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An interview with Warren Bongard, President, Co-Founder, ZSA Legal Recruitment
You’ve been there before—someone important just left the company and you need to replace them fast. But, how do you know who’s telling the truth on their resume? How do you really assess their skills and experiences? How many candidates should you interview before making a decision?
Enter Warren Bongard, Vice President at and Co-Founder of ZSA Legal Recruitment, the leading legal recruitment firm in Canada, assisting companies, law firms, and other organizations in their pursuit to hire lawyers. Warren’s knowledgeable and successful approach to hiring is evident in his answers to our questions below:
1) What’s the best advice you’ve ever received regarding finding employees? Why was it the best hiring advice?
Hire slow and fire fast, because jumping in too quickly is costly both from a financial perspective, but also a morale perspective. If you sense an employee is not working out, act quickly. Bad attitudes spread fast.
2) What’s the most effective job interview question you’ve ever used … and what was the outcome from using it?
When you purchase an unassembled item from IKEA, do you follow the instructions to put the item together?
When people answer that they follow the instructions closely, we know that they are highly detailed oriented and probably not ideal for our company. We seek people that are highly qualified at multi-tasking (we like ADD!) and less focused on the minutia (“do it your-selfers”). Hard to believe in a bunch of lawyers, but this is why it is hard for us to hire. To be clear, we have hired people who read and follow IKEA instructions. The answer is merely a barometer on where they stand on the detail side.
3) When it comes to finding employees, what is the best time/money-saving tip you know? Can you quantify your savings?
Ensure as many people as possible meet the candidates to allow free flowing opinions internally. It accomplishes two things: it vests your current team in the hire and it allows us to identify varying personality issues—especially when the candidate is speaking with a junior employee and an owner. Can’t quantify savings, other than the saving of termination costs by hiring mismatched candidates.
4) What’s your best advice for avoiding hiring mistakes? Why?
Hiring too quickly. We have done it, and still do it (albeit much less). As we progress through a more protracted interview process, we learn so much more about people that we didn’t know at the front end.
5) Which source of job candidates has proven the best for you to find employees? Why do you think it’s the best source?
I think you mean how do we source our people? Despite ads that we run, we often find the best people are those that are recommended by current employees. If an employee we like is prepared to “stick their neck out” for someone, that will go a long way. We have found some of our best people this way.
6) What question about hiring employees are we missing from this list, and what’s your answer to it?
What role do references play in the hiring process?
Always take references. While candidates will only produce references that they are confident will speak highly of them, tougher questions like “areas needing improvement” will lead to more constructive feedback. This feedback will arm us with better information to make a decision.
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