How Waller Won Candidates in an Earlier Student Recruitment Cycle

Facing a challenging and changing student recruitment environment, Michelle Parsons, Director of Law School Recruiting at Waller, a 250 attorney firm headquartered in Nashville, grappled to navigate her firm through an earlier student recruitment process with her old toolset. Witnessing the dramatic industry changes, Parsons knew she needed to adapt her firm’s recruitment strategies to stay ahead of the curve.

To compete with earlier and less structured recruitment timelines, Waller chose Flo Recruit as their partner by implementing Flo Recruit Applicant Tracking, Interviews, and Events. 

A Changing Student Recruiting Environment

Waller sought to move faster in the recruitment process without hiring more recruiters by improving its workflows, increasing the effectiveness of its recruitment marketing events, and improving the overall efficiency of its student recruitment efforts. 

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According to Parsons, “With the loss of national guidelines and the pandemic pushing everything earlier, we had to adapt. This year with Flo Recruit, we can better facilitate the earlier recruiting approach and are increasing our efforts to go broader, deeper, and earlier with our student outreach.”

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75+ Hours of Manual Work Condensed to Minutes with Flo Recruit

Before Flo Recruit, the Waller recruiting team spent 75 hours of team time every student recruitment season manually entering an overwhelming number of OCI and Resume Collect applicants. 

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According to Parsons, in their old Applicant Tracking System (ATS), “an assistant would collect all candidate documents, separate them, upload them one by one into the ATS, and hope everything worked OK in a time-consuming, error-prone process nightmare.”

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With Flo Recruit, Waller eliminated manual document sorting and uploading. Instead, they synced candidate contact information and documents from their law school partners on Flo Recruit into their own Flo Recruit Applicant Tracking System in minutes. This process enabled Waller to move faster than competitors with larger recruiting teams because of the improved data quality and time savings.

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“Flo Recruit has exceeded my expectations of what legal recruiting software could be. It saved us over 75 hours of staff time from the law school sync alone,” said Parsons.

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Building Candidate Pipeline by Getting More from Brand-Building Events 

To engage with law students and source candidates, Waller spends attorney and recruiter time attending, hosting and managing events. At these events, Waller's attorneys formerly struggled to track with whom they spoke, losing opportunities to identify candidates. 

Waller team members wrote notes by hand, then recruiters later entered promising candidates to their legacy ATS. This time-consuming, manual double data entry hindered Waller’s ability to convert event attendees into candidates. Instead of acting on candidates immediately, Waller waited for them to apply online or through their law school, detracting from the return on investment of attending and hosting events in the first place. 

With Flo Recruit, Waller captures law student contact information at events by enabling them to register in advance or sign up at the event. At in-person events, students interested in the firm scan a QR code to register their information with the firm. 

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“What’s great is that even when I’m not at the event, my attorneys can tell students to sign in at the QR code without having to be trained on a complicated digital sign-in system,” says Parsons.

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Because candidates from events are already in her Applicant Tracking System as prospective candidates, Waller can now progress them faster into early interviews.

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“I didn’t realize how much opportunity would arise when all of the candidates from events were in the same system in which I track my candidates who are interviewing. We’re able to act more quickly on high-potential candidates now.”

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Moving Faster as Competitors’ Offer Timelines Accelerate

Since 2019, the law school recruiting timeline has moved up quickly, and the market has become more competitive.

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Ms. Parsons said, “The loss of these firm guidelines opened up an environment for earlier student recruitment outreach, pre-OCI offers, and questions about the right way to hire.”

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With Flo Recruit, Waller keeps up with the speed of the market by leveraging the Law School Data Sync, building candidate pipelines through event tracking, and a faster, modern system that requires fewer clicks.

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Michelle Parsons states, “[The] process with Flo Recruit is much more seamless; with complete background information, we can identify top candidates and make offers earlier than other firms.”  

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Key Considerations Before Switching to Flo Recruit

Moving to a new system can be intimidating. In considering switching to Flo Recruit, the Waller team had two main hesitations. 

Attorneys adapting to change

Managing change can be difficult, and as they considered joining Flo Recruit, they worried about how they would be able to successfully roll out a new recruiting system in a short time period. 

Parsons reports that user adoption was faster than she expected, and the bumps were minimal. Because many of Waller’s attorneys had used Flo Recruit in a limited capacity to interview candidates via On Campus Interviews hosted on Flo Recruit, the user interface was familiar. The new features, like Interviewer Evaluations, were an extension of the process with which the lawyers were already familiar. 

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“Attorneys getting comfortable using a new platform was our biggest worry. However, we found Flo Recruit’s UI user-friendly and obvious, leading to fast user adoption.”

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Retaining access to historical candidate data

The Waller team also considered the risks of losing access to historical data when moving to a new system. Parsons says that at first, she was worried about losing this data, and while historical requests are typically low, 1-2 a year, she wanted to know if candidates had applied for jobs in the past. She was pleased to hear that Historical Data Import was just released. This new feature allows users to import their job history from past systems into the new one, so they can continue to track even after making the switch. 

Measurable Results, Happier Legal Recruiting Team

In the end, Waller has seen real, measurable benefits from the switch to Flo Recruit from their legacy applicant tracking system. With improved workflows, customized communications, and integration with leading Law Schools, Waller achieved significant time savings, a happier, more productive team, and a competitive advantage in the changing student recruitment environment. 

Are you interested in learning more about Flo Recruit? 

Flo Recruit would be glad to help your firm achieve its recruitment goals. Our solution specialists can evaluate your situation and recommend approaches that move the bar for your organization. Contact us today!