In an effort to cut costs and save time, many advisory firms are deciding to forgo hiring summer interns this year.
“Normally, we have more internships than we can handle, but this year, we're not seeing people take on interns,” said Deena Katz, an associate professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, who is the internship coordinator in the school's Division of Personal Financial Planning.
“It's not just because advisory firms can't afford it; they don't have time to deal with it,” she said. “They feel like it's one more burden.”
Hiring and training an intern this year simply wasn't worth the added time and cost for Richard S. Kahler, whose Kahler Financial Group in Rapid City, S.D., manages $90 million in assets.
“It's a disruption to our team,” he said.
“When we have an intern, we really want one who's high-quality and a good fit. The reason not to hire an intern this year was based on economics,” Mr. Kahler said.
Financial Symmetry Inc. usually employs two interns year-round but this summer for the first time decided not to hire interns, because of the added costs, said Allison Berger, a certified financial planner with the Raleigh, N.C., firm, which manages $83 million in assets.
After a quick refresher, full-time staff members will be handling some of the data projects that summer interns typically did, she said.
“The rest of us have been picking up the tasks,” Ms. Berger said. “Sometimes we get in really good interns, and we get so used to them doing the data that we don't do it anymore.”
Ms. Berger said that she hopes her firm will be able to hire interns this fall or next year because putting interns in charge of routine tasks frees the rest of the staff to spend time with clients.
Fiduciary Solutions Inc. in Durham, N.C., which manages $25 million in assets, is another firm that won't be hiring interns this summer, because of the costs and training time involved, said Bedda D'Angelo, president.
“I love the energy and enthusiasm of interns, and they're very technically savvy,” she said.
That said, it often takes an entire internship period to acclimate an intern to a financial firm, Ms. D'Angelo said.
Some financial advisers, however, said that interns are vital to their firms, and feel that it is important to continue hiring them, especially as many interns often become full-time employees.
Jon P. Yankee, a partner at Fox Joss & Yankee LLC in Reston, Va., which manages about $200 million in assets, said he's hired two interns this summer and will keep its program going despite the down market.
“We've put a lot of energy into the whole hiring process and really developed a process for those we call "summer associates,'” he said.
Mr. Yankee said that the interns complete projects and prepare to be-come associate advisers.
“When we're looking to hire, former interns will have a leg up be-cause they'll know what we're like, and we'll know whether they fit into our culture,” he said.
Marc Schindler, owner of Pivot Point Advisors LLC in Bellaire, Texas, said that his firm will hire a summer intern this year to help with such administrative tasks as invitations to client events.
“We like interns very much,” said Mr. Schindler, whose firm manages $20 million in assets. “We find someone who is qualified and get them for a very good value.”
Advisers who hire interns must make sure the interns can complete the tasks at hand, said Jane M. Young, a CFP with Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Pinnacle Financial Concepts Inc., a fee-only advisory firm that doesn't manage discretionary assets.
“An intern we hired just didn't have the experience we needed. They tried really hard, but they would have been more effective at something else,” Ms. Young said.
E-mail Lisa Shidler at [email protected].
