Blog

Last month after my southwest Washington/Portland FPA Mid Winter Conference Keynote presentation, I took four additional plane flights (and hotels, and rental cars!) to visit four CFP Board registered programs in the West:   Utah Valley University, Colorado State University, California State Northridge, and San Diego State. It was my own little version of planes, trains and automobiles! During these visits, I interviewed dozens of students, spoke to a handful of PhDs (faculty members, college ...

Read more +

There are numerous benefits to involving your new planner in client meetings. These include increased leverage of firm owners’ time and client relationship scalability, quality of life improvement, profitability, and enhanced client experience.  There are some common myths that can often overshadow these benefits though.  This month’s post addresses the top 5 myths of integrating new planners into client meetings so firm owners can get their new planner(s) started down the right path to ...

Read more +

2012 is now behind us and for the most part it seemed to be a pretty good year for a lot of you, so congrats! To continue to build upon these successes and avert the challenges facing our profession, it is increasingly necessary that you continue to fully utilize every asset at your disposal. By far the biggest lever you can pull is your firm’s human capital. From this perspective, you need each member of your team at the top of their game for 2013. Here is a list of New Year’s resolutions ...

Read more +

Last month, we reviewed several common personality assessments used in hiring that measured the Affective (Feeling) and to some extent the Cognitive (Thinking) parts of the mind. This month we will examine the leading assessment that measures the Conative (Doing) part of the mind. You may not be as familiar with this one because the others are more widely discussed and commercialized. Nonetheless, having an idea of how someone prefers to take action is just as important a factor in the ...

Read more +

When recruiting new employees, I often get questions about the validity, structure, and cost of various personality assessments. This month, we will take a look at some of the most common assessments that I come across and administer.  Keep in mind, I am not the developer of these tools and have no affiliations with these companies. I am simply providing a general overview, based on my experiences and use of these tools. So why use personality assessments at all? Contrary to some popular ...

Read more +

Last month, we explored what candidates were seeking in growth opportunities by looking at an excerpted dialogue exchange I have been having frequently with candidates recently (see http://bit.ly/GrwthOppPart1). This month we examine specific characteristics firm owners should be providing in their new planner positions to help ensure the new planner doesn’t have to leave the organization for the career growth they seek. The most important distinction we see between the firms that effectively ...

Read more +

The impetus for this month’s post is the recent deluge of individuals who have reached out to me expressing frustration over “lack of growth opportunities” in their position at their current firm.  It’s not uncommon for candidates to reach out to me to “see what else is out there.”  What is interesting is the similarity of the recent conversations and the sense that the underlying, well documented, issue might soon have a larger impact than once thought.  So in this two part post we will first ...

Read more +

Last month we discussed what expectations are generally unreasonable for a new planner hire and this month we look at what firm owners SHOULD expect from their new planner.  As I mentioned last month, not all new financial planners are equal. Also I have previously written on how the educational experiences between CFP Board registered programs can vary widely. http://bit.ly/NewPlnrExppart1 Nonetheless it’s reasonable to have some solid, but realistic expectations for a good candidate that ...

Read more +

Throughout my career I have witnessed firm owners’ frustrations with new planners they have hired or were interviewing. Their frustrations stem from lack of clarity on what type of education a new planner receives and what can be expected of them. Also, firm owners sometimes don’t know what role they are trying to fill so they are left with trying to hire for a catch-all position resulting in unclear roles and responsibilities, and unreasonable expectations. We will start this two-part ...

Read more +

In this month’s post, we pick up where we left off last month with a look at how firm owners can integrate their new planner into the final three stages of the financial planning process to help ensure that the CFP® certification can be gained in two years versus three.  If you missed last month’s post addressing the first three steps in the planning process, it can be found here http://bit.ly/attractingtop Step 4: Developing and Presenting Financial Planning Recommendations and/or ...

Read more +

Last month, the CFP Board of Standards released updated guidelines for the work experience requirement for the CFP® certification - essentially creating a ‘fast track’ to certification by reducing the experience requirement from three years down to two years if candidates for CFP® certification (new planners) work under a CFP® certificant and personally deliver all parts of the personal financial planning process to a client. You can click here http://bit.ly/CFPboard2yrs to read the full press ...

Read more +

Last month I shared my recent recruiting trip highlights and in this month’s post I want to explore the variations between the different types of CFP Board registered programs in more detail. For those not familiar there are actually two types of CFP Board registered programs: Degree and Certificate. Here is a general description of both: Certificate programs generally provide the CFP Board financial planning curriculum on a standalone basis, for which the individual simply receives a ...

Read more +