Christmas Career Countdown - Day 8

Many lateral or senior level hires will require candidates to complete a business plan, often there are very few guidelines for what is actually required.

From our experience, your plan should be concise and effectively communicate a summary of what business you can develop and/or introduce, how that business will grow over a 3-year period, and how your appointment will add value to the organisation. We’d advise around three or four pages in length; the document should not be too over-complicated or include too many specifics and should follow a simple structure as set out below...

• A clear objective based introduction
• Bio – Practice area expertise & sectors, USPs, awards, legal rankings
• Market conditions, business development opportunities
• Practice ‘fit’ – why you and your clients will add value to the firm & vice versa (cross selling opportunities, raising market profile)
• Resources that made fee generation possible & if those resources will be required/exist in the new role (If this includes a team – state the budget and how much of the bottom line they are responsible for)
• Client Base
  • type of client
  • strength of relationship/likelihood of moving
  • fees generated in the past 1,2 years (Ideally per client)
  • fees predicted over the next 1,2,3 Years (be conservative)
  • fees generated for other teams
  • bottom line