Hire Slow, Fire Fast
One common mistake: hiring somebody just like you. “I’ve learned that when you have two people who are alike, one of them isn’t necessary,” says Gitterman. Instead of “clones,” he says, he prefers “complementary styles”—matching a strong salesperson with an analytical whiz, for instance, to fill a deficiency and enhance the senior advisor’s business model. “The junior person has to have a different skill set so the senior advisor can spend more time doing what he or she is best at,” says Gitterman.

Even with this intensive process, you can’t completely rule out the occasional failure. “In the past, we might find two weeks in that all of a sudden the trainee isn’t shaving before coming to work, or the suit he or she wore on the interview is the only suit that person owns,” Gitterman says.

Rather, what you want is someone who fits with your firm’s culture and is motivated to become a full-fledged team member. Needless to say, these qualities don’t necessarily show up on a résumé—or even in a few initial interviews. “Ideally, it’s someone who understands our business and gives us a strong feeling that he or she is committed to it,” says Stephen Fordyce, another partner/director/advisor at Snowden Lane. “We need to know that the person is on board with our work ethic, our thought processes.”

A Learning Curve
It’s different for small firms than it is for their Wall Street counterparts. Snowden Lane’s Fordyce and Guth used to work together at Merrill Lynch. “At the Merrills of the world, the office manager has a budget that he or she is tasked to spend,” says Guth. “There’s really no penalty if a new hire doesn’t work out. For us, though, bringing somebody on is a huge risk.”

No matter how experienced the new employee, expect to devote time and resources to training. “Advisors should not assume that the people they bring on are fully trained or even have the same work habits,” says A.J. Sohn, managing director at Antaeus Wealth Advisors in Boxborough, Mass.

This may sound obvious, but Sohn contends that advisors are busy people and may be impatient. That’s why they’re hiring someone new, after all—to help with the workload. “We might want to offload things quickly, but it’s crucial to plan for training,” he emphasizes.

For Sohn, the best way to introduce associates to his firm’s standard of excellence is to pair them with senior advisors. “The trainee will go to every meeting with that senior advisor for at least six months and often a year,” he says. An added benefit: It enables you to introduce your clients to the trainee, to ease a future transition.