If It Looks Like a Duck, Walks Like a Duck, Quacks like a Duck.......

It used to be that is was a duck. Nowadays, don't be so certain.

There was a time when a people in the trust industry were Trustees, Trust Officers/Managers, Trust Advisers, Fiduciary Services, etc.. Lawyers were Trust or Estates Counsel. Accountants were Tax & Trust, etc.......basically the words: "trust" or "fiduciary" appeared in the title somewhere.

Nowadays, the buzz word is: "Wealth". People in the trust business are now Wealth Planners, Wealth Relationship Managers, Wealth Management or anything that doesn't truly describe what they do. Has the word "trust" evolved into a negative? I guess so and many organisations avoid using it in describing roles or personnel in fear it invokes a negative reaction like "used car" or "insurance" salesman. The PC answer is of course, trust is just a part of our holistic wealth creation and protection strategies and we offer more than just trusts.

For job hunters, it means a lot more keywords to type in the search field and time interpreting what the hell the role is.

For recruiters it means a lot more remotely and marginally qualified applicants flooding your inbox. If you cast a wide enough net then you'll drag in flotsam and jetsam as well as your prized big fish. Then again, use the wrong bait and you end up with nothing.

Should you find a duck out of the flock of birds, you still need to discern which pond that duck came from. Read my blogs on the trust providers (lawyers, accountants & CoSecs, Bank and Independent trustees - yes, I'm still working on the 4th and 5th installments) to gain insight on what these people and organisations actually do.

God help you distinguish between one firms' O, SO, AH, DH, H, EH, AVP, VP, SVP, EVP, AD, D, SD, ED, MD or even EMD from another's AM, M or SM. I've seen people with 3-years experience get Senior Manager titles. I seen people with 6-years get Executive Director titles. I've seen people with 18-years experience carry a Senior Vice President title. These initials have as much meaning as their high school alegbra results. I'd ignore them if I were you, can't tell much about a book from its cover.

Candidates have the natural incentive to exaggerate (or even fib) about responsibilities, tasks, or duties. It's the job of the hiring manager to put those into context and relevance.

For instance, do you know which trust providers in Hong Kong or Singapore actually have their own onshore trust administration departments? Do you know which ones send everything to their Cayman or Jersey trust operations? Do you which ones subcontract out? Was your candidate really performing trust administration or was he/she merely a carrier pigeon sending files back and forth? Can a Wealth Planner ever become Head of Trust or manage a P+L if all they did was marketing? Can a Trust Administrator handle marketing and business development if there was a Wealth Planning group in that company that took all the leads in the pipeline? Where were the leads coming from? A gift horse from the private bank or laborious mining of the intermediaries? Does this lawyer really have years of PQE in private clients/trusts work or did he/she just happen to work on a few trust cases over the years? Will your candidate understand bespoked, customised solutions when his previous employer only had a 3 trust packages to market?

Fail to ask the right questions or get the answers wrong and you end up having roasted peking chicken or duck cacciatore. Usually costly, not necessarily fatal still not what you ordered. Could leave a bad taste in your mouth too. There are cases where it all works out, but more often then not, you're recruiting in a few months time, again.

Not all ducks are created equal. Not all duck ponds are the same.

Best of luck in this year's duck hunting season.