BIC held a conference call roundtable with some heads of investment programs to see how they're managing recruiting. Our panelists included Howard Hammond, president and CEO at Fifth Third Securities and Insurance in Cincinnati; Michael Miroballi, president and COO of Harris Investors Services in Chicago (with Celeste Cece, his lead recruiter); Dan Overby, president of BankUnited Investment Services in Miami Lakes, Fla.; Renée Vanek, president of Affinity Investment Services, a credit union in Basking Ridge, N.J.; and recruiter Paul Werlin, president of Human Capital Resources in St. Petersburg, Fla.

BIC: Did you hire new people for your programs in 2010, and if so, how many?
HOWARD HAMMOND: We were up approximately 70 advisors last year, bringing our fully dedicated reps to 335.

MICHAEL MIROBALLI: We brought in an incremental six to seven advisors and had a number of advisors turn over, focusing on really upgrading talent, so we went from 55 to 62.

DAN OVERBY: I joined BankUnited only 15 months ago, and as a failed and reacquired institution, we had some unique challenges. There had been about 50% attrition in the months leading up to the failure. When I got there, I had 12 advisors. I have 25 today.

RENÉE VANEK: I had six advisors and then I hired one more, but in order to expand our program, we also partnered with an insurance agency nearby that had five registered reps who changed their broker-dealer affiliation to us. So now we have 12 registered reps.

BIC: Where are you getting these reps?
HAMMOND: We had a lot of success last year with some of the wirehouses, with bank advisors from different programs, as well as some independents, so it was really a fairly diverse mix. I wouldn't say we're targeting one specific group; we're looking for the behavioral characteristics of the advisor. We want someone who truly listens to the client and offers the appropriate solution. Our annuity revenue is less than 20% of our total revenue, so we want an advisor who has a well-diversified product mix before we bring him into the fold at Fifth Third.

CELESTE CECE: A lot of our new candidates came from employee referrals, both from financial advisors and our branch managers. We do job postings on sites like Monster.com, as well as industry-specific sites like BrokerHunter.com. We've been reaching out to candidates electronically through sites such as LinkedIn. But last year employee referrals really were a big source of hires.

MIROBALLI: Similar to Howard, we're really looking for advisors who take a much more holistic view of servicing their clients, those who have experience that really focuses on planning. And many of those advisors are looking for a broader platform.

OVERBY: Our candidates came from other bank broker-dealers. We were fortunate to pick up some quality guys from other failed programs in Florida. But most of them came from one large bank program where the reps were pretty disenchanted with significant flaws in its middle and back office.

VANEK: What seems to work the best at our program is hiring independents because while we do get referrals from the branches, they still need to do a lot of prospecting on their own.

BIC: Paul, how competitive is it out there for new hires this year?
PAUL WERLIN: I think what's interesting is that everyone's experience over the last year is so diversified. You've got Renée looking at independents, Howard looking at wirehouses. The real key here is to fit within the culture and objectives of the program.

Getting to how competitive it is. It's like politics: All politics is local, well, all recruiting is local. It's incredibly competitive for a gigantic multinational bank aggressively looking for very experienced people with preexisting books of over $750,000 or $800,000. That's why some of these bigger shops, both in the bank channel and without, are still offering some very big upfront packages.

In other cases, like Dan's experience, where you've got a distressed organization, it's not nearly as competitive. I'd say that for bank recruiting as a whole, it's moderately tight.

BIC: Are any of you offering incentives or upfront bonuses to attract new reps?
HAMMOND: For the appropriate advisor, we're offering a combination of upfront, enhanced payout and back-end based on performance. So we use all three to combine a deal for a quality advisor-anywhere from 25% to 50% of trailing 12 up front, another piece on the back end, and then payout based on production, which could range anywhere from 40% to as high as 80% for a time.