First impressions count in any environment but in a personal and intimate Family Office environment where a hire is not just joining an office but in a way, the family behind it, it is vital that a candidate does everything they can to prove themselves and their worth to the family. In return, the Family Office must respect the time, requirements and value of their prospective hire.

In this small guide, we outline our etiquette to Family Office recruitment and we refer to some of the best practices that both candidates and clients should adopt in order to attract, retain and successfully hire the right employee.

If either party fails to do this it can end the relationship before it has even begun with candidates leaving the process and seeking the comfort of an employer who values them more and clients seeking employees who are more culturally aligned and invested in the opportunity.

This is a short guide on how to act in the recruitment process to ensure a smooth-sailing onward relationship.

Candidates;

Candidates need to understand that the recruitment process in the Family Office world is unlike any other. Family Office Leaders need to assess whether this person is not just competent enough to do the role, hungry enough to succeed and ambitious enough to take it further but culturally aligned to the family and their way of doing things.

Family Offices are often no-more than five people sitting in an office, sometimes even within the home of its Principal. The line between the personal and the professional is blurred and so this hire needs to be able to not just add value professionally but ensure not to change the dynamics of the family or its office. At least not for the worse.

This means that things such as attitude, tone of voice, mannerisms and political ideologies that might, where possible, be left outside the door usually, can all be taken into account as part of the recruitment process.

This also means that the interview process, initial screening and even your conversations with your recruiter should not be treated any differently. Each carry as much weighting as the next.

  • Be confident enough to negotiate your worth but be respectful in doing so and do not change your mind during the process. We see this happen sometimes with candidates who start the negotiating process without first knowing how they wish to price themselves and the value they can add. By changing this sum during the process, a candidate can seem untrustworthy, unsure of themselves and of course add an administrative burden that did not previously exist off-putting the client and the recruiter in the process.
  • Sell yourself but be truthful. In the interview, some candidates feel pressure to inflate or oversell their experience within a certain subject matter. This is dangerous territory as Family Offices will not only test you but they will be quick to delegate responsibility, often with little scrutiny and there is of course a great deal at stake. This means the margin of error is small and mistakes can be less forgivable.
  • Be honest with your recruiter. During the recruitment process, the recruiter will ask you a series of vital questions. Of course salary expectations, working hours and experience all play a part in the line of questioning but the question which is sometimes not answered entirely honestly is a hypothetical question. If your current employer came to you with a counteroffer, would you accept? In a moment of wanting to seem engaged and invested, candidates can often say no. However sometimes in practice, upon receiving an offer from a new Family Office and further to the resignation, a counteroffer may follow. It is often at this stage that all can change. This not only unpicks all of the work your recruiter has put into the process but it paints you as an untrustworthy or unreliable candidate, not just to the client, but the recruitment partner who will be very wary of you with regard to future shortlists.

Clients;

While our Family Office Clients might hold the purse strings, there are best practices for them to abide by too and in the competitive candidate marketplace we find ourselves in, it is for their benefit as much as anybody else’s.

The pandemic, while offering a platform for greater Family Office growth, served as a wake-up call for professionals. Work-life balance became ever-more important and so commuting times, flexibility and workplace culture all became vital elements of any prospective role. With remote working also taking over traditional working, professionals thought deeply about where they worked (with state taxes being different in the USA), living space and working environment all factors in pushing many professionals away from the financial centres they once thrived in.

This led to what many have called the great resignation. In November 2021 alone, 4.5M professionals resigned in America according to the US Government. The highest monthly record in more than 20 years and a similar pattern has followed across the Family Office world.

Candidates are increasingly knowing their worth. With more opportunities on offer than ever before, there is no need to settle for an opportunity that does not excite, challenge or value their employment and so for employers, this means they need to ensure they are doing everything they can to attract and retain the top talent.

  • Take the time to consider your next hire but do not take too long. As we discussed a moment ago, Family Office recruitment has a great deal more considerations than any other. This is a personal hire that has the potential to change the dynamics of an office and its stakeholders. As a result, the decision over each hire will take longer to reach than perhaps in a corporate environment. However, if you take too long, you will lose the best talent and we see it happen every day. If these individuals are good enough to be interviewing with you, it is very likely that they will be speaking with other hiring managers about other opportunities. Hence it is essential that you always maintain a healthy momentum. Especially as you do not want them to get to an offer stage elsewhere while you were stalling or delaying the process. This will only lead to you losing out on a potentially strong candidate but also potentially others on the shortlist.
  • Do not move the goal posts. While Family Offices have long professionalised themselves, without a tailored HR or Legal Team in-house, their onboarding processes are not always smooth-sailing. This means that moving goal posts during the recruitment process can be frequent and it is not always for wanting of a better deal with a candidate but for not truly understanding the gap in their own resources or changing goals constantly. While often an unintentional conclusion, this can set the relationship off on the wrong foot with candidates questioning if their requirements will change throughout the duration of their employment. Hence it is always best to have the scope and the remit of the role in question crystallised in black an while via the means of a detailed job description. This doesn’t always need to be set in stone as you can always allow room for potential growth and enlargement of the role. However this needs to be thought of and planned at the outset.
  • Manage expectations. In the same way that candidates can oversell their experience, clients can oversell the opportunity. While you of course need to make the role exciting and engaging, selling both the vision of the role and your story in getting there, you need to be honest about its limitations, career progression and salary expectations for the future inclusive of long-term incentives and bonuses. The majority of Family Office professionals will come from a very benchmarked environment where career progression and salary increments are both structured and frequent. Ensure to set these out during the interview process but do not overpromise.
  • Manage your Principal. Those with hiring responsibilities within the Family Office need to engage and manage their Principal, however difficult or painful that may be. If the Family/Principal is part of the process i.e. final decision maker, then they need to engage in the process in a timely fashion, guided by those professionals that they have entrusted with the process, or risk losing the hire they want to make. Candidates owe no loyalty until they are fully on board, with a contract signed. Their commitment to the Family Office and the role on offer does not begin until then and so it is vital, in these early stages, that the Principal is engaged and present. This also ensures the prospective employee will buy into the Family Office and its culture a lot more.

While differing slightly, the same principles apply on both sides of the equation. Be honest, transparent and respectful of the time, expectations and requirements of the other party and by abiding by these simple best practices, you can start your working relationship on the right foot and have a long and fruitful partnership.

Do you think there could be more additions to the best practices discussed above for the recruitment processes within a Family Office?