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Practical tools you can easily adapt to your organizations
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Recruitment, Onboarding & Retention

Published on Oct 18, 2018

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Recruitment, Onboarding & Retention

Resources to Grow Your Team
Practical tools you can easily adapt to your organizations

Mosaic Financial Group

Junior Associate
Joined Mosaic Financial Group in April.

Before joining the financial planning industry, spent 12 years in both recruiting and higher education.


LaSalle Network

Marketing Communications Team
Began my career at a mid-sized staffing and recruiting firm in Chicago where I started and managed a workshop program for our candidates to help them develop career readiness skills.

I truly enjoyed the 1:1 career coaching and workshop facilitation, and after over 5 years at LaSalle, I made a very deliberate career change into higher education and joined DePaul University as the Assistant Director of the University Internship Program.

DePaul University

Assistant Director, University Internship Program
If you're unfamiliar with DePaul, they have roughly 24,000 students, located in the heart of downtown Chicago.

In my role there, I managed the University Internship Program, which included acting as a career advisor for students of all majors, as well as consulting organizations, from small mom and pops to Fortune 500 companies, on recruiting and hiring our students.

Being in Chicago, organizations had a high volume of hiring needs, so (was looking at my resume in prep for this presentation, to pull some of these numbers!) was lucky to work with over 600 employers per year and those employers posted over 4,000 internships each year.

Worked with employers in financial services, including Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, UBS Financial, EY, as well as other industries, including City of Chicago, Disney, Chicago Cubs and others.

Our team acted as a consultant to our employer partners and created resources such as:
- Internship Best Practices Guide
- Internship Best Practices Forum (96 attendees, 78 unique companies)

After over 5 years at DPU, husband and I moved back to CLE, and joined CWRU.
- Site visits
Photo by puroticorico

Case Western Reserve University

Director, Employer Relations, MBA & Specialty Masters
(3 years)
I joined the Case Western MBA Career Center, as the Director of Employer Relations. In this role, I worked directly with organizations to support them in recruiting and hiring our master's students, both MBA and specialty masters students. Included providing guidance and best practices on hiring, both for intern and full-time roles.
From 2 person start-ups to Fortune 500 companies like Sherwin-Williams, Nestle, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs

So recruiting and hiring has been my life for the last 12 years (my work life at least!), and while my industry has changed, the best practices around recruiting and retaining talent remain the same. Since joining Mosaic, have hired an admin, as well as two interns. My hope today is to share what has worked in our office, as well as some things I've learned in my past roles.
Photo by skipn42

Agenda

  • Intern/FT Recruitment: First Steps
  • Sharing Your Opportunity: Resources & Tools
  • Interview Best Practices
  • Onboarding & Retention
  • Questions & Feedback
Before dive into content, would love to see where everyone stands regarding this topic.

Q: How many of you have PT of FT support staff?
Q: Looking to hire support staff in future?
Q: How many of you have hired interns in the past? If not, do you mind sharing what has stopped you?

Focus on intern and admin hiring today, but many of these tips can be applied to entry-level hire to seasoned professionals.

Photo by Markus Spiske

Why Interns?

  • Long/short-term project support
  • Pipeline for FT hires
  • Fresh ideas & perspectives
  • Uncover inefficiences
  • Expose future professionals to independent financial planning
For most of you, the value proposition for hiring an admin or other associate is likely apparent. But for many, especially those who've not hired interns in the past, the value is not as clear.

Why Interns?
Q: For those of you who hired interns, why did you? How did you find them helpful?

From my experience, the only exposure students have to financial planning is within the large firms like Northwestern Mutual, Charles Schwab, Edward Jones, etc. Scarcity of internship opportunities with independent financial planners.

Win-win opportunity for the students to gain valuable experience, while you receive support in short and long term projects, as well as influx of new ideas and perspective, pipeline for new FT hires, and sometimes even uncover inefficiencies.
Photo by the yes man

Step 1
Assess Your Needs

The following steps and best practices can be applied to hiring both interns and FT hires, such as admin or other junior/senior associates.

What I've heard over and over from employers, especially those new to hiring interns, is "we need help." But if no structure or plan in place prior to recruiting, the experience isn't always optimal for anyone involved.

Assess your true needs: 1. Projects (LT and ST) 2. Budget 3. Timeframe (length) 4. Hours/Week

These needs should be assessed for admin hiring as well.

Average internship is 3-6 months, with options to extend for stellar students. Example: Greg, Junior: Summer intern, now offered to work on projects while on breaks. Alec, Senior: 3 months to start with option to convert to FT if does well.

Internship Best Practices Guide

Step 2
Craft a Compelling Description

Another mistake I've seen employers make in the past is not spending enough time on their job description. You want to craft a description that candidates just HAVE to apply for. It's all in the PRESENTATION of the opportunity. No matter how unique your organization is, you have to show it in your description.

It's not about "selling" something you aren't prepared to provide, but instead, identifying your unique culture, skills and environment, and packaging it so those things shine.


Craft a carefully worded job description that speaks to your unique culture, mission and goals. It is worth the time to make the posting true to your organization.

I've included some examples in the handouts.

www.cfp.net/career-center/resources-for-employers

Resources on CPF Board Site:

1) Recorded Webinars
- Writing JD to attract right candidate
- Designing a successful internship program
- Recruiting Best Practices & more

2) Helpful articles and resources

Step 3
Spread the Word

Once you have a stellar job description, there are a variety of no-cost ways to spread the word about your opportunity.

For intern and EL/admin staff, I don't think it's necessary to pay for postings. Several of free options to choose from.
Photo by NeONBRAND

www.joinhandshake.com/employers/

For interns, the first website I'd recommend is Handshake. This site is for university students only.

I was talking with our current intern, Alec, before the retreat and he said "the only place I look for jobs is Handshake". Now, as a former career advisor, I need to give him some feedback on using one tool alone for his job search :), but the fact still stands that students are on Handshake and are captive here.

Untitled Slide

Post for free

Untitled Slide

Can select schools for approval with Career Center.

In addition to Handshake, I'd encourage you to research if universities in your area have Financial Planning programs? When we hired our most recent intern, I connected directly with the head of the financial planning program at Uof Akron and he blasted the opportunity via email to all of their students. So those personal connections and outreach can be very fruitful.

Programs are beginning to sprout up across the nation. Check with Career Center

www.indeed.com/hire

For EL and admin hires: Indeed.com

Free postings only - no need to pay for posting on Indeed

www.cfp.net/career-center

You can also post on CFB Board website, and I believe I was able to post for free for interns, but do believe there is a fee for FT postings.

www.linkedin.com/talent/post-a-job

I would be remiss if I didn't mention LinkedIn, as it's a key recruiting tool. For higher level roles and seasoned professionals, this is an especially useful recruiting tool.

With that said, there is a cost to LinkedIn postings, based on the volume of candidates you'd like to receive. Thus, I don't recommend LI postings for EL or intern hires.

An alternative: Post the Indeed link in your LinkedIn feed asking for referrals.

In-person Engagement

  • Local Career Centers - Job & internship fairs, information session, Industry Insider Panel events
  • Student organizations - Beta Alpha Psi, Women in Business, Financial Planning Student Association, Financial Management Association
  • Chamber of Commerce
I've mentioned several online tools, but don't forget the old-fashioned way, word of mouth.

Connect with:
1) Local Career Centers - information session, Industry Insider Panel events, job and internship fairs

2) Student orgs - Beta Alpha Psi

Beta Alpha Psi is an international honor organization for accounting, finance and information systems students

You can expand or contract your engagement based on hiring needs, but if the career center staff knows you and understands your business and culture, she or he will truly be an advocate for you with students.

Step 4
Assess & Interview

So, you've crafted an amazing description, marketed it in several different channels and are now assessing candidates.

First, craft a question set and be consistent with your questions. This will allow you to truly assess skillsets side by side and avoid unconscious bias

Document your Q&A, including their questions - I use Google Drive

1) Prepare questions in advance
- Phone interview, then in-person
2) Ask all candidates same questions
3) Take notes on all interviews
4) Set expectations and stick to that timeline, or keep them posted if things change
5) Be transparent from the start

Handouts:
Sample questions packet
Sample question set from admin and intern hiring
Photo by Brienne Hong

www.kolbe.com/assessments/

Especially on the EL/admin hiring side, for final candidates, I'd recommend a Kolbe or another assessment to determine culture fit.

Has everyone heard of Kolbe?

Susan I know you've used it for years, would you like to share anything about your experience with it?

Step 5
Onboard & Retain

Retention starts from day 1. Going to do a very high level overview of this, but wanted to touch on it.

Going to focus on intern onboarding for this section, as many people are less familiar with that process, but many of these can be implemented with admins as well.

Intern Checklist

  • Introduce and integrate your intern
  • Discuss learning goals on Day One and revisit often
  • Delegate long-term projects for downtime
  • Regularly discuss long-term career goals and alignment with your needs
  • Be transparent about FT opportunities
  • Remain in touch
Interns:
1) Discuss learning goals/objectives on day one and revisit periodically

2) Introduce and integrate your intern - Welcome Lunch, lunch and learns with other managers/execs, info interviews, invite to trainings, client appt shadows

3) Delegate projects for downtime

4) Regularly discuss career goals and alignment with your needs

5) Stay in touch once they leave you, ask for referrals on how to connect with other students like them.

Example of engagement post-internship: Engage them in short-term projects during the school year or remote project work. ie Greg M.

The Internship Best Practices Guide provides other suggestions on onboarding, retention and conversion to FT roles in the future.

Resources

  • Internship Best Practices Guide
  • Sample Administrator Description
  • Sample Intern Description
  • Sample Interview Question List
  • Intern First Day Agenda
I've provided all documents in packets but can send everyone electronic documents post-retreat.
Photo by Annie Spratt

Megan E. Gentille, MBA
Mosaic Financial Group
mgentille@mosaicfg.com
419.512.4399