Report this comment to a moderator

Lateral damage: failed hires cost London dear

I agree to an extent. The term 'failure' is taken from various interviews with HR directors at law firms, and refers primarily to the firm's experience, in that if lateral hires stay less than five years, they have not usually contributed enough to the firm to become profitable; hence a hire that lasts less than five years could be said to have failed. Equally, I suspect that if you spoke to most candidates and asked them if they wanted to stay more than three years in post in their new job - which is when things start to go wrong if they're going to - they would almost certainly say they did. I would bet most of them would want to stay more than five years too - lawyers do not like moving, and for many good reasons. Having said all that, the reasons for things working or not are, as you hint and as I say in the article, are complex and varied.

27-Feb-2012

3:37 pm