It takes talent to find talent

Well with the winds of economic change starting to blow, rumors are rampant about new hiring, bottoming out, expansion, etc.

For all you recruiting and recruiters out there, remember, it takes talent to find talent. Trust work is a speciality and unless you hire specialists, you will suffer for it, sooner or later.

You don't use a football coach to help find you basketball players. Just like a fixed-income guy is not the one who is best to assess your prime brokerage guy. Don't be fooled by generalities, otherwise you will have hired a gynecologist to be your neurosurgeon just because he/she was a learned and licensed....."doctor". After all, they both possess roughly the same qualifications and have similar skill sets but who do you want working on your brain?

Obviously, not every one doing the hiring is a trust specialist so what can you do? Hire a consultant! Sometimes a few beers and a dinner will get you a qualified opinion [My going rate is a 4-course meal at either the Four Seasons or Mandarin Oriental, wine excluded as I need to appear sober]. Other times, just pay a noted trust person or firm, a hour or two of their hourly rate to scan the 2 or 3 short-listed candidates' CV and come up with a few "to-the-bone" interview questions for you. If you're big enough, come up with a test. I know of at least 1 law firm that has a basic competency test it developed for a trustee client.

Look at the damage of a poor hire. Upfront you have more HR costs when you need to replace them. More of your time and energy (as well as everyone else who helps recruiting) wasted. Another Headhunter and their 3-month trailer.

Ongoing, it may cost you the respect of your team, your colleagues, your internal clients, your institution's reputation, your reputation as well as the client or any potential referrals from them. Every minute this person is on company premises he/she is poisoning your staff and colleagues. Every client this person meets could end up being a contingent lawsuit. Every industry has its "lepers": people that appear competent and may even have a reputation as an expert but behind their back, people laugh at them, no one gives them referrals, no one wants to work with them and their staff are running off like rats from a sinking ship. All it takes is a few discrete phone calls and you may have saved yourself a major headache.

With the trust business, a lot of the problems of a poor hire may not turn up for years. A few favorites from due diligence reviews I've done: A low-level manager stole a trust deed from his former employer, an international trust company, when he started a new job as "Head of Trusts" with a 3rd-tier bank trust company. However, when "reformatting" the template for his new employer, certain clauses were accidently deleted. Just too lazy or ignorant or technically-challenged to go through that 25-page document. Who knows how many trusts were created with an "incomplete" deed? Who knows if and when this may come back to haunt them and their clients? What's the cost of fixing this little oversight?? This is the price you pay when you hire someone too junior for his responsibilities. Anyone with a few year's experience can talk-the-talk but can they really walk-the-walk?? Only a pro knows.

Then there was this ethically-challenged as well as technically-challenged (non-US tax) lawyer wrote in the file upon creation of a trust years ago of which I was reviewing: "I advised Ms X to use her sister, a non-US person, to create the trust and therefore avoid US taxation under the grantor trust rules". Nothing better to plan tax evasion (poorly I might add) but also to document it so all can understand the exact purpose of the fraud being perpetrated. How many other cases has this person botched? So, do you call the client now to say you f**ked up and risk public embarrassment or a civil suit? Will it look good when your staff are prosecuted? Does your institution want to go through a lengthy UBS vs IRS type battle? How long and how many accompliances will you need to keep things hush-hush? The price you pay when you hire the wrong specialist.

These are just bad hires from a technical-qualification standpoint. Use your uncommon common sense to avoid those who may abuse their position like recent headliners Ronnie Wong [ex-Goldman Sachs] or Cheuk Sau-Yee [ex-Hang Sang Bank].

For those looking for work, try assessing the knowledge of your prospective boss and colleagues before you sign the employment contract. Ask about tenure, experience and qualifications of those you work with. Any firm with a revolving door and unqualified/under qualified department heads are a sign of trouble. Of course you should know where the lepers are at all times.

Here is a perfect example of a large, reputable, albeit clueless recruiter being lead by a clueless employer that will end up with a clueless employee creating clueless trusts which means a bright future for some clued-in litigators [name of the recruiter has been changed to protect the guilty]:

[Edit: I saw a revised verson of the ad but this was the original, verbatim]

1. Horrible grammar/typos/language through out. Why bother paying the search firm if they won't even bother presenting a clear advert? "servicing existing sophisticate clients of the company" Huh?? Who but clients of the company are we to service??? "Sophisticate" That is a verb, no?
2. "providing the most efficient and tax-effective structures to maximize returns." "maximize returns"??? Noble goal in establishing a trust/structure no? Why not just hire an investment guy and buy accumulators with the trust fund?
3. "You will help in the incorporation in Hong-Kong or more than 30 offshore jurisdictions." Utterly meaningless sentence, but the ICSA requirement farther below tells you that your also going to be the Company Secretarial sales manager too. Granted the industries are inter-related but should your neurosurgeon also be pitching ladies for smears? How many OB Gyn's know about neurosurgery? So why expect so much from your Chartered Sec???
4. "Acting as a legal referee" WTF?!!?!?! Now you have you CoSec/Trust Sales person doing arbitration? For whom? Not sure I like a firm where disputes are so common that it forms part of my job description. So where do you find a ex-judge, with a CoSec qualification that wants to sell trusts?
5. "Legal or tax background" Shouldn't this be a given?? Regardless, I already went through the doctor example and that applies here. Not every accountant/lawyer is as qualified to handle trust work as one might think. Not every lawyer or accountant is qualified to handle "tax-effective" planning as one may think. Appears these guys have never heard of the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners? Then again, a TEP guy isn't qualified to do everything either. Aren't there qualifications to being a "legal referee"?
6. So here is an employer that thinks someone with "Sales skills, excellent presentation and outspoken" can sell anything right? Unfortunately they will, and at the same time will also mis-sell.......Lehman mini bonds anyone? They better hope that their clients or their high priced attorneys are not all that "sophisticate".
7. "Experience within a Private Practice will be highly welcome, Trust company or a bank " Clearly shows that they're reaching for anyone from anywhere.

So in conclusion, we have a worthless recruiter who is merely posting positions as written by the client - absolutely no value added in terms of industry insight or presentation or well planned search. We have a employer that thinks it knows the holes it needs to fill but using a scatter-shot and jack-of-all-trades approach which will end up not satisfying any of their original goals. We have recruits that will be jerked around having to do things they weren't expecting or qualified to do. Nice recipe for disaster.

Bottom line: if this hire isn't good enough to handle the CoSec, Trust sales, efficient, tax-effective, return maximising, legal referee aspects of the job, then what? Who suffers?

Private Clients Sales Manager - Trust

• Our client is one of the leading trust and fiduciary services group supporting high net worth individuals, corporations and intermediaries all over the world. As part of their expansion plan they are actively looking today for a Private clients Sales Manager to join their team.

Your role :

You will be in charge of servicing existing sophisticate clients of the company and perform active business development duties by providing the most efficient and tax-effective structures to maximize returns.

You will help in the incorporation in Hong-Kong or more than 30 offshore jurisdictions, provide corporate nominee directors and shareholders, provide company secretarial services, establish banking relationships in HK with some of the world’s most recognized financial institutions, etc.

Acting as a legal referee and also as Private Clients Sales manager you will be in charge of :

-Developing the business by attracting new clients

-Cross-selling with the existing clients

-Managing the existing team

Profile :

-Sales skills, excellent presentation and outspoken

-Excellent written and spoken English and Mandarin (essential)

-Legal or tax background

-ICSA qualification holder

-Experience within a Private Practice will be highly welcome, Trust company or a bank

Applicants please send your resume together with present and expected salary to EMINEM.hk Candidates not contacted within 4 weeks may consider their application for this role unsuccessful. Unless advised otherwise, unsuccessful candidates will be kept on file for future job opportunities. Your application may be forwarded to other international plc offices for recruitment purposes.

Personal data collected will be used for recruitment related purposes only and all personal data of applicants will be kept in strict accordance to the Personal Data Privacy Ordinance.