CheckMate

I said in my last post I was going to talk more about questions that candidates should be asking recruiters.

I wasn’t going to write about this subject because, first, it’s not real pleasant; second, my experience has been that potential candidates, recruiters, and business clients have already seen through some of the firms that are out there; and, last, I kept naively hoping things would change on their own. But, ultimately, I decided to, largely because I see so much stuff written all the time lecturing candidates about not lying, being honest on their resumes, not overstating their accomplishments, and so on (some of it on the blogs of firms who look like they might be doing some of those same things themselves), I thought it was time to address the recruiter end.

Not to mention some of the claims I see some recruiters make - I find myself waiting for the part where they tell you they heal the sick and raise the dead.

Let’s be honest - recruiters don’t enjoy the greatest reputation. And while a lot of that isn’t justified, there’s also a large part of it that we’ve done to ourselves. What bothers me so much about that is that, whether some of these guys realize it or even care, that kinda thing hurts all of us.

I had initially planned to write just a single post, but there was so much here, I decided to split it into several. The common theme for the series is this…

As much as I’ve suggested using recruiters in your quest to be a financial advisor - and still do - I also think some cautions are in order. There are definitely things I’d suggest you check out when you’re considering replying to an ad from a recruiter, or responding when one has reached out to you, or just reaching out to one on your own.

The bottom line is simple: Can you trust what a recruiter says, and, ultimately, can you trust that recruiter?

As you go through these, I want you to forget for now what anybody else - including me - might say about a particular recruiter, since nowadays anybody can say anything online, good or bad, and you may not be able to trust the source. Let’s just remove that variable and concentrate on what the firm and its people say about themselves. Because, in the end, what matters is your personal evaluation of the recruiter - does what comes out of the recruiter’s own mouth square with reality?

Look for patterns - one of the the biggest things to look at is whether the recruiter appears to consistently overstate things. Sure, we all want to put the best face on things, but I’m talking about stuff that goes beyond a little salesmanship. To go back to a reference I’ve made before, if you hear Jon Lovitz in your head saying “Yeah, that’s the ticket!” as you’re reading a recruiter’s website or talking to them on the phone, that oughtta be a big red flag warning for you.

Naturally, I also invite you to look at what, if anything, we say about ourselves in each of these areas and decide for yourself if we’re being accurate and truthful. We sure aren’t perfect, but I can tell you that, as a general rule, we try not to toot our own horn and instead let our actions, how we conduct business, and our results speak for themselves.

Seems like every organization, including all of us executive recruiters, says they are big on diversity. But what’s the reality?

According to a nice new short article on DiversityInc called “5 Tips for Working With Executive Recruiters”, it depends. The article has a number of good tips, but here’s the part I want you to key on, especially the last sentence (my emphasis):

Make sure diversity is high on the priority list.

When the recruiter is interviewing you, make sure you’re asking questions as well. Chief among them should be ensuring the recruiter knows you want to work for a company that values diversity.

“The candidate should ask what the diversity philosophy is at that organization. What do they have in place to support diverse talent, and do they have an inclusive culture?” says Janet Manzullo, senior vice president, director recruiting solutions at Wachovia. “Everyone says they have one, but when you can, get a recruiter to articulate what that means. That recruiter on the outside should know the company well enough to articulate that and if he doesn’t, that should send a signal to any candidate if the recruiter wasn’t familiar with the diversity strategies and philosophies of a given company.”

Exactly. You need to ask the right questions and decide for yourself how truly committed to diversity the recruiter is. Certainly the recruiter’s knowledge level of the diversity program and philosophy at the companies for whom they recruit is a key piece of that puzzle. And, as with many things, it’s not just the answers you get to your questions, but how the person you’re talking with answers them.

You know, this discussion brings up something I’ve been meaning to talk about for some time. I see an awful lot written about questions that candidates should expect in an interview, or questions that candidates should ask in an interview to look good, but not nearly as much about the questions that candidates should be asking recruiters. More to come on that subject in future posts.

Same story, different day…

I saw this headline early this morning (how could I not, given that it was everywhere):

“Wall Street to tumble on disappointing 2Q results”

As I write this a few hours later, here’s what’s been written over on the Yahoo Market Update:

“It looked like Tuesday was going to be an ugly session, with stocks opening sharply lower following worse-than-expected earnings reports from several widely held tech and financial names. Stocks then staged a turnaround, as a drop in oil prices prompted an impressive early afternoon recovery, led by the financial sector.”

(Albeit in the fine print, not the blaring headline, of course.)

Wait - what happened to the “tumble”?

Then again, there are about three hours left in the trading day as I write this, and the naysayers could still turn out to be right. But what does it matter?

I’m definitely not making light of the tough times some people and companies are finding themselves in now or trying to pretend they don’t exist. But it does get old watching people write this kind of stuff daily - why add to the problems we already have by predicting gloom-and-doom that may or may not even happen? I don’t see how it helps anything.

No matter what your personal situation is right now, just don’t get caught up in it. No point in it in general, and surely something you can’t afford to do when you’re a financial advisor.

Talk about counterpoint and irony…

You may have seen these two stories that both came out today - I know the juxtaposition really jumped at me:

GM to cut jobs, suspend dividend

Beleaguered automaker also plans asset sales, aiming for $10 billion in ‘cash improvements’ by 2009. CEO Wagoner says ‘difficult decisions’ necessary for survival.

By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer
July 15, 2008

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it will suspend its dividend, sell off $4 billion to $7 billion worth of assets and cut 20% worth of salaried cash costs in an overall plan to save billions of dollars.

(Read more here.)

Volkswagen to build plant in Chattanooga

Tuesday, July 15, 2008
By: Mike Pare

Volkswagen AG will build its first United States assembly plant in Chattanooga, officials said today.

Europe’s biggest automaker said it will put a nearly $1 billion investment in Chattanooga’s Enterprise South Industrial Park.

The plant is expected to create 2,000 jobs. It is expected to open in 2011.

(Read more here.)

Classic example of the same economic conditions with vastly different responses from companies in the same industry to those conditions.

Just something to keep in mind in the midst of all the recession talk and economic gloom-and-doom - there are those who are not only doing well, but adapting and thriving.

Same thing applies to financial advisors, too.

And I’m not talking about oil companies…

As you may have noticed, I like to write about things that run contrary to popularly accepted thought and don’t fit the “well, everybody knows that” mold. In this case, “everybody knows that the cost of a barrel of oil going up like it has stinks and it hurts everybody.”

Trust me, I’m not any happier than anybody else about the gas prices now, but, contrary to popular belief, the current major oil and gas price increases aren’t all bad and have even helped some businesses.

ABC News just did a story called “Oil Price Fallout: Jobs Coming Home?” where they mentioned, among other things:

• a furniture designer is having her chests made in North Carolina again (a place that’s lost many jobs to Chinese furniture manufacturers) because they now cost five times more to ship from China

• a company that makes heaters to keep football players warm is moving all its production back to Kentucky from China

• a hair care company is going to move all of its production from China to Houston which means 1,000 new jobs

Two things I want you to keep in mind here…

First, as I keep saying, don’t buy into all the gloom-and-doom you hear on the news all the time. There are still businesses doing well in seemingly tough times, including the wealth management portions of the major financial services firms.

Second, as a budding financial advisor, you need to pay attention to trends like these, especially those that don’t always get a lot of attention in the press, because they can have a major impact on where you invest your clients’ money.

I see a lot of things, especially in some forums I’m familiar with, that claim to describe just what life looks like for a successful financial advisor in a big wirehouse these days. Let’s just say I don’t always have a lot of confidence in some of what I read, so whenever I see something I know is representative of “the real deal”, I like to point potential advisors toward it.

So, here’s one of those for you…

Susan Yelen just made the list of Barron’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisers, and was recently interviewed by her local newspaper, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. She talks about a lot of things, including how she came to be a financial advisor, teaming, what she discusses with clients, what it’s like being a woman in what has traditionally been a male industry, and so on.

There’s a wealth of information in what’s really a very short article - please go read the original and I think you’ll see what I mean:

Making the list - Susan Yelen on exclusive list of financial pros

More interesting data from Chris Russell’s blog this morning in a post called “Job seekers hate the recruiting process, survey says”, and it only highlights what I’ve been saying all along - you need to strongly consider working with a good recruiter as part of your job search, particularly if you’re looking for a financial advisor position with one of the major wirehouses.

The title of the post is misleading (not intentionally), because what’s described really isn’t the recruiting process, it’s the application process, and, more specifically, that done on company websites.

Chris describes a recent Hodes Group survey of job seekers’ experiences after they applied for a job on a company website. Here’s the results:

• 41% said they never received a response
• 28% decided not to submit a resume or application after looking at what they would have to do
• 15% said they were invited for an interview
• 11% said they received a timely acknowledgment of their submission
• 5% said they received an acknowledgment some time later

Bottom line: less than a third got any response, and only 15% were asked to interview. I don’t know if those numbers are representative of job seekers’ experience with the websites of our client companies, but based on my experience, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were.

I do know this - this is where a good recruiter comes into play, and I can speak directly to this one since we do it every day and have been for years. We determine if you are a strong candidate for a particular position before you ever spend your time filling out the application on one of our client companies’ websites, and once you do fill it out, you will get an interview.

To begin with, we either make it easy to respond to one of our listings, or we contact you first if we see your resume and you’re of interest to us. Either way, your investment of time up to that point is very limited.

Now, if you respond to one of our listings, I can’t promise that you’re going to hear from us. You may not be a strong enough candidate and so you won’t hear back, but, again, you’ll only have very little time invested at that point.

I can tell you, though, that if you are a good candidate, you will be speaking to one of us, and as quickly as we can make that happen. Only after we talk at some length and confirm your qualifications and serious interest do we then have you go to a company website and fill out the application.

And guess what? Our interview rate at that point is 100%.

Our clients know that we know what they are looking for - that’s why they pay us - and that if we send them someone, that person is worth interviewing. It’s that simple.

Frankly, the harsh reality is that if you’re not a strong enough candidate to get a response from us, you aren’t very likely going to get a positive response by going in direct to the company, either. On the other hand, if you are a strong candidate, you still might not get a call, because your application doesn’t jump out at the hiring manager. And if you’re somewhere in-between, i.e., a good candidate but you need a little help getting that across to the hiring manager…well, the stock online application just isn’t going to do that for you.

I know this may sound like yet another sales pitch from a recruiter, but I can only tell you how things are. You can take your chances, just go to the company websites, spend a lot of time filling out the applications, and hope somebody calls. Or you can vastly improve your chances of actually getting hired by working with a solid recruiter.

Up to you…

Probably seems like plain old common sense, but you might be surprised…

Take a good look at this post from Martin Burns, the Recruiting Manager at ZoomInfo, about how to tell a recruiter you’re not interested when one contacts you. There are a lot of good tips here that go way beyond that initial subject:

How Do You Say No to a Recruiter?

Not much I can add, other than to say that we always strive to be the “good recruiter” that Martin describes in that post. And, naturally, we hope that you’ll have the kind of reaction to us that he recommends.

This is one of those “Gee, everybody knows that, so I don’t have to write about it.” things, but based on the amount of it I’ve seen lately, I guess everybody doesn’t know, and so I will write about it.

Specifically, the stock “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” connect request.

Never, EVER send out that canned invitation. At least not to me if you really would like to connect, anyway.

Here’s why…

Forget for the moment the larger and more complex discussion about open networking, meaningfulness of connections, and so on - let’s just stick to the simple and narrow: you want to connect with someone on LinkedIn that you don’t know.

The way I see it - and so do a lot of others - is if you can’t take the time to send some kind of even remotely personalized invitation, then why should I take the time to accept it?

It doesn’t have to be anything extensive, or super special, or time-consuming to create - even something like a simple “I read your blog entry the other day about not using the canned LinkedIn invitation, and thought it was very good. I’d appreciate a connection.” would be good.

Now I’m not gonna say I’ve never overlooked my feelings about this and accepted a canned invitation from someone. But I won’t guarantee that I will from now on.

Try it - it won’t take you that long to do, your acceptance rate may just go up, and, if nothing else, you at least know you did things the right way.

Sorry, it’s not a financial services company, but a great story, nonetheless.

Zappos is a company you likely have heard of or maybe even have bought something from. They are probably the largest Internet retailer of shoes, having sold over $1 billion worth last year. There’s a great article this week on the Harvard Business Publishing site that describes many of the innovations at Zappos, but one in particular got the author’s attention - and mine.

Zappos starts off its new call center employees with four weeks of initial training at full salary, which is great, although certainly not unique. But here’s the big deal:

“After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.”

Why does Zappos do this?

“Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.”

Now, I don’t know of any financial services companies that do that, but I can tell you that’s the level of commitment they all expect, so if you want to be a financial advisor, you need to come with that kind of attitude.

Lots of other great information about how the company is able to do so well in the article - here’s the link:

“Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too”