Resilience and Strategy: Alex Russon hiring pointers

To give enhanced context and insight to our 2022 Salary Survey, we asked our Associate Directors to give us their key take-outs and perspectives from the year in business, and to reflect on the hiring trends that they foresee continuing to impact the market in the year ahead. Read on for Alex Russon’s take-outs from the Financial Services sector.

Key Take-Outs

• Companies need to be flexible around offering hybrid working
• Clients are acting faster in the recruitment process, sometimes only having one interview
• Teams calls are now the preferred way to interview
• More and more companies are offering better benefit packages including unlimited holidays, boosted pension packages, extra holiday for birthdays, wellbeing packages and employee listening programs
• Experienced and qualified paraplanners are hard to find and in demand
• Candidates want clearly mapped career development and training
• Abundance of jobs available, and companies are keener than ever to find the top talent

The financial services and wealth management sector is well versed in adaptive management having evolved and changed over the years through legislative and regulatory changes.

Firms have had to work quickly and have proved their resilience by adapting to new ways of working. It’s been impressive to see how new processes, procedures, and strategies have been incorporated and it has become clear that increasingly candidates want to know how a company’s culture and vision align with the entire sector’s interest in sustainable investing.

The use of technology has been embraced and embedded. Many of these changes look set to remain firmly in place for the future as the benefits of hybrid working have become clear for many businesses and clients alike.

Companies looking to attract younger candidates and certainly the next generation of talented paraplanners’ need to build the company’s vision and ethical policies into the company information that’s available to search online. We are increasingly seeing candidates ask about approaches to health and wellbeing as part of employment benefits packages. We are also seeing more paraplanners who want a route into advice and companies need to be transparent about the steps successful candidates can make to secure a longer term successful career with them.

There is a shortage of experienced professional paraplanners, and firms must be able to offer not just excellent salaries and benefits, but clear options for career development into advisory roles in order to recruit top talent.

Download your 2022 Salary Survey today

Alex Russon
Associate Director of Financial Services