Loan Officer Recruiting now demands More of the Art than the Science
This market demands companies to adapt their recruiting efforts to the present environment. Hiring is now becoming more of the Art than a Science. Historically this has shifted between which side of the Ying and the Yang the hiring needs of Mortgage Lenders are at any time. This is largely influenced by factors such as the market and the talent pool and more so today than ever in the history of mortgage lending by government regulations among other influences. This is not a normal shift of going from refinance market to purchase market; it is a whole lot bigger than that. We are looking at a different set of models that are developing. Yes Branch Managers need to have a strategy, a process and maintain accountability and consistency (the science), but now more than ever in the last 15 years they need to know exactly how to Identify, underwrite, qualify and close (the art) the best candidates that they engage with. Even the most experienced Branch Managers have developed ineffective recruiting and hiring practices over the last 15 years for this new market and need guidance back to the art of recruiting and how to position themselves as the buyer throughout the recruitment cycle. With all the newly placed regulations and the disruption of the mortgage lending landscape there will be a lot of under or unqualified candidates seeking new positions within the Mortgage Banker Driven Model as suppose to the Mortgage Broker Driven Model. Just as there will be High Volume Producers that may be such a disruptive hire that it will be the undoing of that Branch. Understanding what Recruiter’s Fool’s Gold looks like, will just as important as disseminating who they need to let go of with their current loan officer staff. Retention starts at recruiting and the art of recruiting will end at future retention. Over 65% of Branch Manager’s have never had formal recruitment training with a Qualified Recruiting Coach and therefore lack the advance recruiting skills to be more than an average recruiter no matter how many goals and systems you put in front of them. And yes technology has its advantages, but the art of Recruiting Loan Officers is a voice to voice interaction transitioning to a face to face experience and finalizing in a person to person process. People work for people and that adage has not changed and until Artificial Intelligence is fully developed, that will not change. How to fully engage your candidate and truly underwrite their ability to fit within your company’s culture and to succeed with the products, pricing model, operational support, technology, the tools provide and local leadership will be crucial to any individual branch’s long-term growth and success. If you want to learn more please contact me @ chuckcowan@ccowan.com or 321-363-4384.
Strategic Talent Aquisition Recruiting Training – Why a “START” Mortgage Recruiting Coach?
Why a “START” Mortgage Recruiting Coach?
The value within the START Coaching Model is the positioning the manager into deep understanding of their present state or condition of their sales team recruiting, help them to develop targeted “live” recruiting strategies that will be providing them measurable progress in obtaining the desired results by have a positive impact on their consistent recruiting efforts. I will break it down as follows:
Recruiting at the most basic level is a six step process:
- Research and Source Suspects
- Prospects Phone Screening
- Candidate Selection via Underwriting and Qualifying
- Business Modeling with Candidates
- Offer and Closing
- On-boarding
Now breaking that down into a strategic process;
Recruiting Requires the following Processes and Techniques:
- Well defined Job Analysis
- Strategic Recruiting Plan
- Consistent Recruiting Process
- Primary and Secondary Sourcing Techniques
- Scripted Screening and Qualifying Techniques
- Systematic Interview and Underwriting Process
- Business Plan Mapping Process and Compensation Analysis
- Pre-closing plan and Closing Techniques
- On-boarding Plan
If having consistent, accountable impact on your recruiting is what you desire, then you need to develop and use the above processes and techniques to be the positive recruiting change for your team and your company.
Not only are most managers not properly or professionally trained in the “Art of Recruiting” (“art” being defined as an enhanced skill at doing a specified thing very well, typically one acquired through practice), they also do not have a proven strategic process to follow, and these are just two of the areas of concern that I see in the recruiting models Mortgage Companies are using in the industry today. Creating a solid foundation by having a Strategic Recruiting Process that the individual manager will use day in and day out is essential to providing the framework of continued recruiting success over the long term. Developing a Recruiting Pipeline with well defined stages of the recruiting cycle that is maintained daily and consistently measured will create the fundamental change needed to impact recruiting results. And that is where a Strategic Talent Acquisition Recruiting Training Coach can provide the differentiation to land the most talented competitors to your team. Lateral Loan Officer recruiting is one of the more difficult aspects of recruiting in the Mortgage Industry and having a coach that can provide you with strategies, processes and techniques, just might help you to get the right candidates to cross the finish line with you.
SO “START” RECRUITING!
Will Retail Mortgage Platforms Weather the Perfect Storm in 2014?
With the compression of originations and closing in the mortgage industry as demonstrated by February 2014 being the slowest month of closing in the industry in 14 years, it begs the questions how are all the privately held independent mortgage companies prepared to survive the upcoming 6-9 months of brutal business conditions? According to the MBA, the average cost to manufacture a loan for this group in the 4th quarter of 2013 was over $5100.00 not including employee expense, the average profit was $150.00 per loan and those numbers are due to significantly change in the 1rst quarter of 2014 and not to the positive side. With that being said, can companies continue to lead their recruiting efforts by paying 80 to 125 basis points to their loan officers? CFPB has just start the in-depth regulating these non-depositories and small community depositories and their business practices. And if the last year has proven anything, is that these companies could be looking at an additional 30 to 40 basis points cost per loan in compliance expense on top of their present cost to produce. So let us look at what could be a very realistic scenario in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of this year, if company spends say over $5600.00 or higher to produce a loan and you lose money on a per loan basis, how do you continue to pay 80 to 125 basis points in commission? I do hear a lot of companies have been to market and have started selling off their loan portfolios to generate revenue to offset these expenses, but how long can that last? Makes no sense, to sale off your portfolio assets to run your sales business and operate at a loss. This 1.1 billion dollar market is not going to grow by any sizable amount according to every report that I have seen over the last 45 to 60 days. What about those organizations that are owned by a hedge fund or REIT, I wonder how secure they really feel? Hedge Funds and REITs are not keen on not making a return. The business is due some major disruption and as LOs how do you feel about that? What are your risks? As recruiters and Managers recruiting LOs how do you feel about that? Can you really tell a candidate that there is a long term future with the company you represent? All I know, after 30 years of recruiting in this business the numbers that I see and hear just will not work moving forward and something will change in these business models. I am trying to create an argument for one player verse another, as I do not know who will and who will not be the fittest and strongest to survive, but I am more interested in future thought moving forward.
Loan Officer Recruiting now demands More of the Art than the Science
This market demands companies to adapt their recruiting efforts to the present environment. Hiring is now becoming more of the Art than a Science. Historically this has shifted between which side of the Ying and the Yang the hiring needs of Mortgage Lenders are at any time. This is largely influenced by factors such as the market and the talent pool and more so today than ever in the history of mortgage lending by government regulations among other influences. This is not a normal shift of going from refinance market to purchase market; it is a whole lot bigger than that. We are looking at a different set of models that are developing. Yes Branch Managers need to have a strategy, a process and maintain accountability and consistency (the science), but now more than ever in the last 15 years they need to know exactly how to Identify, underwrite, qualify and close (the art) the best candidates that they engage with. Even the most experienced Branch Managers have developed ineffective recruiting and hiring practices over the last 15 years for this new market and need guidance back to the art of recruiting and how to position themselves as the buyer throughout the recruitment cycle. With all the newly placed regulations and the disruption of the mortgage lending landscape there will be a lot of under or unqualified candidates seeking new positions within the Mortgage Banker Driven Model as suppose to the Mortgage Broker Driven Model. Just as there will be High Volume Producers that may be such a disruptive hire that it will be the undoing of that Branch. Understanding what Recruiter’s Fool’s Gold looks like, will just as important as disseminating who they need to let go of with their current loan officer staff. Retention starts at recruiting and the art of recruiting will end at future retention. Over 65% of Branch Manager’s have never had formal recruitment training with a Qualified Recruiting Coach and therefore lack the advance recruiting skills to be more than an average recruiter no matter how many goals and systems you put in front of them. And yes technology has its advantages, but the art of Recruiting Loan Officers is a voice to voice interaction transitioning to a face to face experience and finalizing in a person to person process. People work for people and that adage has not changed and until Artificial Intelligence is fully developed, that will not change. How to fully engage your candidate and truly underwrite their ability to fit within your company’s culture and to succeed with the products, pricing model, operational support, technology, the tools provide and local leadership will be crucial to any individual branch’s long-term growth and success. If you want to learn more please contact me @ chuckcowan@ccowan.com or 321-363-4384.
Buyer’s Relationship Skills and Recruiting the Trusted Advisor of the Future
Buyer’s Relationship Skills and Recruiting the Trusted Advisor of the Future
I have been recruiting in Distributed Retail Sales in the Financial Services Sector for 29 years and I have seen it undergo many significant changes in the last 10 years. I have seen more companies’ employ Internal Recruiting Teams today, that has certainly met all or some of their needs and will continue to do so. And the advancement of Sourcing Technologies has had one the largest impacts on how companies recruit in the Distributed Retail Sales Model. The rise and the slow decline of job boards have served their purpose in this advancement of technology in recruiting. CRMs that have become fully engaged across the company’s whole enterprise have had as much impact on recruiting as any other piece of technology in recruiting. The largest asset in any Distributed Retail Sales Model is the role of the Trusted Relationship Advisor otherwise known as a Banker, Loan Officer, Financial Advisor, Insurance Agent, or Real Estate Agent. Realizing, whether you agree with my last statement or not, the Talent Pool in these particular professions has been under siege for years. Just look at the average age of a few of these: Banker- 45, Financial Advisor- 50, Loan Officer- 53, RE Agent- 57, Insurance Agent- 56. That is an age range of 45 to 57 years of age and that age bracket is coming to the end of its dominance of consumer buying power. As the new consumer moves into the leading role of buying power in there industries, do we really think they will interact and buy from this age of advisors at the point of sale? I am not saying that a lot of these Trusted Relationship Advisors today have not or will not make the transition to being the perfect Relationship Manager, as they will.
But looking to the future of these critical roles that companies will need to hire, they need to re-think what these roles will be and what are the appropriate skills, talents, work history, relational competencies and emotional intelligence that will be needed to fill these roles moving forward. One concern that I see, do the companies and their recruiting strategies really understand the role of these future individual advisors? They should, as the role absolutely mirrors exactly what the recruiter of these professionals should possesses themselves to be successful, being a trusted relationship recruiting advisor to any of these trusted advisor candidates will be crucial to alignment of the talent with the right opportunity. Contrary to popular believe, just because you can master sourcing the Identities and profiles of these candidates via Social Media, LinkedIn or any other technically savvy way does not mean you can build long-term relationships. Talking with thousands of these trusted advisors across many disciplines over the last 29 years, the one thing that is most apparent to me is that the top trusted advisors will take their time to build a relationship with a recruiter and both recruiter and candidate understand that being in that relationship has mutual value and at the critical moment that individual advisor candidate decides it is time to explore opportunities is the sweet spot for both parties. Not any sooner or later than that time the trusted advisor decides that it is that time. Becoming the buyer of talent instead of the seller of opportunity will be crucial in that dynamic. Technology will never develop the emotional intelligence that will be required to build that intimate relationship with these trusted advisors and if your recruiting staff is not well coached in relationship skills, both building and maintaining those relationships, then you are missing a significant part of the talent pool in these industries going forward.
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