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May 11, 2017
This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.

As we, sourcing professionals, continue to improve upon our research and sourcing skills, it’s important to understand that specific industries require different sourcing skills and therefore, utilizing certain tools are of the utmost significance. When searching for financial services and accounting candidates, there are a few tools that help uncover more about the candidate as well as finding lists of candidates such as MBA alumni. By tapping into these lists, we discover a lot about the search.

For example, if recruiting for registered financial candidates such as financial advisors with a Series 7 license, there are ways to check their background by simply going to FINRA to make sure your candidate doesn’t have any negative issues aligned to their licenses or any ethical problems. Checking with FINRA is as important as going on social media to check if your candidate has enough emotional intelligence not to post any racist, sexist or disparaging opinions online.

In the United States, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) is a self-regulatory organization. FINRA is the successor to the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (NASD) who enforces arbitration in the New York Stock Exchange. It’s important to be clear about any issues that are required to work within the licensed financial services industry.

  1. Before setting up a prescreen, it is recommended to vet your candidate first by checking out http://www.finra.org

If you need to find candidates who have their MBA, there are ways to find lists of these candidates online.

  1. You can Google something like, “list of MBA graduates at Harvard Business School” with the following result of finding alumni who received alumni achievement awards that you might be able to hire:

In addition to using Google to find lists of MBA alumni, you can also do a searching using distinct Boolean commands, such as inurl: and intitle:.

  1. Typing keywords in the URL such as: “inurl:mba alumni list” yields the following result allowing you to view lists of particular business schools such as below:

Once you log in with your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google password, you can see the MBA alumni who graduated from the University of Richmond for example. The same action can be taken to uncover many other schools too if you do this broad search.

You can also find financial candidates on professional organizations, and if you don’t want to join them, you can find them on LinkedIn and join their group, saving your company money. Keep in mind, when joining financial groups, it’s so important to maintain diversity and inclusion in your work because it is paramount in sourcing all candidates especially those in such a homogenized industry as financial services and accounting.

  1. Some of the following financial organizations usually have lists of strong candidates such as:

AFP (Association of Financial Professionals)

CFP (Certified Financial Planner)

NABA (National Association of Black Accountants)

NSHMBA (National Society of Hispanic MBAs)

Society of Financial Services Professionals (FSP)

There is so much more to do when sourcing financial services and accounting candidates. I have only scratched the surface to help financial sourcing professionals start finding lists of candidates with using FINRA and MBA records just to name a few.

 

Want more information on how to source for financial advisors? Check out these fun searches.

 

This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.
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