Janine De Keersmaecker
Principal and Partner at Argentum Law
A multi-lingual lawyer with over 18 years’ experience, including 8 years in the Middle East and over 10 years at global top- tier law firms King & Wood Mallesons, Loyens & Loeff and...
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- Women Empowerment in Law: Empowering female lawyers and entrepreneurs
- Legal Innovation Strategies: Disrupting legal practices for accessibility
- Diversity and Inclusion in Legal Sectors: Enhancing diversity initiatives within law firms
- Corporate Finance Fundamentals: Basics of financial decision-making in firms
- Legal Support for Startups: Guiding new businesses through legal complexities.
Meet the mentor
Tricky Workplace Situation Handled
- What they need; how much buying power they have; how our product/service could help them/create an experience or memory.
- You could analyze data to better understand your target group and tailor marketing to those groups. You could make the product/service more relatable if you better understand the context and the reason for the consumer to buy it.
- I would encourage them to build their network and potential consumer base on what they are passionate about in life; if you are part of a tribe sharing the same passion, you will be trusted and consumers buy from people they trust.
- Clearer communication; on time communication; understanding what motivates employees; better team management; better allocation of work; team building activities to create a culture of trust; incentivize employees through better pay or other benefits.
- Efficient work allocation and if someone cannot carry the load a colleague will jump in; we function as one body; we could improve the situation by creating more transparency and more open communication
- I would first help the person understand the relativity of things, that stress is often the result of a human construct that can be improved; I would then tell the person that you need to break stressful work down in manageable portions and that sometimes it can be like driving on a dark road, the way will appear whilst driving; I would focus on the importance of setting boundaries and better time management.
- Yes, I try to put myself in their shoes and suggest to come up with a solution. I could potentially enhance my capacity by asking more questions to better understand their needs.
- Looking at hard skills only: where you worked before, which schools you went to, instead of asking questions regarding soft skills or testing your soft skills by role plays.
- There is no eye contact; there is no connection or relationship building; the other person will feel as if he is doing an exam, that there is no real effort to understand him as a human; lack of engagement
- Remind themselves to be truly engaged, to have eye contact, to ask out of the box questions; to make the conversation easy going so the person feels as if she/he can be herself/himself
- I don't think I have ever made a mistake as a recruiter. I tend to look at people in a holistic way and despite the pedigree being so important in my sector, I always looked at people beyond their CV, their passions in life, their interests and side activities.
- Yes, I would say that it is important to break the ice a bit, to have the person being interviewed relax and make him/her feel as if he/she can be himself/herself; I would suggest to ask questions about how the person would handle certain situations, basically ask questions revealing their personality as much as spending attention to their previous job experience and degrees.
- Crucial information is left out and the role and task allocation is unclear resulting in chaos whilst deadlines are very tight.
- Yes, I would say that it is super important to take care of your mental well-being, to do yoga, meditation, any type of sports that could help reduce stress levels, to eat healthy, to ask for help, to contribute to building social cohesion so that you feel like you could fall back on your team; to set boundaries and to demand a clear allocation of roles and tasks
