Fidelity teams with CFP Board on career center to bring students, firms together

Fidelity Investments is teaming with the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. to establish an online career center. The platform will provide job and internship listings as well as information about career management.
“It is designed to play a unique role to bring students together with firms,” said CFP Board chief executive Kevin Keller. “It will be a one-stop destination.”
The CFP Board sponsors 140 undergraduate financial planning programs at colleges and universities around the country. The career site, which is scheduled to go live on the CFP Board’s website in the first quarter of 2015 and have a smartphone application, will help students transition to a planning career. It will be a clearinghouse of sorts for companies and job seekers.
“We can help build that bridge from financial planning programs to practice, so that students can get the experience they need to get certified,” Mr. Keller said.
The announcement coincided with a study released Thursday by Fidelity Investments, Recruiting Redefined, which found that only two in 10 college students and young professionals were familiar with the advisory profession.
Investment advisory firms must change the perception among Generation Y that they’re stuck in the boiler-room era in order to recruit college graduates to fill positions in the aging profession, according to the study.
(Related: 5 lessons learned after one year running a financial planning firm)
Young people were turned off by hiring managers who focused on the sales aspects of an advice job. When presented with a hypothetical job description that muted the sales dimension and emphasized areas such as work-life balance and helping improve clients’ financial health, 51% of students and 40% of young professionals found the field more appealing.
The problem is not that young people aren’t interested in the field, according to Jylanne Dunne, senior vice president of practice management for Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services. It’s that they’re turned off by the rough-and-tumble sales world depicted by films such as “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
In reality, the more holistic approach to advice aligns with Gen Y values.
“There really is a good fit here between this young group looking for jobs and the adviser profession,” Ms. Dunne said. “But they didn’t understand this was a good fit for them. There needs to be a change in how the position is actually presented to the next generation of talent.”
When recruiting, advisers should stress skills such as the ability to communicate, empathize and work with clients.
“Articulating that to candidates, along with a solid career path … are key components of success in this redefinition of recruiting,” Ms. Dunne said.
The Fidelity study is based on four focus groups with 44 participants and four online surveys of 600 people. Participants included advisory firm hiring managers, newly minted financial advisers, students and career counselors, among others.
More findings from the study suggest advisers must change not only how they describe their profession but how they go about recruiting. Only 32% of firms work with campus career counseling offices. Yet the most influential people in a graduate’s job search are family, friends and professors.
Advisers should be guest lecturers and mentors in college programs, Ms. Dunne said.
“We suggest advisers become ambassadors of the profession,” she said. “There are a lot of opportunities for advisers to engage with schools.”
And advisory firms should look beyond campuses to related fields for new recruits. Instead of seeking only candidates from CFP programs, firms should recruit professionals in insurance and banking and provide a “pathway to [CFP] certification,” Fidelity said in a statement. The company said 95% of firms are hiring.
“This workforce development issue is huge,” said CFP Board’s Mr. Keller.
Ms. Dunne declined to say how much Fidelity is investing in the career center site.