Totum pull
Why did Harriet Brown move from HR to recruitment consultancy?Harriet Brown has a CV that demands respect. She started at McKinsey, moved to a top ten UK law firm, then to a smaller law firm that services the ‘Tatler elite’, then to a cancer charity, and then to the London office of a US-based law firm that specialises in international arbitration.
She’s recently flipped her career around and become a recruitment consultant at Totum, a recruitment consultancy providing ‘talent for law firm management’. Brown is building its HR business alongside seasoned recruiter Laura McNair.
Brown had been a Totum client from way back, and appreciated the way the firm worked. ‘I’d phone Totum and tell them I was ready for a move,’ she said. ‘If they didn’t have anything right for me, they’d tell me so, rather than trying to shoehorn me into something inappropriate just to make a placement.’
We meet in Totum’s offices in central London. There’s a neat mix of the traditional and the modern in the air: the offices are new and bustling, but they nestle in a neighbourhood suggestive of history and decorum. The address is Austin Friars – long ago, home to Thomas Cromwell and Erasmus – and the office is bang next to the Portland Stone of the renowned Nederlandse Kerk.
Something of the environment has been infused into the firm’s culture too, because Brown says Totum has an unusually considerate approach.
‘This isn’t your stereotypical recruitment sales culture,’ she says. ‘There’s no target setting, which means we can be a lot more consultative with our clients and our candidates.’
The lure of law
McNair believes Brown’s skills will be a big boon for the Totum HR business. (Brown has already filled an HRD role and placed a candidate who ‘turned up half-jetlagged the day after she flew in from Australia.’) ‘Harriet is a superb interviewer who really gets HR,’ McNair says.
Part of the challenge the duo face is to attract candidates into law from outside of the profession. That’s not as easy as it sounds, when so many misconceptions about working in law are doing the rounds.
‘People have believed that law firms are behind the game, but this is no longer true,’ says Brown. ‘Yes, there’s occasionally one partner who has a paper diary and no PC, but they’re pretty much one in a thousand now. However, in the main law firms are changing. Following the recession they’re more and more progressive and strategic. This is still a period of ongoing change in the sector and it’s an exciting time to join it.’
Brown’s especially keen to talk to HR people currently working in professional services about the possibility of a law-bound move.
Slow to hire, slow to fire
‘The pay’s good,’ she says. ‘And there’s usually fewer levels of hierarchy than in, say, the Big Four. Good HR people can get noticed quickly.
‘Plus, most firms don’t have a hire and fire culture. They’re slow to recruit and reticent to incur the bad reputation that comes from making redundancies.’
But law firms are still pretty different culturally, aren’t they? ‘Well, to succeed in law you need to understand how to work in a partnership. And to manage partners, you need good EQ and exceptional diplomatic and political skills.
‘HR professionals who can placate a situation to avoid a disciplinary, for example, can do very well indeed.’
‘I know how HR works,’ she continues, ‘so I can read a situation quickly, whether that means pulling out a gem hidden in a CV or helping clients be realistic about what’s out there. And when I placed the HRD the other week, the Deputy Managing Partner asked if I could also scan my eyes over the offer letter’.
Sounds like having a recruitment consultant who’s also been an HRM brings benefits you mightn’t expect.
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