How to Hire the Right Financial Advisors for Your Practice (Part 2)

This is part two of a three-part series on hiring the right financial advisors for your practice. Stay tuned for the next installment later this month.
Read part one on how to hire the right financial advisor.
FINDING PROSPECTS
Once you have determined you need to hire an advisor, how do you find good prospects? We will list a few methods below, but don’t choose just one – implement them all to give yourself the best chance of finding the right person.
• LinkedIn/Social Media – post your job listing on both your company and personal profiles on all the social media platforms you use. You should also search through the profiles of people you are already connected to – you may find a potential candidate this way or someone who could refer a candidate to you.
• Build a relationship with the business department of a local college, especially if they have a financial planning emphasis. If you get to know the professors and department heads, they can steer prospects to you both for internships and for jobs after graduation.
• Pay a hiring service to find candidates for you. They typically charge a down payment and then another payment if you hire one of their candidates. This service can be helpful if you want to post the job on a site like Indeed; doing this yourself can suck away a lot of time as you screen resumes. A good service will do the screening and pre-qualifying for you so you only spend time with qualified candidates.
• Your own network of friends, family, clients and colleagues. Don’t keep it a secret that you’re hiring – in fact, let people know the kind of person you’re looking for so they can refer candidates directly to you.

A few notes to keep in mind as you are sourcing prospects:
• Keep an open mind as you look at prospects’ backgrounds. A business or finance degree is not a requirement for success as an advisor. In fact, many successful advisors have come from backgrounds such as liberal arts or teaching. This can give them a perspective others lack.
• Keep a mindset that the right time and right person may not line up for you – make this work to your advantage instead of making a mistake. For example, if you are ready to hire someone but can’t find a good candidate, don’t hire the wrong person. If, on the other hand, the right person crosses your path even if you aren’t quite ready to hire, don’t let timing become a mental roadblock for you. Be prepared to hire even if the timing isn’t ideal.
• Identify as much as you can the possibility of a candidate staying in your community long term. A hidden pitfall in hiring can be finding a person with the right makeup and skills, and devoting time and resources to them only to see them leave soon because they’re not tied to the community. One tip: candidates from smaller towns are more likely to stick around. For example, if your town has 70,000 people, a prospect from a town of 35,000 people is more likely to stay long-term than a cand date from a town of 200,000. If you are looking for someone to stay with you long-term, you can’t overemphasize the connection to the community.
THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
Once you have identified a qualified prospect, you should have a very well-defined interview process in place. Take your time during this phase – there’s no reason to rush. The process should involve multiple encounters, including both interviews and assessments (the Kolbe A Index and EQ-I assessments are good examples). Don’t place too much emphasis on any one component, but look at each candidate’s overall performance to get a clear picture of whether or not they will be a good fit for your practice.
One tip that can be valuable: put prospects in various settings to get a sense of how they handle themselves. In addition to your formal, one-on-one interview, think about taking them to breakfast, or out for a drink with the team or to play a round of golf. Get a sense of how they socialize so you get a better view of them as a whole person.
Make sure that if the candidate is remote, you bring them in for at least the last interview – you never want to hire without meeting the candidate in person at least once.