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By Kasey Dean, Simplicity Lone Beacon’s Senior Director of Accounts.
We all understand that people seek the help of financial advisors because they are looking for answers and help in achieving financial stability now and in retirement. But the reality is you can’t do it alone. You can’t be the solution to every problem or roadblock they face in retirement. That is why to truly scale your business growth you must invest time and money into finding the right people who are aligned with not just the skill sets you require, but your vision for the company as well. I’ve worked with many advisors who struggle in the hiring process because they see a new employee as a capital burden and don’t fully envision how the right employee provides value. The problem with this notion is that if you push off the expansion of your team, you limit what your business can accomplish and its growth in the long-term. Under these conditions, your business will always be playing catch up to its demand and ceding market share to your competitors, forcing your business to lose its grasp of the opportunities that present themselves.
However, hiring the right person is an art just as much as a science, and is one of the most crucial decisions you can make for your business. You’ll need someone qualified with the right skill set, the right work ethic, the right short- and long-term goals that fit with the development of the business, and the right personality to communicate effectively. In short, you can’t make this decision lightly. With that in mind, we completely understand the apprehension you might have about bringing new people into your company’s fold. But the fact remains that your business simply can’t grow without hiring and developing the right staff.
Over the past 5 years as hiring manager for various roles at Simplicity Lone Beacon, I have learned 5 practices that will help you to find staff members that can enrich your business in many ways, ultimately helping your business grow effectively.
Hiring Tips
- Identify Your Must-Haves
All hiring starts with understanding what you need and finding out how to look for that need. This should be a combination of skills, expertise, experience and most importantly the intangibles. Chances are, you’ll get many qualified applicants with the qualitative tangibles, but the intangibles are what will allow you to decipher which of the qualified candidates are the best fit. Consider how this person would fit into your culture with your current staff and what value you need them to bring to the table. With this framework, you’ll be able to screen candidates by asking questions that illuminate these qualities, so you don’t just sit with them reiterating their resume and the job description. For example, we look for 3 qualities in every person we hire regardless of their role; they must be a smart, curious, and detail-oriented person in order to succeed in our company, so we cater various parts of the hiring process (see below) to ensure that we assess people on these core qualities in the hiring process.
- Identify Your ‘Red Flags’
Now that you know your must-haves, it’s important to consider what you don’t want to see in an employee. In other words, no candidate is perfect, but see if you can identify their “red flags” to better understand if those traits are something your company can work with. This could be something you may have learned from previous hire that did not fit into the company or it can be as simple as looking for someone who hasn’t hopped from job to job every year. If a qualified candidate does have that job history, think about what questions you need to ask to get a true reading of what their long-term goals are in their next role. Remember, you are seeing the best version of someone in an interview and that may not always represent who they are consistently. But that’s okay! Nobody is perfect. However, looking for these particular nuances can help save you from investing in an employee who just wouldn’t fit in, leaving you frustrated back at the starting line.
- Create a Hiring Process
Once you have a clear understanding of what you do and don’t want, the next step is to figure out what your hiring process looks like. You’ll want to layout the goals and what you or your respective team should look for at each stage of the hiring process from resume review, 1st interview, 2nd interview, 3rd interview (if needed). Consider this similar to your sales process for new potential clients. Keep the meetings concise, have a clear plan of what to talk about ahead of time, and do your homework on who is sitting in front of you so you can make sure to use this time to get to know them. That way, you can gauge how they would fit in your company. For example, I’ve found success with an initial phone call, then bringing the person in the office to meet at least 2-3 other people, then 3rd zoom call or office visit if necessary. At each stage of this process, I tag in other members of my team to assist and to have them a part of the decision-making process. Which brings us to your next stage.
- Leverage Your ‘Star Employees’
Your current star employees are your best resources, so use them! Have them take part in the hiring process with you to not only help their development but to create an environment where you are not responsible for making all hiring decisions. If you are the only person in the hiring process, you may not only be overburdened, but you won’t leave room for key employees’ perspectives, which can be highly valuable when assessing a good fit. So, consider who in your company do you trust to be able to take this role seriously and have the company’s best interests at heart. On top of that, it also gives your star employees the opportunity to weigh in on key company decisions that will ultimately impact their day-to-day the most.
- Clear & Enticing Job Description
The final step to this process is to create a killer job description using the information you’ve gathered on what you are looking for. From my experience, a great job description understands that the best candidates are courting your business just as much as you are them. The description should include information about your company and why someone would want to join. It should have a clear overview of the role and responsibilities and outline exactly how it adds value to the company. Good candidates will know that a role with too much flexibility may mean their value to the business isn’t clear and their job responsibilities may not exactly fit with their skillset. So, context of what the core functions are expected to be completed on day-to-day basis is highly important as well as what types of growth opportunities truly exist for that role specifically. It’s important to weave these throughout the job posting so you can ensure you are attracting the best talent. At the end of the day, you are 1 of many companies hiring, so what is it that sets you apart to help the best talent flourish in their career? Be able to describe that aspect emphatically.
At Simplicity Lone Beacon, we always say our biggest decisions in any given year will be who our new hire(s) are. This is true for financial advisors and all companies because each new hire will immediately change the dynamic of your existing team, process, and opportunities. If you focus on these practices when it comes to hiring, you will efficiently be able to use your resources to find, develop, and retain the best employees possible, setting your company up for long-term success.
About the Author: Kasey joined Simplicity Lone Beacon from the sportswear industry where she was a marketing manager overseeing the strategy, content creation, execution and analysis for New Balance Athletics’ first-ever customer rewards program. She has also managed a million-dollar media budget, creating content and measuring performance for paid and organic marketing campaigns. Kasey graduated from Brandeis University with a double major in Business & American Studies, where she was also two-year captain of the Varsity Women’s Basketball team. In her free time, Kasey enjoys being active and traveling as much as possible.
