Getting a Job in Wealth Management

Note: it's nothing like this movie or the Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short. Don't get your hopes up.

I wrote this piece because I'm often asked something like, "my grandchild is thinking about pursuing a career in wealth management," and my response isn't as sharp as it should be. Here’s a better attempt.

Thinking about a career in wealth management? Here's what I think you should know.

You need to write well and speak well, so take courses in public speaking, creative writing, professional writing, and English. Establishing your own "written voice" is worth more than any slop an LLM will generate for you. And if you can get ahs, uhs, ums, likes, and you knows out of your speech you’ll be better than most.

Be an even better reader and listener. Read as much fiction and non-fiction as you can. And not just finance and economics because most things in finance and economics are multidisciplinary, so take courses in history, English literature, theatre, and anything else you’re interested in.

And when I say listener, I don't mean a listener of podcasts (i.e., one, two, or plenty of people waxing poetic to each other about how smart they are). I mean a listener of people. Listen to people for the sole purpose of listening, not responding. You need to be able to look someone in the eye, listen to their every word, and not interrupt them. Get used to the awkward two-second pauses in the conversation (I'm still working on this). And please – please! – don’t interrupt people.

Understand body language and facial expressions. This skill is so important. I can’t stress it enough because it'll help you spot and then weed out the bullsh*tters, tire kickers, liars, and people who care only about themselves.

Don't worry about knowing everything there is to know about finance or economics. No one can predict the future, but you wouldn’t believe that with how finance and economics are taught. And wealth management is rife with professionals whose job is to consolidate all the things you might need to know about finance and economics each day into one- or two-page summaries. Take the introductory courses – understanding supply and demand and time value of money is important – but you don’t need to go further than that.

Know a ton about history in general and economic history in particular. Showing people what happened in the past is all you can do, so the sooner you learn about the past, the better you'll be in the present. I'm biased. I can't stand prophets. But I'll be impressed if you can tell me a story about the '73-'74 bear market with me hanging on your every word.

Know basic tax accounting and law. This is important and it's boring. Tax rates, tax deductions, tax credits, corporate tax rules – you need to know it all. You also need to know how things could affect people if they die, become incapacitated, or divorced. Or if their business partner (or child or parent) tries to screw them over.

But you can't behave like most lawyers. This job isn't about being right or winning. It's about knowing when you're wrong and that you're not playing a win/lose game. Your job is to keep people on the straight and narrow for their entire lives. It's not about proving to people (or your competitors) that you're right and they're wrong. If you win, they’re a loser. And no one wants to work with someone who thinks they’re a loser.

You must have a solid understanding of statistics and algebra. If you can’t solve for X, you won’t last more than a week in wealth management. But you’ll always have a BA II Plus calculator nearby. You need to know how to use it but don’t worry about doing math on the fly. And if someone talks about distributions, standard deviations, and skew you need to know what they’re talking about.

But know this: when someone tells you they “ran the numbers” they didn’t do much.

And a solid understanding of behavioural finance is a must. Fear and fear of missing out are two emotions you'll deal with daily. The sooner you learn how to show (not tell) people about their behavioral biases the better you'll be. Know the emotional biases and the cognitive errors.

And never be afraid to share the biases you suffer from. I suffer from representativeness and I know it. And now you do too.

Most importantly, you need solid customer service skills. September 7th, 2010, was my first day in the call centre in Toronto. About thirty minutes into orientation one of the supervisors – her name was Denise and she was great – asked who had experience working in a restaurant. There were about twenty of us in the room and most of our hands went up.

"Then you already know this: people have a high expectation when it comes to food, but they have an even higher expectation when it comes to their money. Don't mess up because people will take their emotions out on you. Money going out late is worse than food showing up cold. If you mess up, do everything you can to fix it – even if you aren’t the one to blame – and do it quickly. And never leave people hanging." She was right. She also didn’t use the word ‘mess.’

Finally, if you’re gearing up for a job interview in wealth management, I’d suggest giving this list a read a few times. And then try to remember these three things for the interview: look up the person interviewing you so you can stroke their ego a lot; answer simple questions with longer stories and answer complicated questions with shorter ones; and don’t fall into the trap if they ask you a question about the future – they don’t know the answer and neither do you – so tell them something about history.