Recruiting is vital to a company's growth and survival. But this critical task has grown more difficult in the lending industry, as the candidate pool has shrunk exponentially over the last couple of years. Consider this: Loan officer population peaked in March of 2021 at 177,991. The number of loan officers who did at least one loan dropped to 93,938 in January of this year. This precipitous 47% drop in loan officer population has left mortgage companies and recruiters swimming upstream in a decreased volume environment. Forecasts for when the market will normalize have backed away from the optimism expressed late in 2023, and interest rate uncertainty abounds as the Federal Reserve has extended its timeframe for cuts. But life in the mortgage industry goes on, and companies who succeed will forge forward despite treacherous conditions, and effective recruiting will be key.
Centralized, Top-down Strategy
Recruiting used to be decentralized, based on anecdotal production information, and involved a great deal of time and manual labor. Phone calls and lunch meetings with individual loan officers are personable, but they're not scalable. Keeping up with the times and staying in the top tiers of industry performance requires setting up a centralized recruiting system fueled by accurate, dynamic data that can be easily mined and actioned off.
A top-down strategy begins with leaders setting the vision for the company's mission and values and defining the type of candidates that will advance their companies' unique goals. This will help you formulate a profile of the loan officers that match your organization's strengths in the areas of product mix, geography and demographics, and culture. Dynamic filters allow you to search for things like different production ranges, product mix, low-to-moderate (LMI), and more, which allows you to target people who fit particular guidelines. Finding and targeting originators that match the strengths of your company gives you a better chance to recruit and retain them.
The Big and Local Pictures
As companies develop their ideal candidate profiles, it's smart to look at loan officer production on national, regional, and local levels. This will help hone the profile and allow you to compare your company's current position to peers and goals. You can also see where your strengths and weaknesses lie in overall production, product mix and Fair Lending efforts.
Trend information is revealing and helpful for company leadership and recruiters. Finding out where loan officers are moving to and from during specific timeframes provides incredible insight; it's important to consciously review loan officer arrivals and departures industry-wide along with your recruiting volume, retention, and corresponding dollar volumes during different time spans. Doing this at the company level will help you compare your activity and stats to those of your competitors and see who's growing, who's not.
Successful, effective recruiting in the mortgage industry goes beyond collecting producers; it's about strategically sourcing, attracting, and retaining top talent to fuel your company's growth trajectory. The ability to achieve this requires market intelligence and the ability to action off it at scale.
Jeff Walton is CEO of InGenius. With over 35 years in home mortgage and as a CEO and President of large national mortgage companies, Jeff is focused on helping the industry achieve high performance using actionable intelligence. Interested in learning more? Book an intro call with InGenius Data.