recruiterchuckcowan

The Forgotten Half of the Recruiting Pipeline

Research has shown that most Branch Managers and Sales Managers in the Mortgage Lending Industry do not have a formally  structured Recruiting Pipeline that they use daily, week in and week out. It is where you would keep score and you can track your progress and ultimately your team’s growth. To be successful as a Sales Leader you are always growing your team or as the saying goes “Either you are growing or you are going”. And by going, that does not mean you are going anywhere positive. Loan Officer Recruiting is a 24/7 aspect of any Branch Manager’s duties and the managers that are successful at recruiting understand that. Having a Recruiting Pipeline is as vital to the manager as a Loan Pipeline is to the Loan Officer. To have a snap shot of your recruiting activities in one centralized place that you can check the needed recruiting actions on a daily basis, is the cornerstone of successful recruiting. It is where you record and track all relevant recruiting information, such as how many suspects have you sourced, how many of the suspects do you convert to prospects and in turn how many of those prospects become qualified candidates? What should a pipeline consist of? To understanding that, realize that there are six basic phases in recruiting process and those distinct phases with abbreviated explanations are:

Phase One Suspects (Sourcing)

Phase Two Prospects (“Getting to know one another” and establishing mutual interest)

 Phase Three-Candidates (Interviewing, Underwriting, Qualifying, Referencing and Business Plan Development)

Phase Four – Hot Candidates (Soft Commitment to Pro-Forma, Compensation, Spousal Buy-In and Pre-Close)

Phase Five- Offer and Close (Formal Offer and Acceptance with Start Date Confirmation)

 Phase Six- Counter-Offer and On-Boarding (Walk the new hire through resignation to starting date and mentoring over the first 90 days or so).

Recruiters and Mortgage Companies all use different terminology for all these phases but the key is to have a central place to list of all Suspects that you have ever sourced and how did you source them. Then listing those that you converted to Prospects and the time that it took and then the percentage that then  become a Candidate, not only can you see what areas in the recruiting cycle  that you excel at but also the areas that you can still  grow and develop. It will also give you the elapsed time from first contact to this point in the recruiting process; additionally it will offer you insight to how much recruiting activity that you require to meet your hiring goals, it also should give you a baseline of recruiting activities and conversation ratios that are needed to get Candidates to the interviewing process. This is a lot of data and insight to what you need to accomplish to reach this crucial point in the recruiting cycle.  But now, this is the half way point, it is when the Interviewing Process really starts, but not the Recruiting Process.  That started back at Suspects and this is the forgotten first half of the Recruiting Pipeline. What we see as a major stumbling block to Loan Officer Recruiting, is how the Branch Managers get evaluated on, as to their recruiting activities. That usually starts at the “Candidates Phase” and how many Loan Officers are they in the process of Interviewing and how many Hires have they made year to date. That is not “putting the cart before the horse”, that is not having a horse and only having a cart with one wheel.  These first sections are where most of the real recruiting activities happen but this is not where the glory of recognition is. Unless companies start recognizing the most labor intensive part of the Recruiting Pipeline it will continue as the most neglected part of the recruiting activities that their Sales Leaders do.

February 27, 2014 Posted by recruiterchuckcowan | Branch Manager, Coaching, Employment, Employment Trends, Executive Recruiting, Housing, Interviewing, Interviews, Loan Officer Recruiting, Management, Management Developement, Marketshare, Marketshare Growth, Mortgage, Mortgage Banking, Mortgage Banking Recruitment, Mortgage Company, Mortgage Loan Officer, Mortgage News, Mortgage Outlook, Recruiter, Recruiting, Recruiting Trends, Recruitment Coaching, Recruitment Training, Sales Growth, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Management Training, Sales Manager Training, Selling, Training | Coaching, Employment, executive recruiting, Financial Services, Growing Marketshare, Loan Officer Recruiting, Management Training, Mortgage, Mortgage Banking, Mortgage Banking Recruiting, Mortgage Production, Mortgage Production and Originations, Mortgage Sales Recruiting, Originations, Recruiting Trends, Recruitment, Recruitment Coach, recruitment coaching, Sales management, Training | Leave a comment