Registered investment advisor Halbert Hargrove has strived to build its firm on a unique business model in an industry known for aggressive recruiting and poaching: training and hiring interns.
Kelli Kiemle, managing director of growth and client experience at Halbert Hargrove, said the Long Beach, Calif.-based RIA often has five to six college interns at the firm at any given time. It also has a dedicated intern manager who runs the program, recruits interns and meets with them weekly.
“We actually have 10-plus employees at this point that have come from our intern program,” she said. “All of them are at different stages of their career, with some people who are just recently graduated, and I have a couple of interns who have been with us for 10-plus years and are at higher-level positions in the firm.”
Halbert Hargrove is among what industry watchers say is a relatively small group of RIAs with dedicated internship programs. These types of programs are rare, but much needed, said Jimmy Zhao, a partner in McKinsey’s Boston office and lead author of a much-quoted report forecasting a shortage of 100,000 financial advisors by 2034.