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Slide Notes

In the spirit of this event, I wanted to put together a presentation that shared practical tools that you can adapt and employ quickly in your individual practices. I know when many small business owners think about recruitment and hiring, they think "I don't have time". Does anyone feel like that? My hope today is to shorten the time it takes you to make a hire and prevent you from having to reinvent the wheel when you do it by sharing some of the tools that have worked for us.
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TAG Wealth - Recruitment, Onboarding & Retention

Published on Oct 18, 2018

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Recruitment & Hiring

Resources to Grow Your Team
In the spirit of this event, I wanted to put together a presentation that shared practical tools that you can adapt and employ quickly in your individual practices. I know when many small business owners think about recruitment and hiring, they think "I don't have time". Does anyone feel like that? My hope today is to shorten the time it takes you to make a hire and prevent you from having to reinvent the wheel when you do it by sharing some of the tools that have worked for us.

For Financial Professional Use Only.

LaSalle Network

Marketing Communications Team
Began my career at a mid-sized staffing and recruiting firm in Chicago where I held a variety of marketing and PR role, as well as managed a workshop program for our candidates to help them develop career readiness skills.

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.

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 plus 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 financial services industry nearly 1.5 year ago now, have hired two admin, as well as four 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

  • First Steps to Intern/FT Recruitment
  • Resources to Share Your Opportunity
  • Interview & Assessment Best Practices
  • Onboarding & Retention
  • Virtual Assistant Support
  • 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
  • Management opportunity for staff
  • 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?

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 and EL hires out of school, the first website I'd recommend is Handshake. This site is for university students and alum only.

I was talking with our last intern, Alec, 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 diversifying his job search tools :), but the fact still stands that students are on Handshake and are captive here.

Untitled Slide

Post for free

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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 U of 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 was able to post for free for interns, but 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.

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

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.

Let me stop here for a moment - any questions on assessing your needs, crafting a description and marketing your opportunity?

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 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.

Onboard Checklist

  • Introduce and integrate your hire
  • Discuss learning goals on Day One
  • Delegate long & short-term projects
  • Discuss career goals and alignment with business needs
  • Complete an exit interview
  • Track candidates & 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.

TAG Assist

Virtual Assistant Support
I realize that even with tools and resources to ease the process of hiring interns or staff, not everyone has the desire or time to hire staff members themselves, or perhaps you simply don't have an ongoing need for staff, but ad hoc support would be helpful.

TAG Assist is a service offered by the TAG branch that allows advisors to have virtual assistant support when they need it.
Photo by NeONBRAND

Why Virtual?

  • Pre-trained
  • Free of W-2 financial obligation
  • Minimal time commitment
  • No office space needed
  • Lower start-up costs
  • A la carte service offerings
  • Zero ongoing obligation
These are pre-trained administrative professionals who can be used for a variety of support services. This service allows you to lift the administrative burden off of you the rep, while also not carrying a W-2 employee on your payroll. Working with a virtual requires no office space, no startup costs like buying a computer or phone and allows you to tap into services as you need them, with no ongoing obligation.
Photo by AK¥N Cakiner

A La Carte Services

  • Paperwork prep & processing
  • Phone & email management
  • Compliance
  • Data entry & CRM management
  • Marketing & social media
  • Software management
  • Licensing
  • Miscellaneous administrative tasks
Here are some of the services TAG Assist assistants can provide.

To harken back to Susan's presentation yesterday, you can delegate what drains you to a virtual assistant.
Photo by Annie Spratt

Menu of Services

This is a sample of our Menu of Services, so you can see the list of options to utilize services is wide ranging.

Growth in All Varieties

  • Interns
  • Part-time
  • Full-time
  • Virtual contract support
So, in closing, growth comes in all varieties, whether that be interns, part-time or full-time hires or virtual support. I hope you were able to take some practical tips away today to employ no matter what hiring needs you may have in the future.
Photo by Markus Spiske

Resources

  • Internship Best Practices Guide
  • Sample Administrator Description
  • Sample Intern Description
  • Interview Question List
  • Intern First Day Agenda
  • Exit Interview Question List
  • TAG Assist Menu of Services
For those who are interested, I'll be sending a variety of resources via email after the event, so you can use what has worked for us and adapt it to your individual needs/offices.

With that, if anyone has any lingering questions I'm happy to answer or feedback on things that have worked for your office, I'd welcome that as well.
Photo by Annie Spratt

Megan E. Gentille, MBA
mgentille@tagwealth.us
866.546.0657 x 515