Five Questions for a Top Recruiter

What’s your view of today’s recruiting environment vs. a year ago?

It’s a whole different ball game out there.

The environment has changed dramatically with far less movement right now vs. all the movement of a year or so ago, when there was “the perfect storm” for movement.

Can you explain the change?

The biggest reason for this change is that so many people have already moved and there are so many handcuffs being put on advisors right now that it’s become a bit more difficult to move.

Nearly everyone is part of some kind of deal, either a retention package or a recruiting package.

Thus, even though recruiting deals are at all-time highs, advisors have to weigh carefully what they will give up if they leave.

What about the view of some wirehouse executives that the heyday of breakaway brokers is over?

No, this won’t change, and I’ve been doing this for 25 years.

Brokers leave for lots of reasons, including financial ones. But they also leave because they don’t like the firm or the people they work with, their manager, their location, their payout —all sorts of reasons.

In the brokerage industry, like in other sales industries, brokers can leave whenever they want to. This is different from some other industries, in which — with the unemployment rate today — there’s less of an ability for some individuals to move when they want to.

So the firms have to treat advisors with kid gloves as the honored employees that they are. Without advisors, nothing happens.