7 Tips for a Branch Manager to Hire the Right Loan Officer
The following 7 Steps are crucial to establishing a process that generates consistency when recruiting strong salespeople in your mortgage company.
1) Always Be Recruiting – the worst time to hire a salesperson is the time your sale staff is desperate. The reason being that you are more likely to hire the first person which may be the wrong person, By actively recruiting, you can hire the right salesperson for the job and not settle.
2) The Eye-catching Ad – this should not be a short narrative of the job or the company. Actually your goal here is to summarize the candidate you want to have by detailing what the candidate has already accomplished.
3) Sifting through Resumes – The majority of business owners make a giant mistake when they invite or rule out a candidate predicated on their resumes. Resumes actually are not always accurate predictors whether a person will be successful in the available loan officer positions you have. The best way to filter out the candidates is to assess them early in the process. There are plenty of sales specific assessment tools on the market to predict with close to 100% accuracy, if a candidate will do well or fail terribly as a mortgage originator in your local area.
4) Quick Phone Call – have a really quick conversation for around 4 minutes just with the candidates you feel are in a position to be hired according to the assessment. Your objective is to find out if they possess the experience you described in your ad, and to be certain they would represent your company well.
5) In Person Interview – the main objective of the interview is to test your candidate about what they put on their resume abd validate it to gauge whether it is the truth or not.
6) Referral Network – Build a recruiting referral network of people who send you salesperson candidates. Leaders of service organizations (Rotary, etc.) are a good place to start. If you are a member of the local Chamber of Commerce find out who is the sales director and get to know other members who are salespeople. Put an ad up on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
7) Prospecting Millennials
Generalizing a group of people is risky in many aspects. Not all “Millennials” act or think the same way. However, if you had to label a generation. Millennials aren’t very fond of aggressive salespeople. Millennials feel more comfortable helping others and offering viable solutions than selling just to make a sale.
An awesome question to ask a millennial during an interview is, What types of problems do you see yourself solving for your customers, company, or society in the next five years?’ as opposed to the outdated “Where do you want to be in five years?’
Additional reasons why you should not always rely on a resume. According to Hire Right, a company that assists companies with employee background checks
80% of all resumes are deceiving.
29% have bogus degrees.
30% inaccurate dates of employment.
40% have exaggerated salary claims.
30% have embellished job descriptions.
27% give fake references.