Please explain?
When interviewing candidates as an employer in the financial planning industry, your recruitment questioning & process should be no different to the framework of your client fact find in a financial planning interview.
As a potential candidate, be prepared to answer insightful follow up questions that truly get to the bottom of your motives, your preferences and historical achievements.
Think of it this way
You’ve been referred a client, had a preliminary phone based discussion and agreed there is value to meet.
The client’s intent is to assess whether you’re the right financial planner to support them (depending on the strength of the referral). As a planner, you should be assessing if you can help the client & if they are someone you can work with.
Depending on your process, you may move to fact find at this point. You collect important data to ultimately construct and deliver a recommendation.
“Recruitment is exactly the same. You are asking important questions to get to the bottom of what ultimately is the goal…..should we hire this person!”
The questions you ask & framework are important
In a financial planning fact find, a question you will ask — Do you own investment property? Let’s assume the client answers “yes”. Do you move onto the next question?
No, you ask follow up questions
The date the asset was acquired, what ownership structure holds the asset, what was the purchase price, why did you choose property over other assets classes and more….
“do you believe you would have sufficient information to make an informed recommendation if you didn’t ask these additional questions?”
In the same way a recruitment question such as
“Tell me about your most significant accomplishment in your career?”
Without follow up questions which include
“what are some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome, what was the outcome/deliverable, what did you like and dislike about the project, on reflection what would you have done differently, what reward did you receive, who else was involved to achieve the revenue etc”
will not give you the full picture.
Follow up/probing questions provide you with a greater understanding of the candidates drivers, desires and genuine ability. Without them you won’t be in a position to make an informed decision.
We’ve been reading his books and material. If recruitment of staff is an important part of your role, then we recommend you do the same.
