Essential Practice: Hiring and Retaining a Millenial Practice

by Jon Lagerstedt, Wells Fargo Asset Management

Just like your clients, every member of your team is unique. Learn best practices for hiring and retaining a millennial workforce.

Jon Lagerstedt: This week on The Essential Practice, Paul Markarian, Sales Desk Manager and Vice President with Wells Fargo Asset Management, is joining us to talk about his experience with millennials and about some recommendations for hiring and hopefully retaining them. I’m Jon Lagerstedt and this is The Essential Practice. Join me in greeting Paul Markarian.

Paul Markarian: Well, good afternoon, John.

Jon: You’ve done a lot of work and research around millennials and I know that you recently came across an article in the Financial Planning Association Magazine, the September edition, around recommendations for successfully hiring and retaining millennials.

Paul: Yes, Jon. I believe that this is a massive and influential group that financial firms have to take notice upon. And in the article “6 Recommendations for Successfully Hiring (and Retaining) Millennials,” written by Cynthia Joyce and Davis Barry, one thing that caught my eye was the last U.S. Census Bureau, in 2015, has this group as being the largest generation in the U.S. population.

Jon: You’ve hired many, many of these folks from this generation; what have been some of the challenges in hiring and retaining millennials?

Paul: One of the challenges that I’ve seen is offering up that work/life balance that they want to expect from an employer. I also think defining job expectations and really showing them what growth opportunities are all about.

Jon: What are some of the different strategies and techniques a hiring manager can take to try to uncover what a potential pitfall might be with a millennial team member?

Paul: For me, it’s always explaining the why, to clearly set the expectations for a team member so that they know all of their work is being recognized.

Jon: So recognition is a huge part, I would agree with that.  I wonder if there are some thoughts you have to have a more engaged millennial team member?

Paul: Some of the things, obviously, that may not be outside the box, but you can have a birthday lunch, happy hour gatherings, whether it’s a kickball team or softball team, and be able to build the camaraderie amongst the group; and they thrive in that type of an environment, where it’s more of a family-type setting.

Jon: What are some of the things that you would suggest financial advisors could do, hiring millennials into their practice, to help hopefully retain them to be long-term team members?

Paul: They could offer tuition reimbursement for pursuing other education designations, such as the CFA or the CFP.  These are obviously a way to engender loyalty for many millennial employees.

Jon: One of the other things that typically comes up during discussion and research around millennials is to have a little bit more flexibility in their lives. What are some other ideas you might share with financial advisors to help them have happy employees?

Paul: There’s obviously work from home options. I think paid maternity/paternity leave aligns well with most groups’ desires for family. And I feel as though being able to have a little bit of flexibility around the edges in the workday, whether it’s dropping children off at school, or even on the back end, being able to attend children’s sporting events and things like that.

Jon: So Paul, again, on the topic of millennials, one of the things that we often read about is their desire to be involved in their communities. I wonder if you have some words of wisdom or some advice you might provide a financial advisor as to how they can best engage this emotion of folks?

Paul: Thank you for bringing that up. They want to give back to their communities and they want to know that their time spent outside of the office is for the things that they want to give back to. So I think whether it’s volunteerism or any other types of community outreach that they’re able to do and benefit from, it’s something that I think is very impactful to what they want to do and they want their company to allow them that flexibility to have that type of volunteer time.

Jon: So if you could provide just your best piece of advice for a financial advisor building out their team and trying to bring in a younger generation, what would be that golden rule?

Paul: I would first say to understand the millennials and I think once you understand them, then you can start to build and formulate a plan around retaining them and recruiting them.

Jon: Is there a plan or a strategy that you think would be most successful?

Paul: I think it’s a blend and a mix of all these different types of approaches and there’s really no silver bullet, again, to recruit and retain these types of individuals. I think it’s always what your firm, the capabilities of what they can and cannot offer.

Jon: In summary, as I think about all the great advice that you’ve shared today, one of the things that I would encourage financial advisors to think about is how can you embed yourself into the millennial generation. Things along the lines of internships or some type of outreach that allows you to tap into the generation itself. And then once you’ve been lucky enough to secure the employment of one of these millennials, I think it makes a lot of sense to go ahead and think about creating milestones along the way. If you’re going to offer an advanced designation for one of these folks, it might make sense to go ahead and establish what that might look like for goal achievement at the six-month, the nine-month, the twelve-month, so on and so forth, time periods and celebrate those achievements as they move through that time with you. Until next time, I’m Jon Lagerstedt.

Paul: And I’m Paul Markarian.

Jon: And this is The Essential Practice.

This article originally appeared at the Wells Fargo AdvantageVoice Blog.

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