Katrina Gittins
Associate
Katrina has over twenty years of experience working in graduate recruitment and development predominantly in the legal sector. She has been consulting since 2005.
Katrina began her recruitment career at Hammond Suddards, (now Squire, Sanders and Dempsey), assisting with the recruitment of both graduates and fee earners.
She then moved to Clifford Chance where she managed the day to day recruitment process. This included selecting candidates for interview and briefing the team of interviewers on the competencies and key criteria. She also interviewed candidates alongside associates and partners as well as assessing group exercises. Katrina also managed the offer process and gathered and evaluated feedback from assessment days, vacation schemes and open days.
After nearly two years in this role, Katrina was promoted to manage the trainee solicitor training programme. This involved managing the process of trainee resourcing; rotating 260 trainees between 5 London practice areas and 12 international offices to meet practice area requirements. The management of the internal recruitment process for newly qualified solicitors was also Katrina’s responsibility. This meant working closely with the practice area heads to ensure a fair and consistent process operated across all business areas in London and internationally.
She successfully initiated, designed and implemented a new process to allocate the international seats and client secondment opportunities. A review of the trainee solicitors’ appraisal process was also initiated by Katrina which improved the credibility and value of the appraisals for both the trainees and practice areas.
Katrina left Clifford Chance to begin consulting. As a consultant she has worked for several top international law firms. She has been involved in all aspects of the graduate recruitment cycle from advising on and writing competency guidelines to providing practical support as an extension of in-house teams from screening and interviewing to running assessment days and providing candidates with feedback.
Katrina has a degree in Applied Economics and has also completed her CIPD.
