level, instead of being reactive and going out and searching for candidates as the need arises, similar to marketing for clients, it's really important to consistently invest in building that hiring pipeline so that you can have more options and you can operate from a position of leverage rather than need and being reactionary. So that's the first thing. The second part was the actual building of the systems to field and process these candidates. So just like you would with a client that you're trying to bring into the business, you want to create an awesome experience for a candidate coming in. First of all, backing up, you want to be clear about who you are as a business, how you operate so that you attract the right people and you deter people that you don't want applying, right? So you don't want your pipeline clogged up, your hiring pipeline clogged up with people that are just going to waste your firm's time and you're going to waste their time. So building that pipeline, investing in your brand and who you are as an operation to attract the right people and then actually building the pipeline to make the process clear, to ensure that you're paying attention to the best candidates that you are creating an awesome experience for them that's then going to create word of mouth marketing, so to speak, to attract more good candidates and so on and so forth. So that's like at a high like 30,000 foot level. How I thought about that post and how I thought about restructuring my systems.
- [08:05]
Tyson Mutrix
It's such a really good point, I can tell you. Like when we added Zoho Recruit or our arsenal of tools, it just the ability to organize all of the leads in one place and actually score them, manage them in one place and then easily convert them into onboarding in one place. It made a massive difference just being able to do that. And that's just one angle of it. And I think that's really interesting that you, you went to that angle because that's probably something that in this discussion a lot of people probably would have overlooked when we talked about. Because I'm going to ask you about recruiting as marketing, that kind of a thing. I think most people are going to jump directly to the marketing part of it. Okay, how do I get better leads? How do I all that kind of stuff right when, and the, the probably the most overlooked part is the, the whole process driven part of it where okay, you've got to have, you hand you have a place to handle your leads. Whether you're using something like Pipe Drive or Biggin or Something like that, or you need to have a place to actually handle your, your leads when it comes to actual candidates. But so I think that's a really good point. I do want to shift gears a little bit because I do want to ask you about the recruiting is marketing part of it. And so when we say recruiting is marketing, what are we, what are you actually marketing? I, I know what it kind of means. I think our firm. But I wonder what it means to your firm. I mean, are you talking about the job itself?
- [09:31]
Host (Rise Up Media Advertiser)
Are you talking about the firm?
- [09:32]
Tyson Mutrix
You talking about the culture? Something else? All of the above? What, what is it that you're actually marketing?
- [09:39]
Bill Farrius
So the way that I think about it is that first of all, if I want to attract, attract the best candidates, it's my responsibility to educate the public and the job market about my culture. Who are we? How do we do work? How do we operate? What are we about? And most importantly, what value can we bring to them? Like, I have this fundamental belief that to attract and keep the best candidates, it's really important to focus on building and developing the individual. So I think that businesses that try to employ golden handcuffs type philosophies and managing approaches can get into trouble. Because the more you try to grasp on to the candidate and keep the candidate and build your culture around keeping people where they are and avoiding change and transition, the more likely it is that they will want to leave. Where as if you focus on doing right by the candidate and helping the candidate develop and creating opportunities for the candidate, I think ironically they're more likely to want to stay. And so it's really about educating the public and the job market on who you are, how you do business, and how you will help the candidate develop,
- [11:24]
Tyson Mutrix
I think that's a really good point. So if we think about sort of building a talent funnel, and I'll kind of, I'll sort of minimize what a typical funnel is, but we just kind of break it down to awareness, interest and conversion. Where do you think that most law firm owners like, they break down in that process? Is it in the awareness part? Making people aware that you've got this position open, all that, attracting interest to that position, or really in converting them, like that's kind of like the last part that you were talking about, where, like actually converting them into, from a candidate to an actual employee, like where, where do you think the breakdown is? The awareness part, the interest part, the conversion part? What do you think?
- [12:08]
Bill Farrius
I think there are problems in all three. I think if you ask me to pick One, it's really difficult to do that because you see firms that are doing a really good job of educating the public on who they are, regularly posting and talking about what their business is about, how they can help candidates. I think it's harder to experience that the next level down in terms of the actual advertising for the specific positions. I think what's important at that step is to be really, really clear again about who you are and what the culture is about, but also what you need for that position, how it benefits the candidate. And it's difficult for me because I'm not paying attention to a lot of the marketing out there for these positions. So it's hard for me to assess, like, how problematic that is for other businesses. But I would also guess that not a lot of people in firms are paying attention to the actual management of the pipeline, like what you talked about and what you have going in. Zoho, once these people contact you, how quickly are you getting back to them? Right? Just like a quality lead in marketing to bring on a client, how quickly are you reaching out to them? Are you acting quickly? Especially on the great candidates, how clear are you with the candidate on what the process looks like, what the next steps are, what they can expect? So my guess would be that there are issues at every level. I pay more attention to kind of the top level because I just come across that more. Like I see, for example, Chris early from. He's nearby in Boston. He runs a personal injury firm. He's doing a great job at marketing. Who he is, who his firm is like, what they're about. And so these are things that I notice on LinkedIn on social media. But the answer to your question is I think there are probably issues at all three levels.
- [14:21]
Tyson Mutrix
I was just looking for his book. I had him on not too long ago, so it's. I think it's on my other desk over there. But yeah, he's. He's doing a really good job of that. You mentioned some of these. How do you think that law firms should start tracking recruiting like they do marketing? Like how, like what are some tools they should use or some, some. Some metrics they should be focusing on?
- [14:42]
Bill Farrius
I mean, we're using just basic project management at this point. We use Monday.com. we might be switching off of that. But I think at the most basic level, figuring out where these quote leads are coming from, having a system for rating these leads, right? So that you can see, like, what, what kind of quality is coming in, how many good fits are coming in, how many People you don't want applying are coming in and then sort of reverse engineering that to figure out where is this going wrong. Is it that the messaging is not clear? Taking a look at the ad, you know, assessing the content, your messaging, the level of clarity. So that's how I think about it, and that's how we're utilizing the tools at this point is just on a very basic level, a rating and then reverse engineering to figure out where the issues are and iterating and on and on.
- [15:46]
Tyson Mutrix
So in your post, you highlighted that quote from Clare Hughes Johnson about a talent brand. And I wonder, what is it? What do you think a strong talent brand actually looks like for a law firm that's never really thought about it,
- [16:00]
Bill Farrius
for a law firm that's never really thought about it from scratch?
- [16:05]
Tyson Mutrix
So let me kind of rephrase it. Let's say you're starting from scratch. You never really give any thought to this. How should they look at it? When it comes to creating a talent
- [16:12]
Bill Farrius
brand, I think at the most basic level, it is who you are, what your business is about, and how someone joining your team can benefit them. I think at the most basic level, that's what it's about, is this is what this firm is. This is what we're about. This is how we help people, and this is how we can help you. This is how it would benefit you to come work with us. I think just starting there at the most basic level would be ineffective. Starting point.
- [16:51]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah, I. Okay, so I, I'm gonna tell you a brief story. Whenever I was applying for jobs out of law school and I got offers on, for jobs I probably shouldn't have gotten. And it was like the. My approach was because I had a marketing background. My bar. My approach was, here's how I will benefit you. Right. So my cover letters were. I would take. I would take the job and I would say, okay. I would match my experience to what they needed and I would. I would explain in my cover letters how I would benefit them. It was really kind of interesting. Is now that I'm on the other side of the table, I am shocked by how many come to our firm and they. We ask them all these questions and they talk about me, me, me, me, me, How. How everything could benefit them. And. But the, the reverse is true. What's your. What you're saying is absolutely true. We as employers, if we want the talent we need to. The good ones that come in, the ones that you're interviewing that you're like, these are good candidates, we need to be able to explain to them how we are going to benefit them. Now, in turn, you should probably be looking for candidates that are looking how they're going to explain how they're going to benefit us. So it's, it's this, it's. Both sides are marketing, but the, the approach that people take, I think it's, it's not the right approach. It's. They're looking at how can, how can you benefit me when in reality, if you're really going to truly market this position, I think you're dead on. You should be marketing about how you are going to be benefiting that, that, that, that particular candidate.
- [18:14]
Bill Farrius
Absolutely. And that's what you should be marketing. And what you're talking about, Tyson, in the reverse, when the candidate comes to you and it's all me, me, me, that's a screening issue. Right, Right. We as firm owners need to be aware of that, as administrators need to be aware of that and to figure out what that means for the hiring process and the strength of the candidate.
- [18:38]
Tyson Mutrix
All right, so let's get into. Funny, a fun topic. This is one where I've got strong opinions about both of these things. But, okay, when you're comparing compensation versus culture, okay, so how do you think culture actually influences recruiting versus compensation? So when you're looking at those two things, compensation, culture, how do you factor those in whenever you're recruiting and you're trying to market the firm?
- [19:03]
Bill Farrius
I mean, I think they, they go hand in hand. I mean, everyone knows this is across the country with, especially with inflation up and economic uncertainty. I mean, people need to get paid. And so if you're not competitive in what you're offering, then you're going to leave some on the table and you're probably not going to hire the best candidates. But I do think that having a strong culture and communicating that and marketing that effectively can score you wins when you're in those kind of gray areas. So if a candidate has a choice between your firm and another firm and the compensation is at least comparable, if the candidate is confident that what you're offering in terms of culture is a better fit, I think based on the research, that a candidate in that situation might even take a little bit of a pay cut or a little bit less money for better culture. So the bottom line is that financial needs still need to be taken care of. But I think having a strong culture just gives you a lot of leverage.
- [20:17]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah, I, I agree. I think for me, you have to be good at both. Right. You have to Be good at culture. You have to be good at compensation. You have to, you have to be both. And the, the. We were talking about like filtering out candidates. If your compensation's wrong, the easiest thing to filter out is compensation. Right. So if your compensation's off, they're, they're going to filter you out right away. So you, if that's. Yeah, they can do. It's harder to research culture. Right. So they're going to, they're going to default to. The easiest thing to filter out. The easiest thing to filter out is going to be compensation. So if you don't have that on point, you're just not going to have that candidate. So I think that's the reality. So you have to make sure you are, you're strong in that area to start, to start with. So really important how is, what's the best way for you right now when it comes to generating good candidates? Do you have one platform that you prefer over another?
- [21:10]
Bill Farrius
We're mainly using LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is what we found the most helpful. So that's what we rely on. That's what's brought in the best candidates. So I think we still have a little bit of experimenting to do and work to do. I think it also depends on the position, but yeah, so far it's been LinkedIn gotcha.
- [21:38]
Tyson Mutrix
I know we use Indeed, but the reason why we use Indeed, we may use LinkedIn a little bit, but it's, it syncs the best with Zoho Recruit, so they link up. That's why we, that's why we kind of default to Indeed. That's, that's our preference. So if anybody ever wonders, like, why we primarily use Indeed, that's why it's, it's comes down to our platform that we use.
- [22:00]
Bill Farrius
We use Indeed too.
- [22:03]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's one of the, it's. To me, it's like the default at this point. But I know the LinkedIn's really tried to kind of get into that game. Where do you think that most firms lose great candidates during the hiring process?
- [22:14]
Bill Farrius
Where do they lose great candidates? I think first of all, starting with your copy and being clear again about what your culture is about and how you can benefit the individual. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. I think a lot of firms and employers don't operate out of that mentality. I think it's like, hey, we have this available to you, like, apply and we'll decide if we're going to hire you. So I think a lot of Opportunity is lost in not putting the time and effort to convey how you can benefit the individual. And that's like more top of funnel stuff. But if you get that right, and of course, like you said, you have to get. Have the compensation right, and make sure that you're doing solid like market analysis to figure out what you should be paying. But getting that right will attract better candidates and more importantly, the right candidates. So I would start there. I would start top of funnel.
- [23:22]
Tyson Mutrix
All right, let's get. Let's have a fun one here. There's a quote from Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, and it's the secret. I want to get your thoughts on this. So I'm going to read this quote to you and I'm going to ask your thoughts on. On this. The secret to successful hiring is this look for the people who want to change the world. What are your thoughts on that?
- [23:43]
Bill Farrius
Oh, that's. That. That's a great quote. My philosophy on hiring is that I place much greater emphasis and weight on character and drive than on experience. So experience means very little to me. Don't get me wrong, it is important, but sometimes it's actually a liability in the sense that bringing someone in who has operated in a different system for a long time and is comfortable with that system can be frustrating. It can work. But I think the fresher out of school they are, the greener they are, the easier it is to implement them and get them to adopt to your systems and way of doing work. It goes without saying that it's very difficult to teach drive and motivation and ambition. I don't think it can be taught. So when I hear that quote, that's what I think of is that drive and the want is way more important than the experience.
- [25:03]
Tyson Mutrix
Your answer is way more charitable than what mine would be. I'll just say that I think you have it's great answer. I think it. I think you're spot on. I. I think whenever I, I hear a quote like this, I think it kind of react. It ignores the reality of the world that we're living in to some extent. Because like, if I sit around and wait for candidates, they're only looking to change the world. Okay, I'm gonna narrow my talent pool to such a small amount of people. That is absurd. And I'm gonna ignore people that would be a really good culture fit. They would be great at the job, you know, that, that, that, that align with our vision, you know, and so it's. Sometimes we, we focus on the wrong things and it's just it's one of the things where, like you, it's easy for a CEO that's got. That works, that's running this massive company to say something like this, who's probably not been in the trenches for a decade or more. So it's just one of those. I guess my whole point is the reason why I want to ask you about this is because. And I think your answer is completely spot on and I loved it. We should clip it and repost it because it's amazing. It's like, don't, don't try to find the perfect candidate.
- [26:08]
Bill Farrius
Right?
- [26:09]
Tyson Mutrix
It's, it's. It's not about finding the perfect candidates. It's finding. It's about finding the perfect candidate for your position and your firm that matches a lot, that aligns with your firm. That's what really matters. And there's no real, like the perfect candidate for my firm is not gonna be the same perfect for your candidate for your firm. They're completely different needs, completely different cultures and everything else. So that's, that's, that's why I want to bring that up. It was kind of a loaded question. I kind of set you up a little bit, but I. It's just one of those.
- [26:37]
Bill Farrius
No, I think that's, I think that makes perfect sense and I think it does depend on the position as well. Right there. There are some positions where you're going to need somebody to come in and just get the work done and be reliable. And then there are certain positions at your firm where you want thinkers and people who are going to. Who are going to be working on what's next and improving and iterating. So it also depends on the position completely.
- [27:03]
Tyson Mutrix
All right, so let's. We got a couple minutes. I want to ask you a couple more questions. I. I am curious. This is more of a curiosity thing for, for me to ask you because people talk about this a lot. So time from hire to their application to hiring. Roughly how long is it does it take for your hiring process to. To start an end?
- [27:24]
Bill Farrius
So it depends on the quality of the candidates that. That are coming in. Since we've implemented some changes, that process has been faster. So we've been able to do it between the time the candidate applies and hire. I don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I recall a couple pretty recently that happened relatively quickly. I would say within a couple of weeks. And I think the bottom line is the stronger the candidate, the faster you need to move because you don't want to lose them. So that's the bottom line is you need to prioritize that. You need to build a system so that you bring them along faster so that you engage in the key activities in the hiring process faster, assess faster. So overall you need to increase speed so that when the quality candidates come in, you're ready to do the work necessary to bring them on board, to hire them and bring them on board.
- [28:25]
Tyson Mutrix
Love it. All right, so I, when I read your post, I kind of had like three takeaways from them. Okay. And, and let me know if I'm missing anything, but it really is. Hiring is not an event. It's, it's more of a system. And, and systems are something you can scale. That's, that's, that's number one. Number two, if you treat recruiting more like marketing, I think you can create more predictability. You're, you don't have, you have less chaos and you have more predictability. That's number two. And then number three, culture and brand, I'd say are your biggest competitive advantages in attracting talent. I think that, that to me it's a no brainer. But am I missing anything or does that encapsulate the main takeaways, would you say?
- [29:11]
Bill Farrius
No, it absolutely does. And it goes back to the point that I brought up earlier on, which is all of this is focused on building and maintaining a strong and healthy pipeline for marketing. Just like you want marketing for people to join your team, just like you want that in marketing to bring on clients. So I think you're spot on.
- [29:33]
Tyson Mutrix
All right, Bill, if people want to reach out to you and pick your brain on how to, to improve their hiring process, what's the best way of getting a hold of you?
- [29:41]
Bill Farrius
They can email me be farriusariousfamilylaw.com I'm on all the main platforms at Farrius Family Law at Bill Farius, so feel free to out.
- [29:53]
Tyson Mutrix
Bill, this is great. Really appreciate you coming on and I think that a lot of people that are listening to this are going to get something from this. Hopefully this will change a lot of mindsets and shift the way that they, they start to hire because I think it can make a massive impact on them. So thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it.
- [30:21]
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