Interview Part 1 - Job Getting or Job Giving?

The interview at the Financial Adviser (FA) firm or the Life Insurance (LI) firm will be one of the easiest interviews in your life.

When you go there, you won't need to worry at all about making a good impression and selling yourself to the interviewer.

I have seen people turning up for the interview in t-shirt and jeans. The next thing I know they end up as advisors in the firm.

In fact before you've even stepped into their office, you have already nailed the interview.

Why?

As long as you are 21 years old and above, have at least 4 credits in GCE 'O' levels, you're not an undischarged bankrupt, have not committed a criminal offence and MOST importantly, you can breathe, you are guaranteed a place.

Although some places have marketed themselves as highly exclusive, accepting polytechnic and university graduates only, one can guarantee they will not turn you away. 

It is getting harder and harder to recruit new people into financial advisory firms and insurance agencies. 

The only times when financial advisory firms and insurance agencies can see a spike in recruitment is during recession periods when firms from other industries are not hiring and retrenching.

When you arrive at the interview, although you will be asked the usual cheesy interview questions at first, you do not have to take the Q&A as life and death.

Those questions are asked to kill some time first. 

You don't have to sound smart. It wouldn't matter at all. 

In fact the questions are simply a build up for the interviewer to sell you the career.

Truth be told, the interviewer has more reasons to be more nervous than you are. 

He has to close cases too, and you are a case to be closed. 

If he lets you slip away, in the next manager's meeting he has to face the embarassment of explaining to his other fellow managers why you didn't join this career in the end or why you ended up with another firm. 

So when you are going for the interview with the financial advisory firm or insurance agency you can just sit back and relax.

Typically, the interviewer is also the manager who is recruiting you. He/she will be your manager if you join.

The truth is, you're not interviewing for a job.

You are being interviewed to become your recruiter's boss.

When you join, you're going to pay for a part of your manager's salary and a part of the directors' salaries.

This is how it works:

As a financial advisor you meet clients. Close cases. Bring in money.

Company takes a cut. Manager takes a cut. 

You take the leftover of what you brought in.

Without you in the equation, company doesn't get paid, manager doesn't get paid either.

So that explains why they are always so nice and patient and keep wanting you to go for the interview even if you can't make it on certain dates. 

However, the same nice and patient attitude isn't always replicated after you have joined the firm and settled in.

However remember that without an additional you, there is NO increment to their salaries.

As a financial advisor or insurance agent, you are powerful. You pay other people's salaries first before you get paid your own salary. In some financial advisory firms, you are even paying for the office building rental. 

If you are at a firm that practices a top down approach to advisors, remember, the power is really bottom up.

Now on to the next part of the interview.