For people who are looking to join an FA firm as a financial adviser, I have some tips for you:

1. Do you know your own strengths and weakness? If no, I suggest you find out your own strengths and weaknesses. Can the firm help you in that weakness? Can you excel in the firm with your strengths?
2. What kind of service does the firm provide to its clients? Is it multi-approach or it focuses on a single core business? For example, some FA firm markets itself to be investment centric while others multi-disciplinary.  
3. Who are the shareholder(s) of the FA firm? What are they like and what are their objectives for owning equity stake in the firm? Are they owning the firm for pure profitability sake? This is important because if the shareholder(s) are owning the firm purely out of profitability sake (which is not unusual), it means that the P/L of the firm is of utmost importance. Do you like to work in such firm which bottomline is the utmost importance? If in doubt, speak to the main shareholder and check that their interest and yours are aligned. 
4. Do not choose a firm simply because it gives the highest commission banding. A firm that gives up to 99% of the fees to the adviser means it is trending on extremely thin profit margin. Something must go with such low profit margin. 
5. Does the firm give on-going training for your CPD hours? Do not underestimate your CPD hours because you can lose your license just because you did not have enough hours clocked. I heard of some poor advisers going around trying to attend external trainings because the firm is not keen to provide trainings.  
6. What is the manager to adviser ratio? Obviously a firm with 1 manager to 100 advisers’ ratio is worst off than 1 manager to 10 advisers. Again do not underestimate this ratio. The manager is the mentor and leader. He can make or break your career depending on their mentorship and leadership skills. 
7. Who is the compliance officer of the firm? What is he or she like? Can the person provide leadership in compliance or just leave the advisers on their own doing their own things? 
8. There will be always a core group of advisers and “part-timers.” Get to know the core group in order to understand the firm’s culture. Does the firm encourage interaction or leave their advisers as solo-practitioners? 
9. Talk to the firm’s products’ specialists. If there is no specialist, do not even consider joining the firm. If there are specialists, see whether they really know their “stuff.” These specialists will be the one who will make or break your career as their support to the advisers are important.  
10. Do not be shy to ask what kind of admin support you’ll have. Minimum admin support are: archiving documents (e.g. KYC, proposal forms, etc),  printing name cards, delivering of documents to/fro from product providers, proper end of month commission statements and end of year financial statements for tax are extremely important. If these supports are not given, you will spend too much time on the desk doing paper work than in front of your clients doing advisory work. 
11. What will the firm do if your production is poor? Some firms will employ “hard” methods such as mandate the adviser come back on weekends to do cold-calls or produce daily activity reports. Others will offer “softer” approach such as coaching and counseling. Still others will be somewhere between. The effectiveness of whichever method is dependent on the personality of the adviser. 
12. Does the firm impose a sales quota? If you see your job as a salesman, obviously a sales quota is required. If you see yourself as a financial adviser, run away from firms that impose a sales quota because a financial adviser is not a sales job. Your clients engage your advisory service. The last they want is a salesman.
13. Does the firm generate leads for you? If yes, how it does is more important. For example, if the firm generate leads by the telemarketer making misrepresentations over the phone to the client, this job will be the shortest career you'll ever have.
14. Reputation - do research as to the reputation of the FA firm. Some firms are well-known for churning. You just need to do the necessary market research (don't ask me though).  You must fleed from firm that has a poor reputation. All it takes is for the regulator to suspend the license of the firm and for a newspaper reporter to report this sensational news and your clients will lump you together with all the other bad guys. You can kiss your career bye bye.
15. Don't put too much emphasis on "vesting.' It is not applicable to investment since transfer of assets to another firm can be done at minimal or no cost. It is only applicable for insurance but then "vesting" is subjected to the firm's default risk. If defaulted, there goes your "vesting" rights. Instead, your true "assets" are your clients who place their trust in you and who will refer you an endless supply of clients.  Ironically, "vesting" decreases the profit margin of the firm and naturally increases default risk.
16. Does the firm has the provision to allow its advisers to do fee-based financial planning? If no, go to another firm that does. If yes, does it has a proper internal process to make this happen? While it is more lucrative to be commission based, clients are increasing asking for fee-based and therefore the ability to provide this service is an important factor.

Before anyone thinks it is possible to find a firm that satisfy all the above, I regret to say that such a firm does not exist. Instead, looking for a firm which is able to satisfy most of the above is the way to go.