CheckMate

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”

My guess is that farmers are not the first thing you associate with being a financial advisor…which is why I’m writing about them.

As this recent article on the Cattle Network points out,

“Financial advisors say farmers are business owners who face many of the same concerns as other professional proprietors. Concerns include cash management, product sales, succession planning, and retirement savings.”

Plus,

“Prices for crops, such as corn, soybeans, and wheat, have surged amid domestic demand for biofuels and international demand for agricultural exports.”

Put those two things together, and it means you have a group of possibly overlooked and underserved people with a definite need for sound financial advice - the very kind of target market you look for as a financial advisor.

Keep that in mind if you’re thinking about becoming an advisor - not just farmers, but people in any number of not-so-obvious careers, professions, or groups need strong financial advice and guidance.

Another huge factor is that this kind of thing allows you to live places where you might not have thought you could have a successful financial advisor career. In the case of farmers, if you’re someone in a rural area, really want a financial advisor career, but thought you couldn’t have one unless you moved to the big city, think again.

Much more detail in “Advisors Help Farmers Reap Financial Gains”, and, as always, I’d suggest you read the whole thing.

Texas Tech University is a place I think was largely unknown nationally until Bobby Knight was hired as their basketball coach a few years ago. Well, now there’s another reason to pay attention…

Investment News has just done a two-part series on the unique Division of Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech - a very interesting series on many levels.

Some facts about TT’s program:

• Includes the only doctoral program in financial planning in the country




• Concentrates on the “holistic” side of financial planning, which melds together psychology and finance




• 80% to 90% of undergraduate and graduate students who complete the program move on to jobs in financial planning




• 300 students are enrolled in the program - 200 undergraduates, 100 master’s degree students, and 28 doctoral candidates




• Graduate students have the option of combining a financial planning degree with a law degree, or a master’s degree in finance or business administration

If you’re interested in attending an outstanding unique program full-time at the undergrad or graduate level, definitely someplace to consider. And even If you’re not, this gives you an idea of the very talented up-and-coming young competition that’s out there, in a place most wouldn’t expect to find it, too.

Check out both articles in the series here:

“Next generation of advisers: Taking the ‘holistic’ approach”
“Texas Tech degree opens doors”

Here’s the school website:

Texas Tech University Division of Personal Financial Planning

The whole discussion about Web 2.0, social networking, and where that plays for job seekers is something I’ve alluded to before, and can be very complex. There’s a nice brief overview article at CFO.com from a few days ago titled “Companies Give “Web Search” a New Meaning” that provides some pretty simple examples of what’s going on out there right now, specifically with companies’ use of social networking sites.

Here’s some key numbers from the article. According to ExecuNet, the percentage of hires by the way they are found stacks up like this:

• old-fashioned networking - 39%
• online search engines - 14%
• online job postings - 13%
• resume databases - 8%
• social networking websites - 3%

As you can see, while in this survey online social networking per se hasn’t really taken off, online sources together already account for as many hires as traditional face-to-face networking.

More key numbers from ExecuNet:

• 77% of executive recruiters use search engines to learn more about candidates.




• 35% of the same recruiters eliminated a candidate based on negative information (”digital dirt”) that they uncovered online.

That’s a subject we talked about a long time ago (“Take control of your online reputation”) - this is just one more confirmation of what we said back then.

There are lots of social networking sites to choose from, and also lots of arguments about which ones are the best to be on. That discussion is way too long for here, but I’ll just say that my favorite is still LinkedIn, and if you’re only going to be in one social networking place online, that’s the place to be.

But, as we’ve said before (“If you want to be found, you’ve got to be findable”) , you need to be on at least one of the top sites, and you need to make sure that the information you post online reflects positively on you.