Last week I got a call from a woman I placed a couple of years ago. Truly one of the nicest people I have ever met, she also does not suffer fools easily. She told me that she had received 10 recruiting calls in the last two days.

"Sarch, what the hell is going on?" she asked. "They don't even know that my deal's not up yet!"

Yep, I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: The level of intensity in the "Recruiting Wars" has never been higher. Every major firm has recruiting experienced advisors as a top goal again as we enter 2008. The laws of supply and demand dictate that deals, therefore, should remain high while the recruiters out there vie for your attention.

But who are those recruiters anyway, and what are their agendas? They are NOT all the same.

Scenario 1 - - The call from the Local Competitor (LC)

As I've written before, branch managers can make or break their careers based upon the success or failure of their recruiting. While the lack of recruiting activity and new hires will slowly kill a branch manager's "career equity," like a slow growing cancer, a single bad hire can kill a career like a single shotgun blast to the chest.

Whether you are actively looking to change or not, it makes sense to get to know about one of your competitors. Most advisors only learn about the competition from the propaganda their own firm tells them, which is usually not up to date, and at the very least, self-serving.

You, the "Desirable Candidate" (DC), have to decide how much time you want to spend being wined and dined by the local competition. It's flattering to be wooed, and you will learn about a platform other than your own so you can better compete with the advisors at the other firm with whom you might be competing. You also have to decide what qualities you are looking for in a manager. Do you want a coach who can help you market and build a business or are you just looking to be left alone to do your thing?

Shrewd branch managers know that learning about you now will hopefully mean that you will call them down the road if you get serious about moving. What you want to know, of course, is whether that particular branch manager will still be in that same office when you are ready. One of the facts of life in the smaller cities in the wirehouse world is that a branch manager needs to build an office in order to build his or her own resume so that he or she will get promoted down the road to a new office somewhere else.

So how can the DC figure out whether the local competitor is going to be there for the long haul? You can't, but there are some clues.

1. The cell phone number clue.

People tend to keep the same cell phone number when it's the area code of their hometown. If you live in area code XYZ but the local manager calling you lives in ABC, it's likely that he or she aspires to be in ABC land sometime down the road.

2. What are the ages of the local competitor's kids?

Managers, like everyone in business, are reluctant to change locations when their children are in middle school or older.

It certainly makes sense to get to know the competition. And just because that local competitor might aspire to be somewhere else does not make him or her a bad person. But you deserve to know where they are in their career path and whether he or she is putting down roots.

Scenario 2 - - The call from the Internal Recruiter

Most firms have someone within their bureaucracy, other than the branch manager, who is making calls into the marketplace to try to fill up their branches. Sometimes it's the local sales manager, and sometimes it's a pure recruiter, working at a local, regional, or divisional level trying to be the eyes and ears for their bosses in the big, bad, recruiting marketplace.

The good ones will gauge your level of interest, be knowledgeable about their own platform relative to your platform and give you insight about the LC. The bad ones, however, are just looking to populate a database, and pass the name onto their local branch manager. Since "internal recruiter" is rarely an endgame for someone's career path, they rarely have any tenure in their position and therefore have little interest in a long-term relationship with an advisor. Your career, to them, is just a transaction and a means to an end.