Our in-house Recruitment Team consists of two staff operating within the HR Department - Suzanne Norman, Recruitment Manager and Kelly Brooks, Recruitment Assistant. Suzanne & Kelly regard the agencies they regularly work with as an extension of their own resource and therefore require the highest quality service from their contacts as well as the highest calibre candidates. This must be underpinned by a realistic and competitive fee rate.

March 2009 update: It is worth stating at this stage that due to the unprecedented and challenging economic climate at present all recruitment efforts are focussed on resourcing suitable, high-quality candidates outside of agency use, purely to avoid unnecessary recruitment fees.

Currently any vacancy we advertise will clearly state whether or not we are open to candidates being introduced through an agency or not.

• Morgan Cole has a core Preferred Supplier List (PSL) of Agents who have:
• consistently submitted high-calibre CV's for our previous vacancies;
• provided excellent service;
• demonstrated a good level of understanding of not only our firm, but also the legal or other   relevant sector;
• agreed to preferable fees.

Although the PSL exists, we are always interested to hear of high calibre candidates who are specifically interested in our firm. An agency we have never used or heard may appear with an ideal candidate for a current vacancy. For that reason we do not sign up to 'contracts' or fixed durations of use with any agency. All agencies, therefore, have an opportunity to send through candidates for our externally advertised vacancies.

Where high-calibre candidates are consistently interviewed from a particular agency, or where we are repeatedly making offers through the same agency, there may be a case for that Agent to be used more frequently by the Recruitment Team.

We therefore operate a flexible Preferred Agents Listing, continuously monitoring and selecting Agents to use (and not to use) based on our experiences of the service level we receive and the statistics we produce. 

All Agents are asked to note that our firm operates a strict policy on payment of agency fees.

• We pay agency fees based solely on the starting salary of the successful candidate.
• We do not include the fees generated in the first year (or over any other time scale).
• We do not include bonuses, car allowances, pension or any other element.
• Fees rates in excess of 20% are not currently considered on anything below Partner level.

Introductions are strictly not instructed if the above basic points cannot be agreed from the outset.

There is a dedicated recruitment mailbox: recruitment@morgan-cole.com  which is monitored each day. All other contact email accounts an agency may have recorded should be deleted and the recruitment mailbox solely used so as to avoid unnecessary and unwelcome emails being received by our busy fee-earning staff, Partners and Managers.

Finally, thank you for taking the time to learn about how we operate. We look forward to working with you.