Edward Jones plans to hire 10,000 new brokers over the next decade by aggressively recruiting recent college graduates and non-financial professionals, especially engineers and small business owners. The firm, which recently committed $260 million to the development of new training and sales support facilities and $100 million to new branch communication technology, expects to hire at a rate of 250 brokers a month, said Steven Novik, chief financial officer.

The firm hopes to double the size of its brokerage force through traditional recruitment channels as well as through the development of a nation-wide branch internship program to attract college students. Edward Jones will next year expand its branch internship program, which currently has about fifty participants, by establishing programs at 200 more branches, said Price Woodward, principal, investment representative recruiting and hiring. About 10 percent of brokers are now recruited directly from colleges and the firm expects the new program to boost that figure to 20 percent.

To up its recruitment of non-financial professionals, Edward Jones this month began "experimenting" with the outsourcing of recruitment efforts to an independent firm in its Canadian markets, Woodward said. For six months Edward Jones will employ a recruitment firm to solicit engineers and small business owners by telephone. "After performing a lot of market research, we found that engineers, technical workers and small business owners are among the most successful brokers. Engineers are typically not risk takers and that fits in well with the Edward Jones model," Woodward said. Depending on the firm's success in Canada, it may employ recruitment firms to solicit broker prospects in the United States.