Harrison Barnes » BCG Attorney Search

Love Your Work And The People Who Give It To You

Harrison Barnes — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 05:15:54 +0000

From the time I was 19 until I was about 27, I spent a good portion of my summers doing asphalt work around Detroit. That included asphalt sealing, hot tar crack filling, and asphalt patching. It was seasonal work and most people in Michigan only seal their asphalt once a year. ”Around Detroit” is a blanket term because I was working in three counties and in an area encompassing hundreds of miles. Essentially, I would travel to areas where people could afford to maintain asphalt. Seven days a week, I would get up as early as I could and go out to start the day at one of my jobs. Sometimes my drive was about an hour. Sometimes it was 15 minutes. Most of the time, I drove about 30 minutes. I made this drive each day because I had work to do. Every day I had work to do was an extremely exciting day for me. Once I got to a work site, I would count on the people around the area – neighbors, other businesses, and passing traffic – to see the work I was doing. I would stop cars and tell them I was in the neighborhood and willing to work. If I was in a residential area, I would knock on doors and tell them I could do work for them. I would do everything within my power to get work, and I always got business. I worked seven days a week. I worked so hard some of my employees would quit the job from exhaustion only after a few days. There were, however, people who lasted. In addition, while doing this work I maintained a profound respect for the people for whom I was working. I did everything in my power to do the work to the absolute best of my ability. I took the work incredibly seriously. I loved my job. The worst thing that could happen to me was not getting work. I knew if I did not do a good job one year, the next year I would not get the work again. I knew people talked, and the better I did in one area, the more work I got. I remember one year I showed up at a house in a certain neighborhood where I’d worked for several years, and a widow answered the door. She told me her husband had died and she could no longer afford the service. Although it was a nice house in an expensive neighborhood (where I normally could have earned a good amount of money), I really liked her husband a great deal and wanted to help her. I did her driveway for free that year and the next year as well. I wanted to work. I simply would not take no for an answer. I remember a very nice man who owned a Chevy dealership in Warren, Michigan. He also owned a rundown mall in addition to the dealership. I really wanted to resurface his dealership, but he didn’t have the money either. I told him I thought things would one day pick up for him. I offered to do work for him at his rundown mall on days I did not have any work, doing hot tar crack filling for the cost of the goods. He let me do this and, over a couple of months, I worked there for seven or eight days when I did not have any work. I never ended up resurfacing his dealership, but I was glad for the work he had given me. He did not take advantage of me and was a very nice person. Why would someone work for free? Because you need to fall in love with your job. You need to love what you do. And work attracts work. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing something good for people. The right people out there will never take advantage of you. Having work is a privilege. Work deserves to be cherished and held in the highest possible esteem. Work is your lifeblood. Without work, everything stops. When I was younger I needed to get up each day and drive to go do my work and to find new work. I needed to impress each person I met each day, or else I knew they might not let me work for them the next year. For me, having work was extremely important in all respects. With work I was able to support myself during the summers and school year. In addition, work provided me the knowledge I would always have something to do no matter what happened in the world. The best opportunity you can ever have is when someone gives you work, because this work can lead to more work. One of the stupidest mistakes people can make is being suspicious of those who give us work. There are people who measure every single hour of their day and make sure they never under any circumstances give their employer too much of their time. There are people who cheat their employers. There are people who disrespect their customers and clients. There are people who resent being given more work. There are people who feel they have too much work. Work is what supports your family. The people that give you work to do are the people who are giving that support. You need to respect them and you need to get work at all costs. The only way to advance is by doing a good job with your work and exceed expectations. The more incredible your work is the more people want to work with you. The more work you are given and the more you do, the more you are seen as someone who is promotable, someone who is an expert. The best supervisors are the people who have done the work they are supervising. In law firms where I have worked, when someone stopped getting work it meant they were not doing good work. If someone is not doing good work, they are generally in trouble. What bad attorneys do is move around from firm to firm for a while until eventually people stop giving them work and they cannot get a job. Most attorneys exist almost day to day. They are entirely dependent upon people continually giving them work. If clients do not like an attorney’s work, they will stop giving the attorney work. If lots of clients stop liking the attorney, the attorney will be left with nothing whatsoever to do. Once the attorney has nothing to do, his or her career is over. This happens to more people than you may think. I have given a lot of thought to the concept of doing ”good work” over the years because I think it is so crucial and important to our lives. When you do not care about the work you are doing, there is no reason for the person paying you to have you do it. When you do not care, whoever is paying you can always find someone who does. It is very easy to find someone who cares about the job he or she is doing. You need to make each day at work the most important. You need to respect the work you are getting and you need to fall in love with it. Work itself is a wonderful thing. If you have ever been without work for even a short time you know how hard this can be. It is never good to be without work. Being without work means your skills and value do not currently have a place. People without work are depressed and wallow. You need to make sure that you always have work. I want to tell you a couple of stories that you may think are sad; however, they are also about two people whom I respect immensely. I sometimes spend a good portion of my day reviewing the resumes of people who are applying to various jobs being recruited for by BCG Attorney Search, one of our recruiting firms. I have seen some pretty dramatic things happen to attorneys. In a down market even attorneys are at risk of losing their jobs. Conditions can become very, very brutal. When attorneys making $200,000+ a year lose their jobs, they often have a very hard time finding another one. In the middle-class world, from where I hail, there is a belief you should never accept a job that pays less than your last job. The idea is once someone has paid you a certain amount to do a job, that is your worth forever, and you should never take a job that pays less. This particular belief is so prevalent that all over the United States there are people sitting on their rear ends all day doing nothing because they are waiting for a job to come along that pays as much as their last one. I cannot tell you how many careers have gone down the drain due to this philosophy, which is incredibly short-sighted. One day I reviewed the resume of an attorney who had lost his job after about 10 years with a major American law firm. I am confident the job he lost paid more than $200,000 a year. He’d lost his job about six months earlier and, instead of doing nothing, he’d taken an entry-level job in a customer service call center. During this time, he’d actually won some awards. He was doing the best he could. When I reviewed his resume I could see he was someone who refused to give up when the going got tough. I respected him. I could see his optimism. He knew the importance of work and did not give up. For the past couple of years, about once a week on average, I’ve gotten a massage from an older woman who comes to our home to do this. When the economy began to slow I stopped getting regular massages because work was so busy due to the number of people losing their jobs. When the woman did come by, I asked her how the economy had been treating her. It used to be you needed to schedule her at least a week in advance because she was so incredibly busy. One day things were different. She showed up with some information about a spiritual topic she knew I was interested in. She’d never brought me anything like that before. In addition, during the massage she wanted to make sure I was going to get a massage again the following week, and I could sense the desperation in her voice. I started asking her about her business and she told me it had really slowed down. She told me she was going to start doing more marketing. I asked her what she meant and she told me the following: ”I like to go and sit out in front of fancy restaurants with a sign and my massage table. People come up to me and ask me for my card.” This is how this particular woman was finding work in a recession. Is this pathetic? No. This is someone who was staying busy and doing the very best she could in a tough market. The same goes for the attorney. He was also doing the very best he could. I am in the career business and I see people take jobs that are beneath them every day. I have seen first-rate attorneys end up on the street after losing jobs, addicted to crystal meth and walking around barefoot. I have seen shocking things happen to people who did not have any work. Work is the absolute most important thing you can have. My hope for you is that you will make the most of whatever job you have and give it your all. If it does not work out, give your next job your all, whatever it is. You need to put your heart and soul into everything you do. You are a special person and the world will realize this, but you need to keep moving. Never slow down. Keep working. The harder you work, the higher you will climb.

The Importance of Sharing Ideas

Harrison Barnes — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:14:08 +0000

When I was in law school, I went into the library one afternoon and took a seat at a desk across from a guy I knew quite well. We were not great friends but I had been over to his home a few times and he was a likeable guy in all respects. Both of us were in the same Property class and we had an exam coming up in about two weeks. In your first year of law school, Property is one of the more difficult classes and requires a lot of study and preparation because it is a different way of thinking. In law school, the way people typically study is through outlines. An outline is essentially a distillation of the reading in class and insights from the Professor. Because there is so much to learn, what typically happens is groups of students get together to create them over a 15 week semester. For example, 15 students will get together and one week one student may do the outline and the next week another student will do the outline. After about 15 minutes, I looked up and realized that the outline he was studying from was absolutely incredible. It was incredible because it was very well organized and was tracking both the Professor’s comments and everything that had happened in the class very closely. It appeared to be something that was made in a prior year and had distilled the same class the professor had taught over and over again in a really good way. I asked my friend if I could see the outline. When I asked him this he hesitated a little bit and I could tell it was not something he really wanted to show me. Before he showed it to me he looked around the library to see if anyone was watching us. When he realized we were alone, he handed me the outline but not before telling me that if anyone walked up to not let them see me looking at it. I thought this was unusual but agreed. As I looked through the outline more closely I realized this was something that would really make my study of Property go a lot better. The outline was exceptionally well done in all respects. I immediately realized I needed this outline. “Can I copy this outline?” I asked. “I promised the people I got it from I would not let anyone copy it,” he said. “Are you kidding?” “No, I’m sorry. I can’t.” This sounded absolutely ridiculous to me. For the next 10 minutes or so I sat there and eventually talked him into letting me copy the outline. In order to copy the outline he made me promise to drive to a city called Culpepper, that was around 30 minutes outside of Charlottesville, Virgina where I was going to law school. He was absolutely paranoid that someone who had given him this outline would see me with it and then blame him for giving me the outline. “These people are vicious … ” he told me. A few hours later I had copied the outline and drove over to his home and dropped it off. I chatted with him for another 10 minutes or so about where he had gotten this outline and who else had the outline. Incredibly, he informed me that he had gotten the outline from the same group of people who were in my outline group for property. He did not name all of the people, but he did name around 10 of the 15 people who were in my outline group as all having it. They had been having a “study party” or something along those lines that he had showed up at, and they had all been using this outline. They allowed him to copy it but made him promise never to give it to anyone else. As far as he knew, only these 10 people had a copy of the outline. The reason these people did not want others to have the outline was because the outline was so good. They believed that this outline was something that gave them an advantage and would enable them to perform much better in the final exam in the Property class. Essentially, the idea was that if they had this and others did not then this “artificial advantage” would enable them to do better, get a better job and be more successful. The next day in Property class, I looked around when the class began and watched those 10 people very closely. The classroom was a podium and I always sat at the very back of the classroom, so I could see everyone in the class and also look down. About 10 minutes into the class, those 10 people all had this “secret outline” out and were taking notes on it and so forth. A couple of days later, before the class started, everyone was waiting out in the hall of the classroom for the doors to open. Individually, I went up to several of the 10 people who were in my outline group but also possessed this “secret outline” and asked them if they had any other outlines except the ones that our group was making each week. Each one said something along the lines of the following: “No, but if you come across any other outlines, please let me know. I could use one.” I was amazed by this. Some of the people who were claiming not to have outlines were people I thought were my friends. This was something that was quite incredible to me because not only were these people lying to me, they were all sticking together. It almost seemed that they had coordinated responses for anyone who asked them about the outlines. It was not cheating, but it almost seemed worse. What made this so upsetting to me was that these were people who were in an outline group with me, which I mistakenly believed meant that we were all cooperating together to achieve something. I was wrong. I was in charge of doing the last outline in the Property course. In this week, the Professor decided to cover “new developments in Property law” and discussed some new cases that had happened over the course of the past year. None of this information was on the special outline that the students were hoarding in my class. The last class took place about three or four days before the final exam, if I remember correctly. The final exam was “open book” meaning you could use your notes and other information. Notwithstanding, it was also extremely important to know what the Professor had said. After the class, I dutifully made my outline. I spent several hours on the outline and made it the absolute best I could. I made 15 copies so that I could give one to each of the members of my outline groups. I put them in their mailboxes in the student commons. However, as I started putting these in the boxes, I decided to play a little bit of the same game that had been played with me. I decided I would not give my outline to the students who had lied to me about not having an outline. I remember throwing away the extra outlines in the trash, right near the mailboxes in the student commons. This was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. Without getting into a lot of details, those people became extremely upset with me because about 30% of the final exam was devoted to the last class and things the teacher had talked about in class. Because the last class was so close to final exams, many people had not bothered to show up because they were studying or sleeping in after a late night studying. Many of those people probably believed that they had everything they needed in their “secret outline”. I will never forget when I got out of the Property exam and was standing in the hall. A girl who was in my outline group came up to me all red in the face, with watery eyes. She was actually was a pretty nice person, besides the fact that she had hid the outline she had from me. She started screaming at me and told me that I had ruined her life and she had probably failed the exam due to me not giving her the outline. I got many mean looks from others who exited the exam, who I had not given the outline to. One guy came up to me and told me my outline had saved his life. But for the most part, I had done something I was not proud of. In retrospect, I really feel like this is one of the worst things I have ever done. I simply should not have played these games with them by withholding information like what had been done to me. Even when the next school year started, there were people who were still upset with me. I remember someone else coming up to me at a party and getting angry with me, telling me they had gotten a horrible grade in property due to me. Then I remember confronting the person with the fact that they had lied to me about their outline and seeing a large group of people actually turn against them. A lot of people learned about this story, and a lot of people were on my side. Still, in my opinion the “tit for tat” was the wrong thing and not something I should have done. In one quick moment, by not providing information to people, I had made several enemies and changed my law school experience in a negative way. It is largely due to this experience that I run my career the way I do today. I am happy to share any and all information I know about getting jobs. I never hide the ball or hide information from anyone. I provide people with as much information as I possibly can about everything I know. My goal is to put as much information out there as I can–with jobs, with advice and everything. I have taken what was a bad experience and turned it into something to help others. The idea of hiding information is something that starts very early for many of us. I am reminded of when I was in elementary school and students put their arms around their papers during tests to prevent others around them from seeing their answers. This idea of “hiding answers” and hiding information is something that stays with many of us throughout our entire lives, and ends up having a major influence on our entire lives. It is the same with our careers. Many people are very secretive about information and their ideas. They do not want others to take credit for what they are doing. When you hoard information, you are constantly playing a “political game” where you are judging if one person or another can know something. In addition, people who hoard information constantly seem to have stale ideas because you only get their information when they deem it is relevant to tell you about them. There are a lot of people out there who are secretive with information. I cannot believe how much I saw this when I was practicing law. I still see it in my job today. One of my biggest beliefs is that if you are continually giving away all of your ideas, then you constantly put yourself in a need to replenish your ideas. This forces you to be creative and come up with new ideas and information and develops a psychology within you where you are always looking to share what you know with people, instead of looking to hoard what you know. When you share ideas others also tell you their ideas, and this gives you access to more ideas. That is, the ideas you share with others end up coming back to you in the form of access to more ideas. Several years after graduating from college and after having ended my career as an attorney, I decided to go to business school. I enrolled in Stanford Business School and packed my bags and went up to the school. Prior to classes starting, they had an orientation where all of the new students spent the weekend together getting to know each other and also had the opportunity to meet all of the students who were getting ready to graduate from business school. I remember going to a cocktail party that was being held for the entering students to meet the exiting students. I was excited to see what the exiting students were doing. I was also assigned a “mentor” who was an exiting student I could call with any questions I had. I spoke with my mentor and asked him what he was doing after graduation. I was very curious. He told me he was starting a business, but that the business was so confidential he could not even tell me what it was about. It was a strange experience standing there, and I wondered what the point was of going to school with someone who could not even tell me what he was doing. I spoke to several other people at the party and I remember another guy did the exact same thing with me. I felt it was very unusual to have no interest whatsoever in sharing what you were doing. It really left a bad taste in my mouth. “Is this what business is about?” I wondered. In the book Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends, author Tim Sanders writes:

Over and over I have discovered that the people in the bizworld who are most successful, and happiest, are the lovecats. These are the people who you always like the most, the ones who are passionate from 9 to 5, or 8 to 10, or whatever their hours. They are the ones who are most generous with their knowledge, their address book, and their compassion.

There are real benefits to sharing what you know. Ideas are open knowledge that anyone should have access to. There are never any benefits in not sharing most knowledge with the people around you. I have always believed in the power of sharing ideas and have found that the more I have done this the better our companies (and I) have done. In closing, I want to share with you an email I sent to every member of our company this morning. It is about ideas and the importance of sharing. I send this email (in one form or another) each year as one of our companies, BCG Attorney Search, completes a book for every law firm in the United States:

Good Morning, I am happy to enclose The 2009 BCG Attorney Search Guide to America’s Top 50 Law Schools(the “Guide”). Special thanks go to Lalita and her team. Indeed, they have spent the past year working on this important project that signifies what BCG Attorney Search and our other companies represent. Each year since BCG Attorney Search’s inception we have written the Guide and sent it out to every law firm in the United States. I remember first working on the Guide when the company had less than 5 employees. Providing the Guide to law firms each year and working on the Guide is more of a symbolic act than anything. First, it is something that insures that our company always has very strong research skills and is “going deep” and knows how to work with voluminous amounts of information. This focus on research has enabled us to venture into numerous fields where these skills are valued that I never could have imagined–whether it is job sites or researching hiring contacts for Legal Authority. Recruiters who know how to do good research and find information that others do not know about typically do the best here. Our sites which are best at researching information (LawCrossing) also do much better than newer job sites that are not as good. Our company has been benefited tremendously by the power of research and the more and better we have become at this the better we have done. Second, working on the Guide each year forces us to pay attention to writing well and our editing skills. Writing is something that is incredibly valuable. Our recruiters are expected to write well. Our companies write hundreds of articles each week. We are always improving our writing-related skills—even in something as simple as how we list jobs. For example, last weekend we did a giant project to eliminate junk characters in our job listings. The more we have written the better we have done. We owe a lot of our success to our ability to get search engine rankings which has a lot to do with how much we have written. Search engines and others look at us and say “these guys have a lot to talk about” and people come and they listen. We need to always be sharing what we know and writing and speaking. This is an important core value of BCG Attorney Search and it has made our recruiters strong. Third, the Guide is about sharing information. Our company has always believed and continues to believe that it is best to share information rather than hold it close to the vest like so many other do. We want people to know what we know. Sharing information brings people to us and allows people to see us as authorities in our field rather than dabblers. We want people to know what we know and we are not afraid to tell them that. If we feel someone cannot get a job through BCG Attorney Search because they do not have the pedigree, our recruiters are happy to share with them another way to get a job. This is not something many other recruiters will do. Our recruiters share information, however, because this is who we are. Fourth, the Guide is about providing value without expecting something in return. At BCG Attorney Search we spend a great deal of money and time working on the Guide each year and provide it to law schools, law firms and others for free. We want them to benefit from interacting with us and we want to be seen as someone who is an asset and not someone just interested in short term rewards. It is important to always be providing value. We want to provide value at every turn. I once read something written by Joe Vitale, a well known copywriter. Vitale started a habit of giving away books to people. Pretty soon he realized that the more books he gave away the more books came back to him. He constantly was giving away books and he realized after doing this for some time that for every book he gave away he received far more books back than just one new book. His library just kept growing and getting bigger and bigger. And if he gave away a book about one idea someone would give him a book about a related idea that he knew nothing about. The point he was trying to make was that the more you give away and the more you share the more comes back to you and the more you ultimately learn and know. This is an incredible concept but it is something that can really change your life and change our business. It is something that the Guide represents and, if anything, it is its greatest meaning. A lot of who BCG Attorney Search is and what our companies represent is signified in the Guide. As we go into an incredible economic storm and watch companies and law firms around us that once seemed invincible collapse, I am confident that what is signified by in the Guide is something that will enable us to continue growing and provide for our future. The more our companies have steered towards the values signified in the Guide the better they have done. The more we have strayed the worse we have done. I believe in these values and that is why I am so proud to present you with the Guide yet again this year. Providing you with the Guide forces me to think about our values each year and what really matters. –Harrison

THE LESSON You must share information freely, and never hide information from anyone. When you give away all your ideas you create the need to replenish them, which opens the door to creativity and innovation. Furthermore, sharing your ideas with others give you access to more ideas. People who hoard information tend to have stale ideas because they only share or seek innovation when relevant, meaning that their own store of information stagnates.

Do Not Be Vengeful: Let Hurt and Anger Go Through You

Harrison Barnes — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:01:16 +0000

He who conquers the mind, conquers the world. -Guru Nanak Dev

In today’s economy, a lot of people are losing their jobs. People are being fired and let go from companies at an alarming rate. There is a huge sense of betrayal people feel when they lose a job. People are incredibly angry at their employers and often life itself. There is also a tendency for people who feel they have been wronged to want to “lash out” at their employers who have fired them. Many of these people become angry, not just at the employer where they have lost their job, but at all employers. They take on a vengeful attitude towards the world. A couple of years ago, I hired a guy who was very talented and had been fired from his last job. He had a home and a family and came in and interviewed with our company, and I ended up offering him the job. His work was not that great but he did good enough work that he was not in danger of losing his job. I had cordial relations with him and said hello to him when I saw him in the office. No one ever said anything mean to him, and no one was ever critical of him. He was paid a good wage and was doing just fine in his job. I had heard from some other people that were friendly with him that he had been fired from his job in a manner that was probably unfair. He had upset the wrong person inside his company and one day someone appeared at his office door and told him he was fired and had to leave immediately. The man was very angry. I am sure this was difficult for him. One day, he came into my office and fired me. “I am leaving tomorrow, I have another job,” he told me. He seemed to be relishing putting me in a bind like this. Most employees give at least some notice, but this guy was just walking out of the job. I was fine with that; however, he was in the middle of a huge project. “I will finish it over the week weekend if you pay me for two days,” he said. So we paid him his final check and it contained two extra days of salary. He did not do the work over the weekend. We called him and emailed him about it constantly, and he finally replied a week or so later: “Sorry guys. I am too busy in my new job to get this done. Good luck to you guys!!” I was astonished by this but let it go. We could have pursued the money and won, but for whatever reason, this guy had some anger he was acting out against us. A couple of weeks later, we hired his replacement. The replacement showed up to work, and we realized that the computer the guy who quit had been using had all sorts of passwords on it that made the files inaccessible. I was a little upset about this because the computer he was using was a $6,000 computer. We called him at work and asked him for the passwords. He refused to give us the passwords and told us he forgot them. I was amazed and sat down for a few minutes pondering this situation. Then I called him on the phone: “If you do not email me the passwords in the next 20 minutes” I told him, “My next call is going to be to your boss. I am going to tell him about how you stole two days worth of pay from us and also about how you are refusing to give us the passwords. I am not sure what your problem is because we have been very nice to you. You have some anger you need to work through, but we are an inappropriate target for this.” A few minutes later the passwords arrived. Four or five months later, this guy used me as a reference for a job and I got a call from an employer. He had apparently lost his last job. Then a few months ago, I got another call from an employer where he had used me as a reference. I cannot imagine why I would be listed as a reference after this. This guy was very angry at the world, and this anger was playing itself out like a cancer through his career. I feel sorry for him despite what he has done to me. Do you have anger and vengeance in your career? Is anger and vengeance playing a part in your career and life at the moment? If it is, you need to step back and take a quick inventory because this is something that is incredibly harmful and can really hurt you quite badly. I remember speaking with my wife about a year or so ago, and we were talking about the people who are the best hires. One of our recruiters at one of our companies, BCG Attorney Search, has been recruiting for about 40 years and once told me “never hire someone who has been fired from their last job.” He told me that these people are usually “pissed off” and they take it out on their next employer. There is a lot of truth to this. If someone hurts us, we want to hurt someone back. We look for the closest related target, and that is usually the next person who is our employer. As you surely have as well, I have been hurt by many people in the past. I have been hurt by lovers, employees and friends. I have also done my share of hurting other people. Deep down, I have a lot of pain for both being hurt and the hurt I have caused others:

I have allowed women to fall in love with me, even though I did not want a future with them and kept the relationship going longer than I should have.
I have let employees go who were good people when a given business could not support them economically.
I have not returned phone calls or responded to emails from people who were reaching out to me.

Similarly, all of this sort of stuff has been done to me as well. A few weeks ago, I was at a retreat called the “Man Kind Project,” and someone got up and started talking about how most men are “full of shit” and never tell the truth. They are not honest with others and also not honest with themselves. This was explained in an incredibly effective way and, after the speech about this, many of the men in the audience were quite moved. They said hearing this was transformative. Not being honest with ourselves and the people around us is something many of us do. More than this, when we are dishonest with ourselves, we are seeing the world in a way that it does not really exist. Over the past several years, I have employed several hundred people in one capacity or another. Every so often, someone turns out to be a “bad person” and has interests that lie in things like stealing or being dishonest. These people are, of course, always fired from the company, but an interesting thing always happens with these people. I always hear from them again–even after several years. And when I hear from them, they are usually coming back to attack me and even the score. This is something we are all doing. We look around at the world with anger and are looking to even the score in some way. It is like this with careers. It is paradoxical that they want to even the score with me since they have harmed me (or my company) in the first place, but this is how many of our minds work. Every thought you have brings either happiness or sadness, love or hate, peace or war, vengeance or acceptance. There is no such thing, for example, as a neutral thought. Every thought we have is something that is bringing us closer to something positive or something negative. The battle for the control and direction of your mind is a massive and incredibly important undertaking, and it is one you are responsible for. Most of us never learn how to control our thoughts and the direction they can take us in. However, the power of our thoughts is something that is incredibly transformative, not just our consciousness but our life. The more we control our thoughts and put them in a positive direction, the better we can do. Pushing your mind in a negative direction that is based on vengeance, anger and so forth does no good. You should be pushing your mind towards something positive. Everything we see is the result of our thoughts. Thoughts are something that shape everything around us and our entire world. True thoughts create their own reality and false thoughts create their own reality, as well. This is one reason it is so important that we are constantly guarding our mind against negative thoughts in the world. We see in others the worst in ourselves. When you try and stand up for something, people are always going to come back at you to try to even the score–even after several years. Even when you are right about something. This is one reason you need to be very careful about what you want to stand for. The more you stand for something, the more you are likely to be attacked. When I was in high school and college, I never smoked marijuana. I was very against this. The reason was mainly due to the fact that I had seen some kids I know change completely when they started smoking the stuff. Their minds literally turned to mush, and it seemed that all they could say were words like “dude” and so forth. Their grades cratered, and it really messed them up. This is not to say that this happens to everyone who uses marijuana, but it happens to some people. Many people can be incredibly productive despite smoking marijuana daily. Nevertheless, I took a stand against the drug. What ended up happening is that the people who used the drug and knew I was against it, started finding fault with me. I stopped being invited to parties where people were smoking marijuana. My friends who smoked marijuana stopped wanting to hang around me when they went out and smoked marijuana. Taking a stand always creates a reaction. A few days ago, I was at a conference walking down a hallway in Atlanta and my cell phone rang. I picked it up, and it was someone who had worked with our company several years ago. While I do not want to get into too many specifics, this person did some bad things to me and the company:

Before losing his job, he had gone through various databases and deleted numerous records of our clients.
This person had told at least one person he had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from our company while employed with us by billing people for work our company did in such a way that he got paid directly and not our company.
Using our records that he had stolen and deleted, he went out and started a business in the exact same field that we had trained him in (after pretending to me that money could not be made in the field)–because he was using the business’ resources and then sending people bills independently.

There were a ton of warning signs I should have seen before I even hired this person:

This person had been someone I had hired after he had been fired from a law firm after only working there a few months. I felt sorry for him and felt, at the time, felt there was some sort of injustice that must have been done to him.
Then he got to our company and could not get along with others. The problem got so bad others refused to work in the same building as him.
I then tried to allow the person to run his own business in our company. This, of course, did not work either and it was one of the biggest business mistakes I ever made.

I am not angry about any of this because I made a massive mistake in my character judgment and others had as well. There are some people out there who just do stuff like this and always will. My lesson is just to stay away from them and avoid them at all costs. When the phone rang and I heard the person’s voice, however, I knew it would be some sort of attack and attempt to “even the score”–no matter how trivial the matter. People that wrong you mercilessly and with no reason are generally looking for some sort of justification for doing so and will keep looking for reasons until they find them. They want you to deserve it, and they want to feel like they have done the right thing in hurting you. The psychology that lies behind this sort of individual is something I have seen time and time again. Over the next several minutes, the person proceeded to tell me that I had a very similar picture on one of our corporate websites that they had on some website they had launched three weeks ago. They accused me of copying the picture. When I looked into the matter, I discovered that not only were the pictures different, but we had our website page built over a year before this person even launched their website. Not only that, but the pictures were completely different. The absurdity of this was magnified by the fact that this person had a tiny little site that was not even averaging 50 visitors a day. I operate one of the larger career companies in the world, and our sites typically average millions of visitors a month. This person was out there in the world looking for any possible reason to attack me because he was looking to even the score and looking for some sort of justification for what he had done. The person sees the world in terms of evil and bad will. The reason he thinks this way, I think, is because he has bad will. When you see things in a negative manner, you will spread bad will. When I was in college, I had a very nice girlfriend. The only problem was that when I got to law school in Virginia, several of my fraternity brothers called me and told me she was dating another man in Chicago as well as dating me. Unfortunately, this was not something I was aware of. We probably would have ended up getting married at some point had I not learned about this sooner. It was a devastating experience; however, I am glad it happened then rather than when I was married. I was very upset and over the course of a very animated phone call, I ended the relationship. It was a very difficult time. I am sure she was upset, as well. We became friends of sorts and she would check in with me every three to six months, but I knew the relationship would never go anywhere again because of the fact of what she had done. Thinking back on this, I feel sort of sorry for her and I am not sure why. I have compassion for her despite what she did to me. Around 8 years later, I was married and living in Los Angeles. I was operating a legal career company that was doing well. I was sitting in my home reading a book one evening. The night before, I had a large party with all of my employees, their families and probably around 100 other people. During the party, I had spent a couple of hours speaking to a very talented girl who had gone to Harvard Law School and worked in a couple of excellent law firms. I thought she showed a lot of potential and was hoping that she would come to work for one of my companies. I was in “recruiting mode” and was recruiting her for one of my companies. Also at the party was a relative of someone who knew my college girlfriend. I did not speak to them much at the party, but exchanged a few pleasantries. “I know you are cheating on your wife and having an affair!” my ex-college girlfriend said when I picked up the phone. “Excuse me?” “I know you are cheating on your wife!” She then slammed down the phone. Since I was not cheating on my wife, the only thing I can figure is that her friend who was at my party must have reported that my chat with the girl at the party amounted to something more than it was. I had no telephone number to call my ex-girlfriend back at. That was the last I have heard from her–ever. It is the strangest thing. But this is the sort of pattern I have seen numerous times. She somehow was justifying her past actions based on reading something into a conversation I had at a party eight years later! She had evened the score in her own mind, I suppose. However, what good did this do her-sitting around for eight years looking to even the score? In addition, she was so eager to even the score she was using information that was not even correct. You need to realize that it does you no good in your career and life to try to even the score. When you are trying to even the score, you are in a state where nothing good can come of it. Trying to prove something to your next employer due to the way you want to perceive the world is not worth it. You do not want to let your mind be transfixed on negative and destructive thoughts. Think about what is positive. Losing a job, being betrayed, being stolen from, and more are all horrible things to happen to us. The worst thing you can do, however, is allow this to occupy your mind and look to put your anger, sadness and so forth on another. Let the pain go through you and move on. THE LESSON Every thought you have ultimately brings you closer to something positive or negative; you must therefore learn to control your thoughts, and direct them towards something positive. Negative experiences happen to all of us, but the worst thing you can do is let these things control your mentality instead of moving on.

The Dangers of Getting Jobs Through Friends

Harrison Barnes — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:01:11 +0000

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. “Oh, I already have a friend there. I’ll just contact him.” In the job market, it’s one of the more common things we hear after informing a job seeker that a certain employer has a job opening. There is a lot you need to consider before you decide to apply to a job through a friend or relative, or take a job working for a friend or relative. First, it is exceedingly rare that a friend or family member will ever be able to get you a position. The reason for this is simple: Despite what you think, the involvement of friends or family members in your job search may actually hurt you. Moreover, all employers know the severe problems that can arise when friends or relatives work together. Due to this, simply going through a close contact is often something that is actually counterproductive for your job search. Second, even if you are one of the few people who are able to get positions through a friend or family member, you could run into a great deal of trouble and harm your relationship with that person in the process. First, this article examines the risks associated with attempting to get a job through a friend or family member. Second, the article will then examine potential problems you could face if you ultimately get a position through these means. Third, this article describes some of the reasons for not working for a friend or relative. Finally, because it is so common to get jobs through acquaintances, this article examines the conditions where it is acceptable and likely to not be a problem. A. The Risks of Trying to Get a Position Through a Friend or Family Member When you are seeking a job through a friend, you will often be surprised to find that he/she will not help you get a job with his/her organization. Moreover, the organization may actually look upon you negatively and not hire you if you try to use a friend or family member to get a job. 1. Friends and Family Members, More Often Than Not, Do Not Help You When You Are Seeking a Job with Them One of the most common things that job seekers do is think that friends are their best allies in job searches. After all, the employment market is a harsh place. Who better to help you with your job search than a friend employed by an employer you would like to work for? A friend certainly recognizes all of your strengths and appreciates you for the person you are. In addition, the thought of depending upon a stranger when you have a friend or family member close by does not make a lot of sense. Certainly you can always trust a friend over a stranger. I have been a legal recruiter for several years. I have represented more candidates than I can count. In all of my time as a legal recruiter, I have never once had a candidate get a job through a friend. Incredibly, I have actually gotten several candidates jobs with firms where they thought that they had friends inside who were helping them with their job searches-”insiders” who never managed to get their friends interviews. Moreover, when I think back on my own life, I do not think that I have ever gotten any job where I had a friend or relative helping me. The issue with using friends to try to help you with your job search is that you never know your friends as well as you think. Almost instinctively, most people are competitive with one another. When you are dealing with people close to you, you will often agree with them just to avoid argument. In fact, if you spend more than a couple of hours with your family or a group of your friends, you will find this sort of thing occurring probably every few minutes throughout each conversation. Friends and family also often do their best to laugh extra hard at each other’s jokes and cover up their unpleasant qualities. Your friends and family will most often say they love your taste in music, your choice of clothing, your house or apartment, your writing, and most everything you take seriously. It is possible your friends and family mean this. It is also possible they do not. The thought of asking a friend to help you with a job search with his employer is, in effect, an attempt to shield yourself from the harshness of the world. The same enthusiasm your friends and family have for you in the personal realm, you may imagine, will directly translate to an eagerness to help you find work with their organizations. I would offer at the outset that this is a possibility, and you may not be wrong in thinking this. Notwithstanding, this is often not the case. One of the more common things that occur when job seekers ask a friend or family member for help is, nothing. The friend or family member gets your resume, thinks about it, and then (for whatever reason) decides he/she does not want to forward it to the powers that be. You cannot imagine how common this is. If you have forwarded a resume to a friend recently, call the hiring partner or recruiting coordinator about it. In more than 50% of the cases, your “friend” will not have even forwarded the information. He/She will pleasantly tell you that he/she will, but he/she didn’t. Your friend will often lie and tell you he/she forwarded the information when he/she did not. Again, I have seen this more times than I can count. The number is more than 50% (with the possible exception of employers that pay “bounties” to employees who find other employees). Your guess as to why this occurs is as good as mine. Perhaps your friend or family member simply does not want the two of you working in the same office. Perhaps your friend does not want responsibility for what you might do if you were hired. Perhaps (just perhaps) your friend honestly does not think as highly of your capabilities as you do. While your friend might not tell you that he/she resents you because you have so and so, did so and so, or said such and such once, you can believe this can come out if you come to him/her seeking assistance with getting a job. Again, you will not even know this has come out. It just will-the employer may never see your resume. Assuming your friend or family member does forward your resume, be prepared for all sorts of brutally honest assessments of your character and talents that you personally may never have been aware of. Most friends speak about one another with other groups of friends when the other is not around. Not all of this conversation is pleasant. Do you have any idea what your friends are saying about you? I can almost guarantee you that some of it is negative. You probably do not even know 10% of the negative things your friends and family say about you when you are not around. I have a question for you: Do you want any of this 90% of invisible negative information you are not aware of to be communicated to your potential employer? 2. The Reasons Organizations Often Do Not Like to Hire Friends or Family Members of Their Employees Nepotism has traditionally been considered a negative term. The word originates from the Latin word nephos, which means nephew and was created to describe Pope Calixtus III’s hiring of nephews as cardinals. The first anti-nepotism policies probably originated in the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, when resentment began to build against incompetents appointed to high clerical offices. To this day, nepotism is something that can create resentment in all employment environments. In this article, I define nepotism as the hiring of relatives as well as friends. Reducing corruption and increasing efficiency are the primary reasons many organizations have anti-nepotism policies. Corruption has always been a concern in this realm. If individuals who are friends or relatives work together, organizations fear that these individuals may collaborate to advance their own interests rather than the interests of the organization. Nepotism can also lower morale of those who supervise relatives of friends of high-level members of the organization, those who work with them, and those who feel that rewards or promotions have been bestowed in an unfair manner. One or two friends or relatives may react negatively (and contrary to the interests of the organization) when another is criticized or disciplined by the organization. Finally, perception is a serious problem. Other employees will also perceive unequal treatment of one friend or relative regardless of whether or not this is the case. While a great deal could be written about nepotism, suffice it to say that is something many employers are concerned about. Using a perceived in with an employer to try to get a job may actually hurt you because of the employer’s own feelings about nepotism. It is important to note that not all employers will be against nepotism. For example, in smaller, family-owned law businesses, it is often common because it provides an efficient way to identify dedicated employees. Nepotism may also foster a dedicated, family-like environment that boosts the morale of everyone-relatives and friends alike. A good example is the Central Intelligence Agency, which actually encourages the hiring of married couples. Having both spouses free to discuss classified information can actually reduce the strain of a high-stress career. While nepotism may have its place, it is important to note that more often than not it is something that can scare away employers. It should therefore be avoided in the job search. B. The Problems You Will Likely Cause Yourself if You Get a Position Through a Friend or Family Member I review a lot of the resumes that we receive throughout the United States each day at BCG Attorney Search. There are two things that I see a lot of: (1) associates who obviously do not have the qualifications to work inside certain law firms and (2) associates working for small law firms (with their own last names in the mastheads) who are secretly looking for jobs. Each and every time I speak with these associates, I find that they are in positions because of family members and are extremely resentful of the family members for whatever reason. They have lots of negative things to say about them and desperately want new jobs with the same salaries and levels of responsibility. Not once in my career do I think I have seen one of this class of associates who was qualified for a job even remotely as good as the one he/she was in at the time. Nevertheless, these associates always resent and, in most instances, hate the family member who got them the jobs they were unqualified for to begin with. Moreover, these associates refuse to go a less-prestigious firm or job. Most often, in fact, they believe they should be working for even better organizations. If you accept a job through a friend or family member, watch out. More important, watch yourself. In the end, you will likely be your own downfall. It is your friend or family member’s act of kindness that will ultimately unbalance your friendship. The typical pattern that happens when someone is hired by a friend or family member is as follows. First, the people hired are grateful for being hired, but generally want to feel as if they deserve their good fortunes. Accordingly, the friends or family members hired will look for all sorts of justifications to show the world and demonstrate to themselves that they deserve their good fortunes. One response of the people hired may be to believe that being hired is a payback of sorts for everything that they have ever done to be kind to their friends or family members. They begin a process of justifying their hiring by everything they have ever said or done for the friend or family member. Another response may be for the hired person to begin comparing themselves to others inside the same organization and believe they are more intelligent than all of these other people. Therefore, the hired friends or family members justify their positions by often unjustly attacking their fellow employees. The most common reaction, though, is that the hired friend or family member will become resentful of the person who helped him/her get the job to begin with. The receipt of a favor can come to mean, in the hired friend’s or family member’s eyes, that he/she was hired due to this and not based on merit. There is what I would term “hidden condescension” in the act of hiring a friend or family member that grinds at him/her all the time. Whoever you are working for likely cares more about (1) getting the job done and (2) doing the job as well as it can be done than having friendly feelings flowing between the two of you. Your status as a friend or relative of someone does not mean that you are automatically the one who can best do the job. If you cannot do the job in the best manner, more resentment is going to arise when your friend or family member asks another person to help with a given task. One of the more brilliant statesmen of the 19th century, Napoleon’s Foreign Minister Talleyrand, decided that his boss was leading France to ruin. Talleyrand therefore decided that he needed to take down Napoleon. Obviously, the task of overthrowing Napoleon would not be a small one. In order to carry it out, Talleyrand desperately needed to enlist the assistance of someone he could trust. Instead of turning to a friend for help, Talleyrand turned to his worst enemy, Fouche’, the head of the Secret Police. Fouche’ had even tried to have Talleyrand assassinated. The brilliance of Talleyrand’s choice was that it provided Fouche’ with the opportunity to reconcile with Talleyrand on an emotional level. In addition, there was nothing Fouche’ would expect from Talleyrand, and quite the contrary, Fouche’ would work hard to prove that he was worthy of Talleyrand’s picking him for the task. When people have something to prove, they will work harder than those who do not. Compare this to what could have occurred if Talleyrand simply went to a friend for help. Talleyrand chose Fouche’ because he knew that their relationship would be based entirely on their mutual self-interest in removing Napoleon and not poisoned by personal feelings. While their effort to topple Napoleon ultimately failed, they were able to generate much interest in the cause and had a good relationship going forward. Similarly, it is important to realize that getting a job and working in a job on equal ground and in an atmosphere of mutual self-interest is crucial. Personal feelings obscure the fact that there is work that needs to be done in an efficient manner. In a work environment where everyone is evaluated and judged on merit, more productivity and honesty on all sides can only ensure good business. C. Conclusions One of the more disturbing phone calls I have received was from the Dean of Career Services at a second-tier law school. The Dean had read an article I wrote that advised attorneys on how to get a job in a tough legal market. The Dean told me that the first place everyone should always look to get a job was with their family. The Dean then told me that people should go to events and “make friends” with other attorneys and then ask them for jobs (a.k.a. “networking”). As I listened to the Dean speak, it became abundantly clear to me that she did not like any manner of getting an attorney job that did not come through friends or family. In her view, if a job came through a friend or family member, it was far better than getting a job through a “stranger.” It is natural when looking for a job to contact the people you know to see if they can help you with your job search. In fact, I would guess that most job seekers early in their careers contact a family member, a personal friend, or an acquaintance when seeking a new job. Most associates and partners I have worked with as a recruiter (who have contacted me for assistance) have been clear with me that before contacting a recruiter, they contacted a friend, an acquaintance, or another person they were connected with in some social manner to see if he/she could help with a job search. Moreover, most employees have, at some point in time, told a friend that they would try to assist them with getting a job at their place of work. While it may be difficult to believe-and contrary to the advice of the Dean, you actually may be safer (1) getting a job without the help of family or friends and (2) working in an environment without family or friends. You do both at your own risk. Most of the time, I believe the risks far outweigh the potential long-term and short-term rewards. THE LESSON Despite the obvious advantages, getting jobs through a friend or relative may ultimately harm you. When you do so, you risk lowering your colleagues’ opinions of you, who may see your connections as evidence that you lack the skills to get your position on your own merits. Nonetheless, there are situations in which it is acceptable to take advantage of such connections, but you must be on your guard; make sure that the job you get is a good fit, and one in which you would perform well regardless of your connections.

You Need to Bring a Singular Focus to Everything You Do

Harrison Barnes — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 05:14:54 +0000

What makes a person really good at something? The answer to this question is identical to the reason for exceedingly high success in any profession. There are people who are really good at finding jobs. People who are good at finding jobs bring an incredible level of focus to their search. This is the level of focus I want you to bring to your job search as well. In order to get the position you are seeking, you need to be focused and follow one very simple rule. In order to be good at your job you need to be focused as well. No one becomes good at something and stays that way without focus. If you understand the rule I am about to share with you, you too can be at the very top of your chosen field. Those Who Do One Thing Well and Those Who Do Many Things: The Fox and the Hedgehog. The Greek poet Archilochus wrote: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox” based on Archilochus’ quote analyzes the differences between foxes and hedgehogs. Berlin believed people can be classified as either foxes or hedgehogs. In the fox and hedgehog parable, the fox is always trying to get the hedgehog. Day after day, the fox is in pursuit of the hedgehog, devising means to catch the hedgehog. The fox is, by all appearances, a highly intelligent, crafty and resourceful creature. Indeed, compared to the rather dull hedgehog, the fox appears to have every advantage. The hedgehog is a small, awkward animal that lives a simple life and spends his days taking care of his den and finding food. Each day, the fox tries a new scheme to catch the hedgehog and each time the hedgehog simply bundles up into a ball of sharp spikes—foiling the fox’s attempts. Berlin believed foxes “pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle.” As a consequence of this outlook, foxes “lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision.” In contrast, Berlin believed hedgehogs “relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance….”

Whatever you do, do it to the best of your ability.
Multitasking is good but expertise in just one thing is better.
Bring a singular focus to what you do.
Be the hedgehog and not the fox in your job search.

Jim Collins, a noted management theorist and a former professor at Stanford Business School, discusses the concept of the hedgehog and the fox based on Berlin’s famous essay in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Collins notes his conclusions formed from Berlin’s essay by Princeton professor Marvin Bressler during his interview with him:

“You know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and the division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’”

To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than e = mc2? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand”? No, the hedgehogs are not simpletons. They have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest. Do you have any fox and hedgehog stories? As a young attorney, I spent approximately one year working almost exclusively for a partner at a world class law firm who never lost a case. The partner also had the reputation for burning out associates very quickly. While I could spend considerable time dissecting how this attorney operated, the simple fact is the only thing that mattered to this attorney professionally was ethically winning every case he took. Everything else was superfluous. A case would generally start with this attorney being given a fact pattern which seemed insurmountable. These were the types of cases the attorney generally handled. The reaction of most attorneys would be to settle the case after a few short hours of research. But this attorney refused to give up. He kept pushing. He would question every single aspect of the case and the law. We pulled every legislative record necessary to determine if the law was being implemented the way it should be – even if there were 30-plus years of case law against him. He carried this fanatical focus and attention to detail to the extreme. This push could go on for months or even years. After numerous months of researching the seemingly inconsequential—and questioning the truth—something would emerge that enabled this attorney to win the case. It always worked that way. Another great attorney I know, who is considered one of the top lawyers in America, once told a client in my presence: “If I take this case, I will eat, sleep and drink this case. It is all I will think about.” This is the essence of the hedgehog as I see it. Any person or group of people who achieve greatness in any calling generally do one thing and are focused on doing one thing. They do it the absolute best it can be done. Many people and organizations go through their existence trying different things and pursuing different goals. Their thinking abilities in this regard are often flawed, in my opinion. Truly stellar law firms and truly exceptional attorneys also tend to be hedgehogs. The firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, for example, has made its name doing essentially one thing. Conversely, the great majority of law firms in the country have far lower profits, but work in numerous areas of the law. Wachtell’s profits per partner are also higher than any other similarly sized firm in the world. The top partners in the best law firms also tend to be hedgehogs who do one thing really well. They are also quite focused on their careers. Few of these partners probably dreamed incessantly about going in-house when they were practicing, for example. They focused on the here and now and being the best at what they do. When you search for a job, do one thing and do it well. At its core, the difference between people who are best at looking for and finding jobs can be related to the distinctions between the hedgehog and the fox. In order to really succeed in your job search, you need to be concerned about one thing and one thing only: Getting the best job possible for you. Everything else is superfluous. In order to do what you do well, you cannot do multiple things at once. You cannot look for shortcuts and you simply should not do anything to which you are not 100% committed. You need to focus on what you do in a strong, singular way, blocking out all distractions. Once you do this everything else falls into place. In order to explain the process of being a hedgehog, I would like to tell you about something I love–legal recruiting. At its highest level, legal recruiting is a very sophisticated and serious business. While the average legal recruiter makes less than $100,000 a year, there are a small handful of legal recruiters in the United States (less than five, I believe) who make well over $1,000,000 a year. These recruiters move around practice groups, important partners, some associates and are even instrumental in merging entire law firms. These recruiters can call managing partners of large national law firms and get through right away. As professionals, these recruiters are given a high degree of respect because they can influence the future of entire law firms. There is a contrast to recruiting at its very highest level, however. People go into legal recruiting for a variety of reasons. When I started legal recruiting several years ago, it was my perception that the great majority of legal recruiters were not bringing the high level of focus needed to truly excel in this business. As recently as 2000, what was once ranked as one of the top legal recruiting firms in the United States did not even have a formal office. Moreover, I would frequently reach my recruiter in the middle of the work day on her cell phone when she was doing trivial things such as buying a dress. There also appeared to be no organization in the profession and few legal recruiters even truly knew the type of work their candidates did. Most recruiters did in-house placements, law firm placements and would even place legal secretaries and paralegals. Some recruiters also placed executives in corporations. In short, these recruiters would do whatever they could to make a fee. When I questioned these recruiters about why they did this, their response was generally that they believed the money was good and they were “people persons.” This is not to say all recruiters are like this. However, for the most part, the legal recruiting profession has not benefited from the high degree of focus and organization that characterizes many other professions. In addition, I believe there is somewhat of a bias in this country—which is largely a product of the fact most attorneys are so solidly middle class—that makes most attorneys believe they must practice law to have respectability in society. Anything less would be extraordinarily wrong to these sorts of people. Accordingly, it’s not really a surprise that many legal recruiters went into the business feeling that they’d somehow failed in the practice of law. Indeed, one of the first legal recruiters on record went to an unaccredited law school in California and could not pass the bar exam even after numerous attempts. Accordingly, the job of a legal recruiter—even at its outset—was associated with failing. I am not faulting the way this system works. Indeed, this is generally how most of the world works. This same analogy could probably be carried over to law firms. Not every young attorney is good enough to get into Wachtell. Not every young attorney is good enough to get into an AmLaw 100 law firm. Some attorneys do personal injury law—others do not. This sort of class system is all around us and pervades the profession. The lesson I learned from talking to recruiters while practicing law is that very few were committed to practicing the art of legal recruiting like I had been taught to practice law. Far from being true advocates for their candidates and pushing their expertise—and questioning everything about the attorney job search process to reach true levels of excellence—most recruiters were simply happy to be doing something they enjoyed and did not regard as particularly taxing. When I started legal recruiting, I worked seven days a week at it. I routinely started work at 5:30 in the morning and worked until at least 10 or 11 p.m. seven days a week. I am often so happy when my candidates get offers I get choked up. This business has invested everything it has—and will continue to do so—into making BCG Attorney Search the best it can be. We have attempted to translate the vision of the way recruiting should be throughout the country. Being exceedingly focused on what we do, and what BCG Attorney Search does, is the only way I feel recruiting should be done. This is how the BCG legal recruiters think about their work. Doing our jobs to the absolute best of our ability is our single-minded obsession. This is the only thing that matters and it is something we take extremely seriously. Here at BCG Attorney Search, we practice legal recruiting the way we were taught to practice law. The idea that legal recruiting is a break from the practice of law is about the most foreign concept imaginable. A good recruiter has chosen the recruiting industry as his or her profession. It is not a safety catch — it is the focus of their career. For them, recruiting is not just a unique alternative to practicing law, but an alternative just as challenging and demanding as any in the legal profession. It is a place in the legal community to be innovative and to work at the highest level of the profession. It is this drive that pervades their work on a daily basis. To a good recruiter, recruiting is a powerful and essential industry in its own right. A good legal recruiter knows the market. In Los Angeles County alone, there are over 3,000 law firms. There are an additional 5,000+ companies that hire attorneys. These numbers grow exponentially as one covers the United States. In order for a recruiter to get a candidate a job, they need to know where the jobs are and where their candidates are likely to fit well. This is an extraordinarily difficult task. Indeed, the knowledge a recruiter must have at their disposal is profound. When you think about how most recruiters operate, you may wonder how a recruiter in Los Angeles could possibly monitor over 3,000 law firms. This is especially true if the recruiter also makes in-house placements. How on earth could a recruiting firm comprised of maybe just two or three individuals monitor all this activity? Meanwhile, firm names change, people leave their jobs, and so forth. Accordingly, the answer to this question is that most legal recruiters do not. Because most legal recruiters do not monitor the entire spectrum of the market, they generally monitor only a few firms. The firms they monitor are also, incidentally, ones with which you’re familiar. In addition, they also have a few key relationships. At BCG Attorney Search, we divide the United States into numerous regions and station recruiters in those regions. We believe it would be impossible for a legal recruiter to know what is going on in different areas of the United States at one time. To be good at your job and your job search you need to bring a singular focus to it. The lesson here—and the lesson of the fox and the hedgehog—as I see it, is you need to do what you do as well as it possibly can be done. This is also the lesson of BCG Attorney Search and our present and ongoing success. This is also the lesson you need to understand in your own job search and career as well. The more focused you are the more successful you will be.