Our Approach
Strong relationships and long-term partnerships mean the numbers stack up.
Since McKenzie Douglas was established in 2000, we have built robust and enduring relationships with many of our clients, including world-leading blue-chip organisations. Time and again, they commission McKenzie Douglas as their first resource for the recruitment of their key legal personnel. Because we understand their culture, their business needs and appreciate the structure and operations of their existing teams, we make the placement of suitable candidates an efficient and effective process.
One such client is a FTSE 100 company whose recruitment criteria matches their organisation: in short, their name is the epitome of quality. McKenzie Douglas have worked with them for over ten years and, in this time, have recruited almost their entire legal team of more than twenty lawyers including: Senior Competition Legal Counsel; Employment Legal Counsel; Energy Legal Counsel; Customer/Asset Finance Legal Counsel; Global Intellectual Property Counsel.
In one year alone, McKenzie Douglas have placed fourteen lawyers into an expanding and highly specialised in-house legal department who operate on a global level. Their technical specifications have varied significantly according to assignment and business division, but we have successfully filled every position we’ve been instructed on.
Quite simply, the numbers speak for themselves.
Adaptive solutions for challenging requirements.
The global telecommunications sector is one which is ever expanding and increasingly competitive as the big players work to break new ground and emerging territories. McKenzie Douglas were commissioned by one such company to fill twelve senior positions for a new Legal and Contracts Management team across the Middle East and North Africa.
Each role was to oversee a different region, looking after the interests of the organisation as well as managing different business partners and stakeholders. It's easy to see how each position would have its own unique challenges in terms of skill sets, qualifications, cultural "fit" and languages.
The McKenzie Douglas team were required to recruit candidates across Africa and the Middle East, travelling extensively to conduct interviews and meet representatives of the client in different regions including the trickier geographical hotspots of Nigeria, Iran and Iraq.
All roles were successfully filled and, thanks to our flexible and "can do" approach to a challenging instruction, McKenzie Douglas have been retained to work on numerous assignments for this client.
When client and candidate are oceans apart.
A multinational natural resources business was seeking a Global Competition / Anti-trust Counsel, a high profile post with significant responsibilities.
McKenzie Douglas undertook a dedicated search and identified a suitable candidate who was, in our opinion, streets ahead of any other candidate we could find.
There were, however, two issues to overcome: the candidate was based in the United States and the job was in Europe and, secondly, the candidate wasn't actively seeking a new position.
At prima facie, it would appear this just wasn't going to happen: tempting the candidate to even look at the role let alone consider relocating across the Atlantic was going to be challenging to say the least.
Undeterred, a McKenzie Douglas specialist made a number of speculative enquiries in the candidate’s direction, whetting their appetite enough to attend an interview where they were pitched against six other candidates.
After two interviews the candidate was offered the role and accepted. A successful conclusion for all concerned as the candidate is still in-situ after five years and, having been promoted, is enjoying life in mainland Europe.
We put in the leg work and always go the extra mile.
Although time-consuming and with no guarantee of results, the team at McKenzie Douglas dedicate significant time to working pro-actively on behalf of our candidates to find them the right roles.
This involves contacting potential clients who are not advertising vacant positions; occasionally, this even means helping a client realise that they actually need an in-house legal resource.
Just sometimes, with a bit of persistence and patience (and often sheer good timing!) this produces the ideal match for both parties.
Working with a candidate who was seeking a move back to an in-house role, McKenzie Douglas held lengthy and in-depth discussions about what kind of role they were seeking. Rather than just wanting to take any role, their ‘brief’ was quite specific and, as the candidate's background was truly first class, we felt certain they would do well in interview.
Our extensive searches found a potential client who was just starting to think about recruiting for their in-house legal team. But these were very early days, and the HR team had not even given sign-off for recruitment, let alone decided what sort of candidate they were seeking.
Five months and four interviews later our candidate was offered the job.
Our experience at McKenzie Douglas shows that if you have the 'right' candidate, and a bit of persistence and patience, it's worth going the extra mile.
If you would like to find out more about the McKenzie Douglas approach to solving high profile legal recruitment requirements, how we are able to adapt to unique scenarios and our global legal recruitment solutions, please contact us here or call us on 01539 446666.