Recruiting Wealth Planning Analysts

Over the past two months, we underwent the process of recruiting for two wealth planning analysts at our firm. We’ve written about our recruiting and hiring process before, so you can see how we’ve hired for other positions in prior blogs. We won’t do a write-up every time we hire someone at MY Wealth Planners, but we do think it’s important and useful information both for our clients and community to understand how we think about the process of onboarding key professionals to our firm, and there’s useful context for both aspiring financial planners and other financial planning firm owners to see how this process works at Longmont’s largest local fee-only financial planning firm.

The Job Posting

Below follows the actual job posting, along with a shorter summary and commentary to follow (so you can skip past if you don’t want to read it all):

Summary

MY Wealth Planners® is hiring two Financial Planning Analysts. These are entry-level in-person positions in the financial services industry in Longmont, CO, with a start date for one position on January 5th, 2026, and the second on June 1st, 2026. 

A financial planning analyst is a financial planner in training, primarily supporting the firm’s financial planners in financial plan development and client service tasks. This includes client document review, financial plan data entry and scenario modeling, and investment account administrative tasks. Financial planning analysts will attend meetings with planners to take notes and engage in follow-up tasks such as updating client relationship management software and providing recap emails to clients. The position is expected to staff hours from 8:30 am through 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday, with moderate work volume. A candidate for this position is intended to be promoted to a Series 65 securities licensed associate financial planner after one year.*

Compensation

• Salary: $56,485.00 – $62,394.58 based on relevant experience**
  • Payscales are adjusted for inflation annually in December, and final offers will be adjusted upward at that time
  • *Associate financial planner pay range $77,049.85-$84,268.29
  • **Candidates with the CFP® Certification or comparable alternative receive a 20% premium enhancement to their base salary, above the stated range
• After 90 Days:
  • Quarterly Gainshare Bonus Eligibility based on company profitability
  • 401(k) with a 6% Match
  • Health Insurance (Gold-Tier Plan) 100% paid by Employer, with the option to add family members at Employee’s cost
  • Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flex Spending Accounts (FSA)
  • Vision & Dental insurance 99% paid by Employer, with the option to add family members at Employee’s cost
  • Life, Long-Term, and Short-Term Disability Insurance 100% paid by Employer
  • 21-26 Holidays per year (25 Scheduled in 2026)
  • Unlimited Vacation Policy
  • Paid Medical, Jury, Military Service, and Bereavement Leave
  • Continuing Education Budget for specified courses and certifications
• After One Year: 6 Months Paid Paternity & Maternity Leave
• Paid Sabbatical every 5th Employment Anniversary
• Partnership opportunities after 10 years
• Additional Information:
  • Link to What it’s like to Work at MY Wealth Planners
  • Link to our full Employee Benefits Guide

Common Tasks

• Supports senior team members by creating financial plans and preparing materials needed for client meetings and follow-ups
• Attends client meetings and takes extensive notes
• Fills out necessary forms for opening or maintaining accounts
• Maintains information in the Advyzon CRM system
• Sets up and retrieves reports in the portfolio management systems (Advyzon, Charles Schwab)
• Assists in generating performance and other reports
• Processes move money requests at a licensed planner’s direction
• Fills out necessary forms for opening or maintaining accounts at a licensed planner’s direction
• Participates in the firm’s marketing activities, such as podcast production and public events
• Performs ad hoc tasks in support of firm operations

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree OR 1 Year of Position or Equivalent Experience
  • Pending graduates for the Fall semester 2025 or the Spring semester 2026 are welcome to apply for the respective January and June start dates
• Speak, read, and write English
• Able to lift and carry up to 15 lbs

Preferred Qualifications

• Upbeat and personable
• Graduate of an accounting, finance, or personal financial planning program
• Prior completion of CFP® Certification courses via certificate or degree program
• Proficient with basic PC and Microsoft Office Software, including:
  • Word
  • Excel
  • Outlook
• Experience with Advyzon, yCharts, eMoney, and/or Holistiplan
• Interest or background in financial services as a career path

Hiring Process

As this position is on our lead planner and partner career track, we are extremely thorough in our selection of candidates, and it is a possibility that no one will be hired or only one candidate will be hired during this round of search. We are serious about onboarding A+ candidates, not settling for B+ candidates. We encourage anyone to apply, but apologize in advance that we will be slow to hire and discerning in our evaluation of candidates.

Each step after the first should be considered as if moving forward. We will never ghost a candidate and will always provide positive confirmation that you are moving forward or have been declined at a certain stage. Below are the steps of the hiring process:

• Submit your application between October 22nd – November 14th. Note:

• • Applications should include a resume and cover letter in .pdf format; no other formats are acceptable. Resumes and cover letters should not exceed one page each, for a total of two pages. Those who thoroughly read this job posting should include the phase “old fashioned” in their cover letter and specify whether they are applying for the January start date, June start date, or if both, which is preferred; and only if not thoroughly read (e.g., AI generated or template-based), should discuss your excitement to work with a leading and innovative company like MY Wealth Planners.
  • We often receive several hundred applications for positions at the firm, and if overwhelmed by interest, we may close the application window early and with limited notice on the job postings. Thus, applying with a sense of urgency is important.
  • We will notify applicants not invited to move forward within a few days of applying; we believe in open and clear communication with all applicants to the firm.

• If selected as a candidate of interest, you will be asked to submit a video no longer than 5 minutes, introducing yourself. Your introduction video should be a link to the video, not sent as a file, and include:

• • One minute on your background and yourself.
  • Why you want to work in-person at MY Wealth Planners specifically.
  • Your understanding of our business model.
  • An explanation on a financial planning topic, to be described with the invitation to submit a video.

• If selected to interview, interview by November 20th with the MY Wealth Planners team. If local, in person. For those applying from greater than 100 miles away, a Zoom interview will be permitted, but a final candidate will be invited to meet in person before being given a final offer letter. Transportation and accommodations will be paid for in such a case.
• Final selection of a candidate for the January position will be made no later than November 30th, and final selection of a candidate for the June position will be made no later than December 12th. All candidates not selected will also be notified by these dates, though candidates who are not a fit may be notified earlier.
• Tentative offer made, and background check performed.
• Offer made and accepted no later than December 10th for the January Position and December 19th for the June position.
• Start Date: January 5th, 2026 or June 1st, 2026.

About MY Wealth Planners

MY Wealth Planners was the first locally founded CFP® Professional-owned fee-only financial planning firm in Longmont, CO, and is Longmont’s first Certified B Corp. Established in 2015, MY Wealth Planners serves approximately 196 households and small businesses in the northern Front Range area, providing comprehensive financial planning, investment management, and employee benefits consulting services.

Commentary on the Job Posting

That’s all quite a bit, but useful context for those wanting the full story. To summarize the basic elements of emphasis: We were looking to hire two planning analysts, one in January and one in June. It’s an entry level position that’s salaried. This is noteworthy because the vast majority of entry-level positions in the financial planning world are 1099 contractor sales roles for insurance and brokerage firms looking to sell life insurance or investment products as the core means of revenue. By contrast, our position focuses largely on technical skills and trainability for a relationship-managing financial planner role within the firm, as we’ve done with past planner-track hires.

In terms of the hiring process, we effectively had a three-stage process from the candidate side: submit an application conforming to instructions, submit a video, have an interview. We’ll now go on to discuss the aggregate candidate pool, and what we saw occur, both bad and good, in each of the application and vetting stages.

Information on the Applicant Pool

Our total applicant pool included a rather diverse set of applicants, including some groups we have not previously experienced significant interest from in prior hiring periods.

Total Applicant Pool

• Gender (assumed from gender presentation norms or etymology of first names)
  • Male: 70.83%
  • Female: 29.17%
• Race (assumed from the Etymology of names, which does lend itself to greater potential for inaccuracy, so take these figures with a grain of salt)
  • Caucasian: 34%
  • Black or African American: 1.4%
  • Asian: 22.2%
  • Indian: 34.7%
  • Hispanic/Latino: 4.9%
  • Middle Eastern: 2.8%
• Education (explicitly shared in resumes)
  • Degree in Financial Planning: 18.07%
  • Degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, or Economics: 56.25%
  • Degree in Unrelated Field: 10.41%
  • No Degree: 15.27%

There are some particular items of interest in the application group. First, the gender division between men and women appears unequal at face value. Some educated guesses on this relate to statistical norms in business schools and financial programs; for example, the division of men and women at CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business is about 4:1 male to female. This is a common ratio. In turn, the financial industry’s male-to-female representation is typically somewhere similar. However, in the world of financial planning, women have been making steady gains in representation. Women now make up 23.8% of CFP® Professionals; still far from gender parity, but this has been a slow-and-steady area of improvement for over a decade since it became a priority among the professional associations and the CFP Board.

Another interesting observation was the substantial amount of applications we received from Asian and Indian applicants, far in excess of both our historical norms as well as national representativeness. We identified the catalyst for this during the hiring and recruitment process. When we initially shared the job posting to platforms within industry (i.e., CFP Board, FPA, and NAPFA Boards) and external to industry (i.e., LinkedIn, Indeed, etc.), we posted the job as “Financial Planning Analyst” rather than “Wealth Planning Analyst” to help the job posting better conform to industry norms where terminology like “Financial Planner” is more common than “Wealth Planner”. However, the keywords “financial” and “analyst” drove a substantial number of applicants with degrees or experience in business analytics and quantitative analysis to our job posting. With further research, we realized that quantitative business and quantitative finance degrees are considered priority STEM degrees for H-1 B applications and for F-1 visa holders seeking to study and work in the United States. Thus, early in our recruitment process, we received substantial interest from candidates seeking work, but also, importantly, jobs that improve their odds in the H-1 B lottery system. Inadvertently, the term “financial planning analyst” also drove some candidates seeking more traditional accounting “FP&A” positions.

Filtering Applications down to Video Candidates

With 144 applications, you might imagine we’d use a tool or AI to help parse resumes. This has never been the way at MY Wealth Planners; we’ve always made a point of reviewing every application manually and assessing via a rubric process. This hiring round was no different. Our primary filters were similar to past filters:

• Locality: If located in Longmont or within 20-30 minutes commute, candidates received top marks. Locality has always been a practical element in hiring for us, if only because it reduces the potential for relocation costs, and it’s more likely that a candidate will be happy living and working where they already live and work or otherwise chose to go to school.
• Experience: An ideal candidate would already have experience in a financial planning firm whether through work or internship. Credit was also given for experience in finance. Lower scores were given for work experience in general, with no experience at all receiving the lowest marks.
• Education: Because we were focused on hiring folks with financial education or the financial planning knowledge set already in place, top scores went to those with degrees in financial planning or who had already completed or otherwise were involved in the CFP® Certificant education. Finance, business, economics, and accounting degrees followed up. General degrees tailed those, and having no degree or otherwise being unqualified resulted in negative points in our rubric.
• Verifiably Real: This appears to be a strange dimension, but it’s actually one of the most helpful. Candidates submit resumes, which are unverified claims of their work and educational experience. Yet, people are much less likely to lie in publicly available mediums where their professional peers can call out inaccuracies. Further, other social media presences are helpful in understanding the candidate’s situation, personality, and so on, and sometimes can be helpful in identifying problematic issues, e.g. inappropriate online behavior.
• Shown Interest: Historically, this has been “bonus points” territory for us. However, this time it was an important element of the application. We had seen in previous hiring rounds that AI and templates were more frequently used for cover letters. While we understand the practicality of doing so, we wanted to ensure our candidates were the types of people to have attention to detail and thoroughly could review instructions and follow them. Specifically, we included two instructions for the cover letter (which you’ve seen if you read the job description above): Tell us which of the two start dates you’re interested in, and include the phrase “old fashioned” in your cover letter.

So what were the results? 58 of the 144 applicants actually read the directions and followed them. Of the 58 applicants, 55 were both direction-following and well qualified enough to move on to the video applications.

Video Applications

We adopted a video application process as an intermediary between the paper application and an interview for a few reasons in this hiring round. Typically, when hiring for other positions, we’ve elected to interview only ten candidates. However, we recognize that doing so is an artificial constraint; you could have only four folks actually ready to interview and waste your time with six, and conversely, you could have fifteen folks who would interview well, but you artificially cut them off. The video applications served to give us a better gauge for a candidate’s ability to prepare and follow through with a specific and directed task, while having a decent amount of time to complete the task, as well as an “open-book” sort of assignment.

The instructions sent to candidates were as follows:

Thank you for applying to our Wealth Planning Analyst position. We’re interested in learning more about you! Please record a video no longer than 5 minutes, with the following items highlighted below, and send us a link to watch. Please submit your video no later than [3 full business days later, at 5pm on the 3^rd day.]

Some additional information for your submission is below the submission guidelines.

Submission Guidelines

1. Tell us about yourself! (1 Minute~)
2. Why you want to work in-person at MY Wealth Planners, specifically. (1 Minute~)
3. Your understanding of our business model. (1 Minute~)
4. Provide step-by-step guidance on how Sarah, in the case study below, can complete a Roth contribution, and describe any planning considerations that could affect her decision to make the contribution this year. (2 Minutes~)

Case Study

Sarah is an unmarried professional woman. She earns $300,000 annually working as an attorney, and has already maxed out her contributions to her workplace 401(k) plan for the year as much as is allowed. She’d like to make a $7,000 contribution to a Roth IRA this year. Her only other financial considerations are an existing $1,000 pre-tax IRA and $50,000 in a checking account.

Help for your Submission

• Easy and free platforms for this are Zoom and Loom, or you could upload a video recording to a platform like YouTube.
• Please do not send us a video file in an email, just a link to a cloud-hosted platform with your recording.
• Please do not overdo the video. You do not need to edit it, insert slides or visuals, or otherwise “dress up” your video. We’re interested in getting a better impression of you, not your editing skills. The only editing that may be necessary is cutting down the beginning or end of the video for time.
• Any time beyond the 5-minute mark will not be considered as part of your submission, so ensure you’ve wrapped up by that time.

~~~

So, basically, tell us about yourself, why you want to work with us, solve an open-book case study item, and do it all in five minutes or less. So, what went well and perhaps more importantly, what didn’t go well?

In the “tell us about yourself” stage, the strongest candidates gave a succinct personal and professional narrative. “I’m X, I’m from Y, and I’ve worked for and/or studied Z at ABC University.” Great, easy, and in line with what should already be known from the resume and cover letter. Weak submissions either failed to share anything personally (one candidate even explicitly said “you’ve got my resume, so I’m just going to skip to question 2”) or spent too much time on the personal narrative, burning up time more appropriately used on the balance of items 2-4.

In the “why you want to work in-person at MY Wealth Planners, specifically” stage, strong answers included our focus on local community impact, fee-only model, Certified B Corp, and commitment to professional and technical excellence. Some bonus points were there for folks who already lived in the area or were explicitly interested in relocating to Colorado. Weak answers were non-specific, or alternatively, kind of creepy. The non-specific answers were just generic statements that could be made about any company, e.g. “I want to be a financial planner” “I want to be a CFP”; the creepy answers were… well, let’s put it this way: Your reason for wanting to work at a company shouldn’t come across like a marriage proposal to the owner of the firm individually. Just… don’t do that.

This step was also important because it helped filter out a few candidates who had applied without fully processing that the opportunity was in-person in Colorado. We even had an ex-CIA analyst apply and then withdraw when he realized it wasn’t going to be close to Langley (I’m not kidding!)

For the “your understanding of our business model” question, the key indication here is whether the candidate has done more than surface-level research on the firm. Strong answers clearly outlined our comprehensive wealth planning and management process, including our net worth fee calculation, and highlighted other additive services such as employee benefits consulting and divorce financial analysis. Really top-notch answers even dug into the specifics of our regulatory ADV filings, which lay out our service model in both quantitative and qualitative datapoints. In turn, poor answers here were once again generic. A large number of declined video applications hinged on this question, where responses were essentially inaccurate (“you charge AUM or a percentage of investment assets”), used generic descriptions (“are a fee-only firm” without getting into the specifics beyond that), or were otherwise simply avoiding the question. We didn’t need anyone to give us a treatise on our business model, but if you don’t understand the basics of how a firm makes money, you’re not demonstrating basic due diligence skills required for a financial planner.

Notably as well for questions 2 and 3, some candidates fell into the trap of turning it into a treatise on themselves. Rather than saying why they wanted to work at MY Wealth Planners or talking about the business model, their answer to question 1 protracted into the space of questions 2 and 3, and resulted in them essentially talking about why the opportunity was good for them personally and how it would benefit them personally, rather than talking about the firm, the opportunity itself, or otherwise answering the questions. For those having a hard time envisioning it, imagine going on a date, and your partner for the date spends the entire conversation talking about themselves rather than ever talking about you or anything you have in common. Make sense?

Finally, there was the case study. For those unfamiliar with the question or concept being asked in the case study, this is a layup scenario for a back-door Roth conversion. We scored the answer on a checkbox basis, seeing how many relevant points were identified by candidates. A perfect answer included reference or descriptions of the following:

• Sarah earns too much to make a pre-tax or direct Roth contribution.
• A backdoor Roth contribution is a possibility. Explain steps to perform the backdoor Roth contribution.
• The presence of a pre-tax balance in her traditional IRA creates the pro rata rule issue, in which a conversion would create some taxable income for the year. Solutions for the pro rata include:
  • Rolling the pre-tax portion into the 401(k) if permitted by the employer.
  • Converting all $8,000 instead of just $7,000 and paying the taxes.
  • Paying the taxes due on the taxable portion of the conversion with money in the checking account.
• Filing the appropriate tax form to report the conversion correctly for tax compliance.

Respondents didn’t need to get every element of the case study correct, but they either needed to demonstrate a general understanding of the problem and potential solutions or otherwise attempt to research and problem-solve for the case study. We had respondents who both entirely understood the problem and answered it clearly, and others who openly acknowledge they didn’t personally know the answer, but had done research and submitted an accurate solution for the case study in light of the research.

Finally, an element not included in the actual questions was just the professionalism of the video submission itself. Professional video submissions were typically considered those with a neutral or professional background, with the presenter dressed in a professional manner, and that communicated in a clear way. We explicitly did not judge videos based on editing (e.g., perfect intro or outro), but we did consider the “holistic” nature of the submission. For example, some candidates with poor quality submissions included:

• Recording in what appeared to be an active locker room
• Pausing in the middle of the video to scratch private areas, slurp a drink, or talk to people off-screen
• Recording on a cellphone at an angle that conveyed more about the inside of the applicant’s nose than the rest of their face
• Reading from a script

That last one is not intrinsically negative; plenty of candidates clearly also wrote and read scripts. But there’s a material difference in the quality of a submission when comparing reading from a script in a natural “eye-contact with camera” style, versus pausing mid-sentence to look a substantial degree away from the camera to scroll or find your place in a paragraph and then restarting. Consider the examples of: “I believe Sarah has too much income to make a contribution to a pre-tax IRA or Roth IRA” versus “I believe…. Sarah has uh…. Sarah has too much income to uh… make a… payment to an IRA”. Again, it’s not about the script; it’s about the way the candidate is able to communicate.

The final point on video submissions for those faced with them is to consider this: The video submissions are an open book assignment. The questions candidates are asked to answer, and/or present on, are things that can be researched thoroughly, and the quality of the video is almost entirely in their control. If a candidate is unhappy with a take, they can always do another take. But if a candidate tries a “one and done” approach, they’re betting a lot on their first and only try, rather than putting in the effort to convey qualities that advance them to the next round.

Ultimately, of the 55 applicants invited to submit a video, 18 did not submit a video, another 23 were not invited to interview, and the remaining 14 were invited to interview.

The Interviews

Candidates for the interview were asked fifteen questions. Four questions about motivation and career goals, three questions about preparation for the interview and self-reflection, five questions about technical skills and financial expertise, two questions about practical and logistical fit for the position (e.g., geography and timeline), and one question about job understanding. Rather than going through all fifteen questions, we’ll highlight here a couple of specific questions where we saw candidates shine or struggle the most substantially.

Two questions involve asking why the candidate wants to work at MY Wealth Planners and why they want to work as a financial planner. In part of asking these questions, we deprive them of the most common answers we get to these types of questions, and ask them to elaborate beyond those as assumed answers (“Because I want to help people,” “Because it seems like a great firm/opportunity”). Many candidates answering the question about why they want to be a planner regularly found themselves essentially still saying “because I want to help people,” but with fewer words. It’s perfectly fine to say you want to help people (that’s why it’s the default answer that everyone gives if you don’t deprive them of that as a viable answer) but taking the time to elaborate more personally or directly is far more useful. For example, if the reason you want to help people is that your family struggled financially when you were growing up, that’s a tremendous personal story that helps contextualize your personal experiences with money and why a career helping people with their money would be meaningful to you.

In turn, when asked why you want to work at a firm, “because it’s great” is presumed, but being able to articulate what you think makes it great or makes the opportunity worthwhile is more meaningful than just generally complimenting the firm. For example, one candidate demonstrated they’d done substantial due diligence, highlighting our recent firm activities, comments we’d made on the podcast, and our advocacy work in the financial planning professional space. Another highlighted our commitment to local impact and our identity as a Certified B Corp, and what that means for our priorities as a company, and in turn, why that type of community focus was important to them.

Two questions in the technical category involved a role-playing exercise and an elaboration on the case study from the video submissions. The role-playing exercise is not really a technical exercise, in that we don’t require candidates to have any prior knowledge about financial planning or a technical topic to engage in it. The real purpose of the role-playing exercise is to test the candidate’s ability to improvise conversationally. The basic premise is that they need to give a client bad news about their retirement goals. Demonstrating the ability to describe the problem in plain English, suggest some ways that they might collaboratively handle the problem with the client, and setting a positive or optimistic tone for the long term outcome are exactly the things we’d want to see in such a demonstration. The ability to convey bad news, set expectations, and motivate clients are all important parts of working as a financial planner. Yet, we saw many candidates regress into a “3^rd person” description of “what they’d do,” despite being clearly told that “I am the client, you are the planner, take a minute to talk to me…” and being explicitly told that they should roleplay as the planner speaking to us as the client.

The elaboration on the case study issue was designed to help us sus out the difference between candidates who had researched or used a tool like ChatGPT to find the answer to the case study and those who actually understood the technical answer and the concepts underpinning the client’s problem. The modification to the case study was that “Sarah” had only funded the pre-tax employee contributions to her 401(k), not “maxed out her contributions to her workplace 401(k) plan for the year as much as is allowed,” and the question asked of the candidates is how that material change in facts influenced their answer and what problems it potentially solved that they’d already highlighted in the case study. For any financial planner or student of financial planning, this is an immediate flag that a mega backdoor Roth contribution would be a better potential strategy than the back-door Roth IRA contribution that the original case study prescribed. Candidates who understood this clearly gave that answer. Other candidates who were not as strong in the subject matter often reiterated their guidance from the original case study, or otherwise obfuscated other “educational factors” rather than actually identifying the solution. And that’s an important distinction, because as a financial planner, it’s better to either identify the answer correctly or, if unsure, say that you’ll research and find the right answer, rather than trying to make up a potentially incorrect answer on the fly.

Finally, the other area is something we’ve harped on before in writing about hiring and job applications: The quality of the questions asked when the opportunity arises to ask questions. There’s a lot of value in asking both practical and direct questions about career path, benefits, compensation, or job responsibilities. Alternatively, for those who already feel comfortable with that subject matter, it’s valuable to use the questions as an opportunity to demonstrate your existing due diligence on the firm, then discuss deeper issues or considerations, such as factors affecting its culture, mission, values, or priorities. Candidates who ask either type of question are using the time for questions effectively. Those candidates who ask questions that are clearly answered, e.g., “When does the position start” or “What’s the salary range”, or who have no questions to ask, are squandering the opportunity not only to gather information, but to use up remaining interview time to build a better rapport with the interviewers.

Post-Application

So, with all of that in mind, where did we end up? A couple of factors played into our final selection of candidates. First and foremost, there was a substantial preference for the June start date among our candidates over the January start date. For a variety of reasons, many candidates were either in school or had external factors (e.g., spouses) that factored into how soon they could comfortably start a position. Of our interviewees, only five were open to or available for the January opportunity, while all the others explicitly preferred or were only available for the June position.

Secondly, in a competitive field, culture fit became a larger element of our candidate selection than anticipated. While all interviewees were fundamentally qualified to varying degrees, answers in the interviews between candidates highlighted a goldilocks zone of a few factors we hadn’t focused on in the build-up to selecting a candidate, and only became apparent with data gathered among the candidates. One factor was career track preference. We are hiring an entry-level planning analyst position, but we explicitly stated that we were hiring candidates on the partner track. Some respondents made it fairly clear they only intended to be with the firm for a year or two; others made it clear that while they would be happy to be with the firm for a decent amount of time, they had other life priorities that would eventually supersede the possibility of becoming or remaining a partner of the firm.

In another case, some candidates were very clear about their ambitions. Perhaps a little too clear. It’s all well and good to want to maximize your life path and the return on your activities, but in one particular case, a candidate was outright arrogant about their potential for both this role, but also how and where they thought it would take them. Ambition is perfectly fine, but keep in mind that when you’re applying to a role (any role!) you’re applying to that specific job at that specific firm at that specific point in time.

Wrapping It All Up – What We Take Away

This was perhaps one of the most engaging recruitment cycles we’ve ever been through as a firm. We had a more competitive field than usual, and found an unevenly weighted barbell of quality and effort among our applicant pool. Traditionally, we’ve always honed our applications down to a small interview group straight away from the paper application phase. But having an intermediary video submission requirement proved invaluable both for saving the time and effort of both applicants and reviewers, but also gave us some tools to sus out candidates who really knew their stuff from those who could just problem solve. While we identified some individualized issues among candidates, we also obtained some decent data on how to attract applicants in the first place, but also noticed that some specific words and phrases in job postings, video instructions, and interview questions inadvertently produced surprising results.

Still, we’re happy with the process as we enjoyed it, and we’re looking forward to some new team members in 2026. Stay tuned to be introduced to them!