It is the same story, and you already know the premise.

The race for good candidates is hard. And when you find one you genuinely want, you need to assume they will not wait for you.

You may have the most thorough interview process. But here is what most firms miss. Calibrating that process to attract that top, passive talent. 

Most firms run every candidate through one process at the same pace. That is the mistake.

In my experience, the firms that consistently secure their top choice are the firms that read the person in front of them.

When a candidate is right and you sense it early, you need to move at their tempo, not yours.  Your job, from the very first meeting, is to read how fast that person is willing to move. Then you shape the process to match. Move too slow and you lose them. Move too fast and you scare them off. The skill is not speed or thoroughness. The skill is calibration. The right speed is what will attract them, especially those who are passive.

Here are three recent searches that we worked on that show what this looks like.

When the firm moves too slow

One of our clients ran a multi-round process and landed on the candidate they wanted. Everyone agreed. Then the offer stalled for two weeks inside the firm, waiting on internal approvals.

The candidate was ready to move. While the firm worked through its own sign-off, that person kept interviewing elsewhere. Strong candidates in this market are not on hold. They are taking other calls and fielding competing offers while your process runs. By the time the offer came, this candidate had already accepted another role.

The lesson in this: clear your approval path before you start interviewing. Knowing who you want is worth nothing if your process cannot move when the moment arrives.

When fast reads as pressure

A partner needed to replace a senior law clerk and felt the pressure of the gap. He interviewed a strong candidate, someone settled in their current firm for years and offered them the job thirty minutes into the interview.

The enthusiasm was genuine, but a candidate like that does not upend a stable career on the strength of one half-hour conversation. The speed did not read as conviction. It read as pressure.

And ultimately, the candidate declined. 

When the calibration is right

The third firm found a candidate they liked and understood something important about them. This person was happy where they were. Happy, yes, but could be persuaded to move for the right opportunity.

So, the firm did not push. They met with the candidate more than once. They brought the person into the office. They let the relationship build across a few touchpoints, giving the candidate room to picture the move. They moved deliberately, at the pace the candidate needed, and they secured the hire.

There is also another reason the slow pace worked. A passive candidate is not desperate to leave, so they need a reason to stay engaged in your process. Every extra meeting is time they put into you.

The more time they invest, the more committed and real the move becomes in their mind.

You already use the first interview to assess whether the candidate can do the job. Start using it to also read how ready this person is to move.

Ask where they are in their thinking. Are they actively searching or just open to a conversation? What would it take for them to leave? The answers tell you the tempo.

A candidate halfway out the door needs you to move quickly and clear the path. A settled, happy candidate needs patience and more than one conversation. Deliver the wrong one and you lose a person you could have hired. This matters more now, because the senior talent you most want is barely moving. In our placements this year at Forge, we have found that experienced candidates have stayed put and the pool has not grown with demand. When one does surface and you want them, mishandling the tempo is expensive.

This does not mean abandoning your process. You still align stakeholders, coordinate schedules, and complete your checks. But what the candidate sees is momentum, or the lack of it.

The clock is shorter than it looks. Across legal support roles in the first half of 2026, our average search ran 52 days from opening to start date. That span has to cover sourcing, several rounds of interviews, references, and a notice period of usually about two weeks. The window where the candidate is actually deciding between you and someone else is a small slice of it.

When you find a candidate you truly want, treat the first meeting as your read on their tempo. Then set the pace of everything after it to match. Speed it up for the candidate who is ready. Slow it down for the one who needs convincing.

This is the real skill. You are reading the tempo of the person across the table and setting the pace to match it, and you are doing it inside a window narrower than it looks. The firms that win their top choice are not the fastest or the most patient. They are the ones conducting the process instead of running it.

Joncarlo Bairos is the co-founder and president of Forge. He works with law firm professionals across Canada on helping them attract and hire the right talent.

Forge provides law firms with the people and processes to launch, grow, and exit. Three service lines, one for every stage of a firm's life.

Forge Management Services supports firms as they launch. It gives sole practitioners and small firms fractional back-office and operational support, the infrastructure of a larger practice without the overhead.

Forge Recruitment supports firms as they grow. It places permanent legal talent with law firms across Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Forge Advisory supports firms as they exit. It guides owners through mergers, acquisitions, and succession planning, from first conversation to closed deal.

One partner. Every stage. To learn more about Forge, visit www.forgerecruitment.com.