How to survive your first 90 days in a new sales role
Starting a new sales job is one of the most stressful transitions in a career. You’ve got a quota looming, a new product you don’t fully understand, a territory you don’t know, and colleagues who are already watching to see if you can actually sell. The first 90 days matter more than most sales pros realize. Get them right, and you set up years of success at this company. Get them wrong, and you’re on a performance improvement plan by month six. Here’s what actually works. Your first week is about listening, not selling This is counterintuitive because you want to show early impact. But in week one, the smartest thing you can do is shut up and absorb. Meet everyone you can. Your manager. Your teammates. The sales ops person. The marketing team. The customer success team. Anyone who touches the revenue engine. Ask them what they do, what they see working, what frustrates them. The goal isn’t to impress anyone. The goal is to build a real map of how this company actually sells. The org chart tells you one story. These conversations tell you the real one. Learn the product like you’re going to be the expert Most new reps do the minimum on product training. They watch the videos, take the quiz, and move on to prospecting. That’s a mistake. Your customers don’t care about your quota. They care about whether you actually understand what they’re buying and whether you can tell them the truth about what it does and doesn’t do. If you don’t know the product cold, every objection makes you freeze. If you do know it, you’ll close deals that weaker reps can’t. Spend the extra time. Read the docs. Take notes. Try the product yourself. Sit in on technical calls. Ask dumb questions now while you still can. Shadow the best rep on the team Every team has a top performer. Find out who they are in your first week and ask if you can shadow them on calls. Watch how they open. Watch how they handle objections. Watch how they transition from discovery to demo. Watch what they say in the last five minutes of a meeting. That’s where most deals are won or lost. This is the fastest possible way to learn what “good” looks like at this specific company. Training decks won’t teach you that. Watching a closer will. If you’re also early in your career and want a sense of the temperament that holds up over time, how salespeople handle rejection is worth reading. Understand your numbers before you touch the pipeline By the end of week two, you should be clear on: what’s my quota, how is it measured, what’s my base versus variable, what’s the commission structure, what counts as a win. What are the leading indicators my manager will actually watch? Activity? Pipeline coverage? Stage progression? If you don’t know these numbers, you’ll spend weeks doing work that doesn’t count. Get clear now. In month one, pipeline is your only job You may not close deals in month one. Often the sales cycle won’t let you. But you will build pipeline, and that pipeline determines everything that happens in months three through six. Block time every single day for prospecting. Not “when I have time.” Not “between meetings.” Calendar blocks, defended aggressively. The reps who fail in their first 90 days almost always fail because they didn’t build enough pipeline early. Qualify ruthlessly The instinct when you’re new is to chase every lead, keep every meeting warm, and not kill any deals. This feels like hustle. It’s actually procrastination. Good reps qualify out fast. If a prospect isn’t really a fit, if they don’t have budget, if the timeline is “someday,” you need to know now. Keeping dead deals in your pipeline doesn’t protect you. It just hides how bad things are until month four, when it’s too late. Ask the hard questions early. Who else is involved in this decision? What’s your timeline? What happens if this project doesn’t move forward? The answers will tell you whether you have a real deal or not. If you want more ammunition for those early conversations, these 10 sales interview questions flip neatly into discovery questions. Build a system for the chaos New reps get overwhelmed because there’s too much happening at once. Calls, emails, CRM updates, internal meetings, training, prospecting, product demos. Everything feels urgent. Nothing gets finished. The reps who succeed build a system in the first 30 days. When do they prospect? When do they work accounts? When do they handle admin? When do they reset and plan the next day? This sounds rigid. It’s actually how you stay sane. Without a system, the urgent crowds out the important. With one, you make steady progress even on bad weeks. Own your mistakes You will miss a call. You will fumble a demo. You will say the wrong thing on a deal. It happens to everyone. What separates the reps who grow from the ones who stall is how they handle it. The reps who grow own it, ask what they should have done differently, and adjust. The ones who fail stall, make excuses or get defensive. Your manager knows you’re going to make mistakes. What they’re watching for is whether you learn from them. Your manager is your most important relationship The single most underused resource in a new rep’s first 90 days is their manager. Most new reps treat their manager like a report card instead of a coach. Set up a standing weekly 1:1. Bring a list of things you’re stuck on. Bring deals you’re working and ask what they’d do differently. Bring feedback on the team and the company. Ask for honest input on how you’re doing. A manager who sees you actively trying to improve will advocate for you when it matters. A manager who never hears from you will assume you’re fine until they decide you’re not. Plan
LinkedIn recruiting is broken. Do this instead.
If you’ve tried recruiting on LinkedIn in the last year, you know something’s off. Your InMails get ignored. Your job posts get flooded with unqualified applicants. LinkedIn Recruiter’s search feels increasingly like a waste of money. And somehow, despite all of it, you’re supposed to grow your team. The truth is, the way most companies use LinkedIn for recruiting stopped working a while ago. The platform changed. Candidates changed. The playbook most recruiting teams are still running is a playbook from 2018. Here’s what’s actually working now. The inbox is cooked Every recruiter figured out you could message people on LinkedIn. So now every professional gets 20 messages a week, most of them recruiters who didn’t read their profile. The signal-to-noise ratio collapsed. The result: a candidate who would’ve replied to a thoughtful message in 2018 now deletes 95% of what hits their inbox without reading. Your carefully crafted InMail is probably in that pile. This doesn’t mean outreach is dead. It means volume outreach is dead. The messages that still work are short, specific, human, and reference something real about the person, not “I saw you work in sales.” An SEO problem Posting a job on LinkedIn used to feel like it at least got your role in front of qualified people. Now it gets your role in front of everyone, most of whom aren’t qualified. A single job posting can get 500 applicants in 48 hours. Three of them are actually right for the role. Seeing through the noise takes more time than most hiring managers have, so roles sit open while good resumes drown. That drag is the first place what a bad hire actually costs your business starts compounding. If you’re relying on job postings to fill roles, you’ve already lost. Postings should be one input among several, not the main source. LinkedIn Recruiter is now a research tool The paid version of LinkedIn Recruiter used to be where real sourcing happened. You could find anyone, message anyone, and build real pipelines. Now it’s diminished. Candidates get too many messages to engage with them. Filters are less precise than they used to be. InMail response rates have fallen. And the cost keeps climbing. What’s still valuable: using Recruiter to build lists of specific people you want to reach, then finding other ways to connect with them. Email, mutual connections, conferences, industry groups. Recruiter is a research engine, not a contact engine. This is essentially the moment when it makes sense to hire a headhunter instead of trying to grind it out on the platform. What actually works: being visible, not loud The real shift is from outbound recruiting to inbound trust-building. Think about who you actually want to hire. They’re not scrolling their LinkedIn inbox. They’re reading LinkedIn content from people they respect. They’re engaging with posts about their industry. They’re noticing who shows up consistently with real insights. If you want those people to pay attention to you, you need to be one of the people showing up. Post thoughtfully about your industry. Share real hiring insights from your experience. Talk about what your company actually does and why it’s interesting. Comment on other people’s posts in a way that’s actually valuable. Over time, this builds a real audience. People who trust your perspective. And when you post about a role, they reply, or tag a friend who’d be perfect. This is slower than cold outreach. It’s also much more effective. Your current team is still your best channel The single highest-converting recruiting source for most companies is employee referrals. Good employees know other good employees. Their networks overlap with your hiring needs in a way no LinkedIn search can match. Make it easy for your team to refer people. Offer a meaningful referral bonus, not $500, something that reflects the actual value of a good hire. Tell them what roles you’re hiring for every month. Give them template messages they can send to their network. Celebrate referrals publicly when they work out. Most companies underinvest in this and overinvest in LinkedIn. Flip that ratio. Build in public One of the most underused LinkedIn tactics is just showing what your team does. Post about your product launches. Post about your wins. Post about how your team thinks about its work. Candidates don’t want to apply to a logo. They want to work with people whose thinking they respect. If they see your team’s work on LinkedIn and it resonates, they’ll be warmer when you reach out, or they’ll reach out first. Part of the reason is that most candidates have no idea what working with a recruiter is actually like; seeing your team act like real people on LinkedIn lowers that barrier. This is how small companies with no brand recognition compete for talent. You don’t have to be Google. You have to be visible and interesting. Use LinkedIn Events and Groups strategically Most companies ignore LinkedIn’s community features. They’re underpriced attention. A thoughtful event hosted by your team, something like “How mid-market law firms are solving the hiring problem” or whatever your version is, gets in front of exactly the audience you want to hire from. Not for pitching, for giving value. The people who show up tend to remember you when they or someone they know is looking for a new role. Same with Groups. The right industry group on LinkedIn can be a warm sourcing channel that no competitor is working. Accept that it takes longer now The underlying reality: recruiting is harder than it was. It takes more work to reach good people, more work to convince them to consider you, more work to close them once they’re in your process. Companies that accept this and invest in the real work of recruiting (content, relationships, referrals, real outreach) are still hiring well. Companies that keep expecting LinkedIn to do the work for them are stuck. When to bring in outside help If you have hiring needs but lack the in-house
Headhunter vs Recruiter: What’s the Difference?
If you’ve ever shopped around for hiring help, you’ve run into both terms. Some people call themselves headhunters. Others call themselves recruiters. Some use the words interchangeably. What’s actually the difference, and does it matter which one you hire? It does. Here’s how to think about it. A recruiter fills the role you advertised A recruiter’s job is to find qualified candidates for an open position. Think of them as a funnel. They write the job posting, run ads, source from LinkedIn, screen applicants, and hand you a shortlist of people who meet the bar. Most recruiters work with candidates who are actively looking for a job. They’re good at managing volume, sifting through 200 applicants to find the 10 worth interviewing. If you’re curious what that actually looks like from the candidate’s side, we wrote about what working with a recruiter is actually like. If you’re hiring for a role where there’s a decent pool of people already in the market, a recruiter is probably what you need. A headhunter finds people who aren’t looking A headhunter works differently. They don’t wait for candidates to apply. They go out and find specific people, usually people who are already employed and happy at their current job, and convince them to consider something new. This is the work most employers don’t have time for. It’s also the work that produces the best hires. The people who aren’t actively looking are usually the people who are too good at their current job to be job-hunting. A headhunter spends their week identifying those people, building relationships with them, and making a case for why your opportunity is worth a conversation. That’s a different skillset than managing an applicant pipeline. The engagement model is different too Recruiters often work on contingency. They only get paid if you hire someone they sourced. This means they’re motivated to send you volume. More candidates, faster, to increase the odds one sticks. Headhunters usually work on retainer or on an exclusive contingency basis. You pay upfront, or you commit to them as your only search partner. The engagement is deeper because the work is deeper. They’re not just sifting. They’re going into the market and pulling someone out. The fee structures reflect the work Contingency recruiters typically charge 15-25% of the first year’s salary, paid only if the hire happens. Retained headhunters charge similar percentages but split across the engagement. Often a third upfront, a third when candidates are presented, a third when the hire starts. The guarantee is that the work happens whether or not you end up hiring. For senior roles or hard-to-fill positions, the retained model makes sense. You’re paying for the search itself, not just the result. If you’re wondering whether your role even calls for this approach, we broke that decision down in when it makes sense to hire a headhunter. So which do you need? Ask yourself a few questions: The reality is, the line between the two blurs. Many firms (including ours) do both. What matters more than the title is asking how they actually work. A “recruiter” who does real sourcing and relationship-building is functionally a headhunter. A “headhunter” who just posts jobs and waits is functionally a recruiter. The real question: what kind of search do you actually need? Before you hire either, get clear on what kind of search this is. If you need three decent candidates for a role that’ll attract applicants, the contingency recruiter model fits. If you need the single best person in your region who’s currently employed somewhere else, you need someone who does real outbound work. We’ve done both sides for clients for years, across sales and legal roles. Sometimes the right answer is “let’s post it and see who applies.” Sometimes the right answer is “I need to go find this person and convince them.” If you want to talk through what your specific role actually needs, reach out. We’ll tell you honestly which approach makes sense, and whether you should even hire outside help at all.
How Long Should It Take To Fill An Open Role?
You’ve had a role open for a while, and you’re starting to wonder: is this normal? Should it really take this long? Are we doing something wrong? The honest answer is: it depends. A receptionist role and a senior attorney role are not going to take the same amount of time. But there are reasonable benchmarks, and if you’ve blown past them, there’s usually a reason. Here’s what to expect and how to tell if your search is stuck. The national averages, roughly Most hiring data puts the average time-to-fill at about six to eight weeks for a white-collar role. That’s across industries, across role types, across company sizes. It’s a rough average. Higher-complexity roles take longer. Senior positions, specialized technical roles, and leadership hires typically run 10 to 16 weeks. Executive searches can take six months. Lower-complexity roles move faster. An entry-level sales role or a support position should close in three to five weeks if you’re running an active search. If your search is significantly outside those ranges, something’s off. What should happen in each phase Most hiring processes break down into four phases, and knowing where the time goes helps you spot the bottleneck. The signs your search is stuck Here’s what usually goes wrong: The fixes that actually work When 90 days is too long If a role’s been open 90 days, the cost is no longer just the open position. It’s the burnout on the team picking up the slack. It’s the projects that aren’t getting done. It’s the revenue that isn’t coming in. At some point the cost of the vacancy exceeds the cost of making a decision, and what a bad hire actually costs your business is a useful lens for running that math. We see this constantly with clients who come to us after running their own search for four months. The role hasn’t changed. The pool hasn’t changed. What’s changed is that they’re now willing to move faster than they were. If your search has stalled and you want to talk through what’s actually blocking it, we’re happy to have that conversation. Sometimes you need a new approach. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you honestly why it’s been stuck.
How To Recruit Someone Who Isn’t Looking For A Job
The best person for your open role is probably employed right now, doing a good job somewhere else, and not reading job postings. That’s a problem if you’re used to posting jobs and waiting for applicants. It’s also an opportunity. Most of your competitors are still playing the same game, posting jobs and hoping. If you can learn how to reach the people who aren’t looking, you can hire people your competitors will never see. Here’s how it actually works. Accept that your job posting isn’t going to reach them The first mental shift is accepting this. The person you actually want to hire is not browsing LinkedIn job alerts. They’re not on Indeed. They’re not setting up Handshake profiles. They’re busy at their current job. This means the entire “write a great posting and run ads” playbook doesn’t apply. You’re not trying to attract applicants. You’re trying to find specific people and start a conversation with them. It’s the core reason companies end up hiring a headhunter in the first place. Completely different work. Start with a specific profile, not a job description When you’re recruiting passive candidates, “3-5 years of experience in enterprise sales” is useless. That describes 40,000 people. You need a specific profile of the person you’re looking for. The best way to build that profile: think about the last person who did this job well. What did their background look like? Where had they worked before? What industries were they in? What kind of sales did they do? How did they come up? What was their trajectory? That gives you a profile that’s hireable. Now you can go find the 30 people in your region who match. Do real research, not keyword searches LinkedIn’s search is a blunt tool. Typing “Sales Manager” into the search bar gives you thousands of people with that title, most of whom aren’t what you’re looking for. Real sourcing looks different. You’re looking at company pages to figure out who’s at competitors. You’re looking at LinkedIn posts and comments to figure out who’s active and respected. You’re looking at conference speaker lists, alumni groups, industry associations. You’re building a real list of specific people you want to talk to. This takes time. It’s also how you find the 10 people actually worth reaching out to instead of the 500 who happen to match a keyword. Reach out like a human When you do reach out, the message matters enormously. The default is to send a generic recruiter pitch: “I’m working on an exciting opportunity…” That goes straight to the trash. The messages that get replies are specific and personal. They reference something about the person’s actual work. They explain why you’re reaching out to them specifically, not just anyone. They’re short. They don’t demand a resume. They ask a simple question: “Would you be open to a 15-minute conversation about a role that might be worth knowing about?” If your outreach message could be sent to 500 people with names swapped out, it’s not going to work. The first conversation is a conversation When someone does respond, the first conversation isn’t an interview. It’s two professionals talking. You’re trying to understand where they are in their career, what they actually care about, what their current situation looks like. Candidates often tell us their side feels very different from the recruiter’s side, which is why we wrote what working with a recruiter is actually like. You’re also telling them about the role, but not a sales way. The real question on their mind: why should I even consider leaving a good job for this? You have to answer that, honestly. If the answer is weak, they’ll know, and they’ll pass. Good candidates will often say no to the specific role but leave the door open for future conversations. That’s valuable. A good passive-candidate search is a relationship game across years, not a transaction this month. Move faster than they expected Passive candidates are cautious. They’re trading a known good situation for an unknown. Any friction in your process, any slow response, any unclear next step, they’ll take it as a sign that this isn’t worth the risk. If you want to close a passive candidate, your process has to feel exceptionally well-run. Fast replies. Clear timelines. Organized interviews. A real pitch from the hiring manager about why this role is interesting. A competitive offer that they don’t have to negotiate for three weeks. This all starts with actually knowing what to ask in the room. These 10 sales interview questions are a decent starting point. If your process feels disorganized, you’ll lose them and they’ll never tell you why. Expect a low hit rate Most firms that try passive recruiting for the first time get discouraged. You reach out to 50 people. Ten respond. Three are interested enough to talk. One becomes a real candidate. That feels terrible compared to posting a job and getting 200 applicants. But one real candidate from passive outreach is usually worth more than 200 applicants from a post. The passive candidate actually has the right background. They’re considering the role because the timing and pitch worked, not because they’re applying to anything with a pulse. Volume is low. Quality is high. When to do it yourself and when to get help Passive recruiting works, but it’s time-consuming. Most hiring managers can’t spend 10 hours a week on sourcing and outreach. That’s why firms like ours exist: to do that work for companies that don’t have the bandwidth, across sales and legal roles. If you have a role where posting hasn’t worked and you’ve got a specific profile in mind, this is the kind of search we do all day. We’d be happy to talk through whether it’s worth running that kind of search for your role or whether there’s a simpler approach.
The sales hiring market in Florida right now
If you’re trying to hire salespeople in Florida right now, you’ve already figured out something’s different. The roles that used to fill in a month are taking three. The candidates who used to accept your offer are asking for more. The people who do say yes are getting poached six months later. Florida’s sales hiring market has changed. Here’s what’s actually going on and what it means for your next hire. The labor pool has grown but the good reps haven’t Florida’s population growth is real. People keep moving here from New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey. A lot of them work in sales. In theory, that should make hiring easier. In practice, it hasn’t. The overall labor pool is bigger but the pool of proven B2B sales talent isn’t growing at the same rate. A lot of the transplants are in real estate, financial services, or retail. The enterprise SaaS rep, the industrial sales rep, the legal tech specialist: those are still rare in Florida, and every company is fighting over the same shortlist. We wrote about the broader version of this shortage in America’s next top talent. Remote reshuffled everything The other big shift: Florida sales pros now have national options. A rep based in Miami can take a role at a company headquartered in San Francisco or New York, at a salary that accounts for those markets. That’s raised the wage floor for everybody. Local Florida employers who used to compete on Florida wages are now effectively competing on national wages. If you’re trying to hire a senior sales rep for $120K base plus commission, you’re losing candidates to remote roles paying $160K base. That math has to change or your searches won’t close. The cities have different markets Florida isn’t one market. It’s several. The rest of the state (Gainesville, Tallahassee, Fort Myers, Palm Beach, Sarasota, the Keys) each have their own dynamics. Palm Beach has seen a big wave of hedge fund and wealth management growth. Naples and Sarasota are quietly attracting tech companies following the money. Don’t assume Florida is one market. The legal side of this looks even more localized, which is part of what to expect when working with a legal recruiter in Florida. What candidates are asking for The conversations with candidates have shifted in the last year. The asks we hear most often: What’s working for employers Clients who are hiring successfully right now are doing a few things differently. They’re compensating competitively for the national market, not the local market, at least for senior roles. They understand that they’re competing with remote jobs whether they want to be or not. The cost equation here is worth understanding, which is why we broke down what a bad hire actually costs your business. They’re moving fast. From first conversation to offer, the best employers close in under four weeks. The ones dragging out a 10-week process are losing candidates mid-way. They’re hiring for trajectory, not just quota. They talk to candidates about where the company is going and where the role could lead. Generic “crush your quota” pitches don’t land with senior reps anymore. Being specific about what to look for when hiring a salesperson is a big part of getting this right. They’re investing in employer brand at a local level. They’re visible at Florida sales events. They post real content from their sales team on LinkedIn. They make their company a known quantity in their local market instead of another anonymous logo. What’s not working The failing strategies are pretty consistent: Where this is going Our read on the next 12 months: the Florida market stays competitive but stabilizes. Wage growth slows from the 2022-2024 surge but doesn’t reverse. Remote/hybrid becomes the new baseline rather than a benefit. Employers who’ve adjusted their playbook continue to hire well. Employers still running a 2019 hiring process continue to struggle. If you’re hiring sales talent in Florida We place sales professionals across the state every week and we’re happy to talk about what’s working right now in your specific market. Sometimes the right move is running a traditional search. Sometimes it’s a completely different approach. Either way, knowing what you’re walking into saves you months.
Why law firms are struggling to hire right now
Law firms are busier than they’ve been in years. Business is good. And they can’t find people to handle the work. This isn’t a new problem, but it’s getting worse. We talk to managing partners every week who are frustrated. They have the clients. They have the revenue. They don’t have the attorneys and paralegals to service the work. So work gets delayed, clients get frustrated, and partners burn out trying to pick up the slack. The question isn’t whether there are attorneys out there. There are. The question is why firms can’t find them. The talent pool is smaller than it looks Law school enrollment peaked about ten years ago. The number of new attorneys entering the market has been declining ever since. That means the experienced talent pool isn’t growing the way it used to. At the same time, more attorneys are leaving the practice entirely. Some go in-house. Some leave law altogether. Some work remotely or part-time. The traditional law firm attorney is becoming less common. For firms still trying to fill seats, this is a supply problem. There’s less supply, more demand, and the supply that exists is more selective about where it goes. The best people aren’t advertising themselves If you’re a good attorney, you’re not browsing job postings on LinkedIn. You’re busy. Your firm probably treats you well or you’d have already left. If you do move, someone needs to come find you. Most law firms don’t have the resources to do that. They post a job, they hope someone applies, and when nothing happens after two months, they’re stuck. In places like Florida, the challenge is even more acute because there’s a lot of demand and limited supply. Getting the best candidates requires actively recruiting, not passive job posting. Compensation isn’t keeping up Law firm salaries, especially for associates, haven’t kept pace with what in-house positions pay. The hours are often worse. The culture can be more traditional and rigid. The growth opportunities might be limited. An attorney with four years of experience can go in-house, make more money, have better hours, have a clearer path to advancement, and not have to worry about eating what they kill with their billable hours. Why would they stay at a firm that offers less? Some firms are starting to address this. But many are moving slowly on compensation because it means margins go down. Remote work changed everything Ten years ago, if you wanted to live in a small town, you had to work as a solo practitioner. Now, you can live anywhere and work for a firm anywhere. This is great for talent flexibility. It’s terrible for local hiring. A firm in Miami now competes for talent against firms in New York, San Francisco, and Austin. And often, the firm in Austin is offering more money and better hours. The in-house move is accelerating More corporations are building out legal departments and hiring attorneys directly instead of outsourcing to firms. These in-house roles tend to offer better hours, clearer advancement, and better work-life balance. For a junior or mid-level attorney, an in-house corporate role is often more attractive than staying at a firm. This has pulled talented people out of the firm world, and that trend is continuing. Onboarding is slower now When you do find someone, getting them productive takes longer. New attorneys need training on your systems, your processes, your clients. They need mentorship. If they’re remote, all of that is harder. Firms used to assume six months to full productivity. Now it’s often a year or more. That means you’re paying full salary for someone who isn’t generating full revenue for longer, which reduces the ROI on the hire. Firms are more selective Because hiring is harder and costlier, firms are more selective about who they bring on. That’s rational, but it also means more candidate rejections, longer interview processes, and more cases where a firm passes on someone who’s “good enough” waiting for someone who’s perfect. The perfect candidate rarely appears. So seats stay empty. What firms can do about it Slow down the hiring process. When you find someone good, move fast. Don’t wait for perfect. The cost of the empty seat is usually higher than the cost of getting it slightly wrong. Invest in recruiting. Whether that’s hiring an in-house recruiter or working with an external search firm, actively recruiting costs money. But it’s usually cheaper than the alternative—leaving seats empty or making bad hires because you were desperate. Be honest about what the job is. If your firm culture is brutal, don’t pretend it’s great. If the hours are long, don’t sugar-coat it. The attorneys who thrive in your environment will self-select in. The ones who don’t will take themselves out, and you won’t waste time with bad fits. Offer flexibility where you can. Remote days, flexible schedules, part-time options. This dramatically expands your talent pool and appeals to attorneys who might not have considered your firm before. Pay what you need to pay. If you want the best talent, you have to compete on salary. This squeezes margins, but empty seats and overworked partners squeeze them more. This isn’t going to get easier The supply of attorneys isn’t going to grow in the next five years. The preference for in-house and alternative work arrangements isn’t going away. Remote work is here to stay. The competition for talent is only going to intensify. Firms that recruit effectively now will have an advantage. The ones that keep relying on job postings and hoping people apply will keep struggling. If you need help finding the right people for your firm, that’s what we do. We understand the legal market and know how to find candidates who actually want to be there. For a practical guide on what to expect from the process, read about what to expect when working with a legal recruiter in Florida. And to understand things from the candidate perspective, check out what working with
What Working With A Recruiter Is Actually Like
If you’ve never worked with a recruiter before, it can feel intimidating. You might wonder: Will they actually have my best interests in mind? How much control do I have over the process? What am I supposed to do? We’ve placed hundreds of professionals, and we’ve heard all the concerns. Here’s what working with a recruiter actually looks like from the candidate side. It starts with a conversation, not a spam email A real recruiter will call or email you because they think you might be a fit for a specific role. Not because they blast generic messages to everyone. When we reach out, we’re reaching out because we’ve looked at your background and we think there’s something worth exploring. That first conversation isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a screening. We ask about where you are in your career, what you’re looking for, what matters to you in a job. If there’s no fit, a good recruiter will tell you that. No need to waste your time. You’re not committing to anything This is what surprises a lot of people. Talking to a recruiter doesn’t mean you have to interview for the role. It doesn’t mean you have to move jobs. It just means you’re hearing about an opportunity. You can say no at any point. You can say “not interested right now but keep me in mind.” You can explore the opportunity without any commitment. That’s the whole point of recruiters—they expand your options without forcing your hand. The recruiter will coach you through the process A good recruiter has done these interviews a hundred times. They’ll tell you what to expect. They’ll tell you what the hiring manager cares about. They’ll tell you where other candidates stumbled. They’ll tell you how to talk about your experience in a way that lands. This is incredibly valuable. Most people go into interviews cold. Having someone in your corner who understands what the other side is looking for is a huge advantage. The timing will be faster than you think Recruiting is most people’s hobby job. It’s something they’re supposed to be doing but rarely prioritize. When you work with a professional recruiter, the process moves faster. Most placements happen in four to eight weeks from first conversation to job offer. That’s faster than you’d do it yourself, and way faster than the six-month searches most companies run. You’ll actually hear back If you’ve ever applied to jobs online, you know the silence is brutal. You send in your resume and never hear anything. With a recruiter, you’ll get feedback. If you’re not moving forward, they’ll tell you why. If you’re moving to the next round, you’ll know immediately. This matters. You can learn from a no and move on instead of wondering what happened. There’s no cost to you Recruiters are paid by the employer, not by candidates. You don’t pay anything. Not to talk to them, not to interview, not if you get hired. The employer pays a fee only if the hire works out. This means the recruiter is incentivized to find you a job where you’ll actually want to stay. If you leave after three months, they haven’t done their job. You have control over what opportunities you hear about A good recruiter will ask what you’re looking for. The role, the company type, the location, the compensation, the culture. They’ll only bring you opportunities that actually fit. You might hear about things you didn’t know existed. You might discover that you’re qualified for roles you thought were out of reach. But you won’t be spammed with irrelevant stuff. The conversation with the employer is still on you Here’s what the recruiter doesn’t do: they don’t interview for you. They don’t accept the job for you. They screen candidates to make sure they’re serious and qualified, and they coach you on how to present yourself. But the actual interview and the decision to accept an offer—that’s on you. Some people think recruiters are gatekeepers. They’re not. They’re filters. They weed out the obviously wrong fits so you don’t waste time, and they coach the right fits so they interview well. Honesty is everything This is where to be careful. Some recruiters oversell candidates or misrepresent the role. A good recruiter doesn’t do this because it’s bad for everyone. A placement that doesn’t work is a failure. When we place someone, we’re honest about their strengths and their gaps. We’re honest about what the role actually entails. We’re honest about the company culture, the team, the growth opportunities. If we’re not, the placement fails and we’ve wasted everyone’s time. If you’re: Then yes, working with a recruiter makes sense. We’d love to talk to you about what you’re looking for. Start here at Find Your Dream Job to get started, or contact us to discuss your situation with our team. You can also browse open positions to see what opportunities we’re working on right now. If you’re curious about what legal hiring looks like from the employer side, read about what to expect when working with a legal recruiter in Florida, or check out the broader legal hiring trends.
What To Expect When Working With A Legal Recruiter In Florida
If you’re a law firm in Florida looking to fill an attorney position, you’ve probably considered working with a recruiter. But if you’ve never done it before, the process can feel like a black box. What exactly will they do? How long will it take? And how much will it cost? We work with law firms all over Florida, from solo practices to mid-size firms. Here’s what you should actually expect. They’ll spend time understanding your firm A good recruiter won’t just take your job description and start running ads. They’ll ask questions. What’s your firm culture like? What does success look like in this role? What are the deal-breakers? Who does this person need to work with? What does the day-to-day actually look like? This conversation might feel long. It is. But it matters. The recruiter is trying to build a picture of not just the skills you need, but whether someone will actually be happy working for you. That’s how you avoid the hire that technically works out but makes everyone miserable. They’ll go looking for people who aren’t looking This is where a recruiter earns their fee. The best attorneys aren’t browsing job postings. They’re busy with their current practice. A recruiter’s job is to find those people and start a conversation. In Florida’s legal market, that’s increasingly valuable. Law firms are struggling to hire right now, and it’s not because there’s a shortage of attorneys. It’s because finding the right person takes work that most firms don’t have bandwidth for. You’ll get screening before candidates hit your desk A recruiter will talk to candidates before they ever contact you. They’ll ask about their experience, their goals, what they’re looking for, what they’re earning now. They’ll ask the questions that matter. This saves you hours. You won’t spend time interviewing people who aren’t serious, people who don’t have the experience they claimed, or people who want something completely different than what you’re offering. The timeline is usually faster than you expect Most law firms think hiring takes months. When you’re doing it yourself, it often does. With a recruiter, the timeline usually compresses. We’ve seen searches that were stuck open for six months get filled in four to six weeks. Not because we work magic, but because we’re spending 40+ hours a week on your search while you’re spending 5 hours a week on it. This is the core difference between working with a professional recruiter versus doing it yourself. There’s a cost, but there’s a math to it Most legal recruiters in Florida work on contingency. You pay a fee only when someone is hired, usually 20-25% of the first year’s salary. That sounds expensive until you do the math. If it’s taking your firm six months to fill a role versus six weeks with a recruiter, the difference in lost productivity usually exceeds the recruiter fee. And that’s before you factor in the cost of hiring the wrong person. You’ll need to move fast when the right person shows up A good recruiter will bring you multiple candidates. But when they bring you the right person, you need to be ready to move. The best candidates have options. If you interview them and then take three weeks to decide, someone else will scoop them up. That means having your offer strategy ready, knowing your budget, and being prepared to make a decision faster than you normally would. The relationship continues after the hire A reputable recruiter doesn’t disappear after someone starts. They’ll check in. How’s the onboarding going? Are there any issues? Is the person integrating with the team? This serves the recruiter too—they want the placement to stick because if it doesn’t, they haven’t solved your problem. But it also means you have someone invested in making sure the hire works out. Working with a recruiter makes sense if: If any of that describes you, reach out to us, and we’d be happy to discuss your hiring challenges. Want to understand what the candidate experience is like on the other side? Check out our article on what working with a recruiter is actually like. And if you want broader context on legal hiring trends, read about why law firms are struggling to hire right now. You can also learn more about our legal services and how we find top talent, or check out our about us page.
When Does It Make Sense To Hire A Headhunter?
Not every hire needs a headhunter. If you’re filling an entry-level role and you’ve got a stack of applications, you can probably handle that on your own. But there are situations where going it alone ends up costing more than getting help. We see it all the time. Niche Roles Some jobs don’t get filled from a job board. Senior sales positions, attorneys, C-suite executives. The best people for these roles are already employed. They’re not browsing job postings on their lunch break. Finding them takes a different approach. You have to know where to look and how to start a conversation that gets their attention. That’s what our team spends most of the day doing. Stuck Searches We get a lot of calls from companies that have had a role open for two or three months with nothing to show for it. The posting is up, they’ve done some interviews, but nothing clicked. At that point, something in the process is off. Maybe the job post isn’t reaching the right people. Maybe the comp is wrong. Maybe the screening needs to be tighter. Whatever the reason, every week that seat stays empty is costing you money. We’ve taken searches that were stalled for months and closed them in a few weeks. No Time This is probably the most common reason people call us. Running a business and running the hiring process at the same time is a lot to handle. Every resume you review, every phone screen you schedule, every reference call you make is time away from the actual business. If your plate is already full, hand the search off. You’ll get better candidates and your business won’t suffer while you’re distracted. High-stakes Hires There’s a difference between hiring someone for a support role and hiring the salesperson who’s going to carry your revenue next quarter. When a role has a direct line to money, the cost of getting it wrong goes up fast. We wrote about what bad hires actually cost, and the number is always worse than people expect. When the stakes are high, having someone screen candidates before they ever get to your desk is worth the investment. Quiet Searches Sometimes you need to replace someone and they don’t know it yet. Or you’re expanding into a new market and you’d prefer your competitors not find out by seeing your job posting on LinkedIn. We handle confidential searches regularly. Our team knows how to run a search without making it public. Reaching Passive Candidates This is really the core of what a headhunter does. Job postings reach people who are looking. Headhunting reaches people who aren’t looking but would consider the right opportunity. In our experience, those tend to be the strongest candidates. They’re employed, performing well, and selective about where they go next. They’re not going to come to you. Someone has to go to them. The process is straightforward. You tell us what you need. The role, the skills, the personality, the budget. We go find the people who match. We talk to them, screen them, and bring you the ones worth meeting. You do the final interviews and make the call. That’s how we’ve always done it at SalesBountyHunter. If any of this sounds familiar, we’d love to have a conversation. And if you’re reading this as someone looking for work rather than someone hiring, check out our Find Your Dream Job page.