Hire strategically, not reactively

Too often, advisors hire by reacting to their problem of the day or problem of the week. They put a body in place who they think is going to solve that problem. Or they meet someone who has skills and characteristics that intrigue them, and they think, “I’m going to invent a role for this person, because just having them in my organization will help us out.”

Both of those scenarios generally don’t end well for the employee or the employer. The employer doesn’t get what they want strategically and financially from that hire, and the hire doesn’t get what they want because their role is so ill-defined.

Instead, you need to be thinking about who your next best hire will be. And that thinking should be driven by clear sense of where you are today, where you want to be and the gaps that have to be filled to get you there. Only people who can help you fill that gap should be considered. Typically, those candidates will fall into one of three buckets:

1. A growth role—someone who can help the firm grow in a meaningful way.
2. A stabilizing role—someone who excels at the core “keep the lights on” functions of an advisory business.
3. A capacity extending role—someone who can give you greater scale or efficiency.

One key move here is to create a functional org chart that shows what the business needs to get done on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. It allows you to build an organization where you define what needs to happen first, then fill in the talent later—instead of doing it the other way around.

Get smart about finding candidates

Competition for top talent in wealth management is fierce right now. Don’t be surprised if you spend six months or more finding your next hire. That said, you can improve your odds by:

• Building relationships with local universities with a CFP program. Get to know the professors and administrators in that program. Speaking at their events. Offer internships. You want to create a pipeline of students from that CFP university program into your business.
• Working your networks. Seek referrals through business colleagues, other advisors, even your clients (particularly if they’re business owners). Also consider financially incentivizing your current team members to find ideal candidates.
• The best way to find passive candidates—people who aren’t actively looking to work with you—is to hire a recruiter. The money it costs you can very easily be made back within six months if they find a great hire for your firm.

Interview intelligently

Top firms approach the candidate interview process with great care. They use structured interviews with questions that reflect the critical competencies they need in their next hire. They also ask behavioral questions to determine if there’s a good team fit (or determine what they’ll need to do to help the person fit in well).

These interviews are long—up to two hours—and they involve not just the principal but also key team members who would be working with the candidate. By involving those team members, you increase your assessment of cultural fit of the job candidate, and it strengthens the buy-in of the other team members to that hire. Make sure the team understands their job as an advisory capacity. They’re to interview, take notes, evaluate, and give you feedback. You as the business owner or leader still have the final hiring decision, but that their feedback is critical to you making the right candidate choice.

Finally, they often ask the final candidate to do some sort of job simulation or role-relevant project as the final test.

Onboard with intent

Great onboarding really begins at the job offer of setting clear expectations for the role, the person’s development, and the work structure (in-office, remote, hybrid, etc.), Beyond that, have a welcome kit that puts all that in writing, talks about the story of the firm, and gives the hire the step-by-step of what’s going to happen. Think of it this way: Don’t leave any mystery. Be as clear with a new hire as you are with a new client.

Once they’ve been working with you for a week or so, have them shadow other team members—watching how jobs are done. Have 30-, 60- and 90-day milestones set out for the new hire of what they need to learn, how they can show proficiency for each key function of their job and so on.

Finally, celebrate the achievement of those milestones. When they hit their marks, let the person know in front of the whole team that they’re doing a great job.

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