Despite the dearth of internship positions in the financial planning field, there are firms that have been running such programs successfully for a number of years.

At Legend Financial Advisors Inc. in Pittsburgh, internship programs have been in existence since the firm's founding in 1994.

The firm has hired about 47 interns during that time, says Lou Stanasolovich, Legend's president and CEO. All potential interns, he says, go through the same hiring process that any other job candidate goes through, including two interviews, drug tests and a background check. The benefit, as he sees it, is mutual. The firm, he says, gets workers who are eager to learn and gain experience, as well as potential full-time employees. The interns, after 15 to 18 months working at the firm with an average wage of $7 per hour, can walk into job interviews with practical experience. "We are a tough shop to work for," he says. "We're very demanding, and frankly, we would put up our interns against any college student in terms of work ethic."

The firm mainly gets its interns by attending job fairs at local colleges and universities. No local institutions have an undergraduate degree program in financial planning, so interns have come from various finance-related programs, Stanasolovich says. The firm also lists internship openings on job listing Web sites. Three years ago, the firm started hiring marketing interns, and also has instituted a program that pays interns a $100 bonus if they recruit an intern themselves.

Last year, the firm received 200 resumes for two financial planning intern positions, he says.

Since it started taking interns, about ten eventually were hired for full-time positions, Stanasolovich says.

"The most valuable aspect of internships is the opportunity to see a potential core staff employee in action," he says. "We can have a first-hand view of their work habits and overall fit within our organization."

Linda Tarbox, president of Tarbox Equity Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif., has been working with interns for the past ten years as part of her role as a teacher in the financial planning program at the University of California at Irvine. During that time she's seen a dramatic increase in the number of financial planning firms that have created internship positions. "In the beginning, we had a lot more interns than potential sponsors," says Tarbox. "Now it's quite the opposite."

Among the reasons firms have been hesitant about taking interns are concerns about how much training a program requires, whether the training time is worth the benefits and, to some extent, a concern about whether students should be given access to private client information. The tradeoff between training requirements and the benefits of having an intern are judgments that have to be made by each individual firm, she says. But she adds that one of the most important things an intern gets out of working in a financial planning firm is just watching planners in action. This is something Tarbox learned herself when she fretted over whether she was giving one of her interns enough work. "She kind of sat me down and said, 'If I could just sit and listen to you, I will learn so much,'" Tarbox says. As for the confidentiality of client information, she says, it's routine to have interns sign a confidentiality agreement.

Advisors considering an internship program should start the process by contacting local colleges and universities to find out what type of financial programs they may have, those involved in the programs say. The depth of programs will vary by institution, as will the existence of a formal process for recruiting interns.