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LAW OFFICE MANAGEMENT A personality screening tool helps employers understand how each person is best suited to working and interact- ing with others, according to Osborne. It tests for characteristics such as as- sertiveness and a desire to take charge, or empathy and a preference for work- ing collaboratively. Understand- ing people's individual operating styles — whether they are support staff, articling students, associ- ates, or partners — can help as- sess where they best fit within the firm and how they can best work together, he says. "We don't need to love each other but we need to understand one another." Psychologist and law firm con- sultant Dr. Larry Richard is head of the leadership and organization develop- ment practice at Hildebrandt Inter- national Inc. in Somerset, N.J. He says personality tests can be used to supple- ment interviews. For example, a test result showing that an individual is easily distractible need not be grounds for rejecting the candidate but it could prompt interviewers to question the person about how he or she handles deadlines. Test results could also clarify ambiguities arising from interviews, says Richard. For example, one inter- viewer may be left with the impres- sion that a candidate is very warm and friendly, while another considers him self-absorbed. A test could show that the individual is gregarious but lacking in empathy — thus making an impor- tant distinction that most interviewers would miss. Richard believes that in recruiting as- sociates law firms will need to embrace personality screening and other tests for such qualities as emotional intelligence, as the old method of simply picking the best law school graduates is being made obsolete by the demographics of an ag- ing population. As they go beyond the traditional hiring pool, he says, firms will need to find new ways to decrease the risk of making bad hires and increase the likelihood of finding a suitable can- didate who normally would not have been considered. In this respect, he says, "Science can open more doors than tra- dition or intuition." However, law firm recruiters say the very fact that good candidates are in such high demand makes lawyers reluc- tant to use personality screening tools. "Nobody wants to do anything that potentially causes them to lose a good "We don't need to love each other but we need to understand one another." — DAVID OSBORNE, PREDICTIVE SUCCESS CORP. candidate. So the possibility that a good candidate may say, 'What is this BS?' and go to another firm that doesn't require testing — that's a disincentive," says Ste- phen Nash, chief executive officer of the Counsel Network in Toronto. Warren Bongard, co-founder of ZSA Legal Recruitment, says his firm uses personality tests for its internal recruit- ment but agrees that law firms do not generally find it relevant in today's tight hiring market, though he concedes the tools may be useful when deciding be- tween two or more good candidates. "Finding candidates is more of a problem than having the luxury of trying to decide between two finalists. And the tools aren't go- ing to help you find people." In fact, in a large law firm, find- ing someone who has the right skills and the ability to work well within the environment may be more important than making sure their personality fits, says Bongard. "You may not like their per- sonality, but it may work well with cer- tain clients and that should be enough to decide to hire them." DD CL HR3RDA OP 02 ad 1/9/08 2:36 PM Page 1 Time to update your dictation system? Help is here with Dye & Durham BASICS® Office Products and Philips Digital Pocket Memo LFH9600 Advanced functionality and style for dictation. Voice commands, on-board file encryption and password protection are but a few of the powerful features. The ergonomic design and the intuitive controls are user friendly. Packaged with SpeechExec Pro Dictate, the network-based dictation software and a docking station for uploading your files, the new 9600 is the ultimate in digital dictation. U C PREFERRED SUPPLIER To order please quote code #40075-00 yourONE source supplier for Office & Furniture Products • Corporate Promotional Products Printing & Graphic Services • Law Office Essentials Corporate Supplies • Search & Registration Services E Kevin Marron can be reached at kevin@ kevinmarron.com OFFICE & FURNITURE PRODUCTS dyedurhambasics.ca • 1-888-393-3874 • Fax: 1-800-263-2772 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com FEBRU AR Y 2008 21 a D Y I n E 9 p N d & 9 C n D R m a 1 H a A n M S a 8 W e ' r e y C i o a