In this solo presentation, Richard Milligan of Foresee Recruiting examines how the mortgage‑lending industry’s regulatory and technological upheavals from 2007‑2015 created a recruiting environment focused on poaching dissatisfied employees. He notes that the current deregulatory climate has left roughly 94.6% of loan officers content, rendering the old “hunt the unhappy” approach ineffective. Milligan shares a personal turning point around 2010 when he shifted to recruiting by leading with his personal vision and core values rather than a company’s value proposition. He illustrates the impact with a story of a high‑producing loan officer who switched firms after being inspired by Milligan’s leadership vision. Milligan contrasts two recruiting narratives: the common “opportunity‑improvement offer” (better pay, marketing, support) and the “new opportunity” model, where a leader’s unique vision and values create an irreplicable proposition—citing companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Starbucks as examples. He urges recruiters to stop front‑loading the first conversation with company features and instead present a leadership value proposition, laying the groundwork for future discussions on leadership branding. The video concludes with a call to visit his website (4crecruiting.com) and YouTube channel (4C Recruiting) for more content.
Chapters
You ready? 5. Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan here with Foresee Recruiting, and I'm coming to you today to talk about a dynamic shift that's going on inside the mortgage industry, specifically in the area of recruiting. A little bit about me, I talk to hundreds of recruiting leaders on a weekly basis, and so I get a specific feel for what's going on in the industry based on the fact that I talk to people from New Jersey to California, from Hawaii to Florida, from Texas to Minnesota. And here's what I can tell you. A lot of recruiting leaders inside the mortgage industry are struggling right now, and rightfully so. So let's just take a step back and let's look at the last 10 to 12 years inside the mortgage industry. Go back to 2007. Things began to dramatically change that shaped the mortgage industry for about 8 years, right? We can take 2007 and '08 all the way through around 2015, and that was a season of turmoil. A season of change inside the industry, right? We could go back and talk about specific things like the NMLS requirements and the new GFE standards and things like TRID, the larger— the last large piece of regulatory change that impacted the way loans are delivered to the closing table. Inside of that as well, we have all these regulatory pieces that were coming from the CFPB. You throw in these enormous spikes in volume. Because as soon as we thought rates were at their lowest low, guess what? They would go down again, and we would see these enormous spikes in volume. Most lenders in that season between 2008 and 2015 changed their sell platform, their LOS, their point of sale. And so in addition to all of those issues that I just laid out for you, you also have this season of change where we're having to migrate from one platform to the next platform. Simply to sustain a system that was compliant and that allowed us to move through the regulatory environment. With that said, during that window of time, most people left one company and went to the next. And as recruiting leaders, we adapted. How did we adapt? Here's how we adapted. We recruited primarily through the lens of trying to find people who were unhappy. We could go back to that time. There was always a company that had a struggle. There were— there was long underwriting turn times or a lack of leadership or changes inside the organization that impacted their finances or impacted their ability to make sure that loans were being closed in a timely manner. And so what we did as recruiting leaders was we simply sought out the low-hanging fruit. In essence, we became hunters. We were looking for the easy kill. And now we get to 2015 and the season begins to change. In fact, I would dare say we're in a deregulatory environment. The last survey that I saw said 95%. It's 94.6% of people say they're happy where they're at. So if you're recruiting through the lens of trying to find people that are unhappy, then it becomes very difficult when only 5.4% would actually meet that criteria. So what do you need to do in order to adapt today? Well, let me take you back to some changes that I made around 2010, and I began to win significantly inside the lane of recruiting through a completely different lens, which was not trying to problem-solve people that were unhappy. What I began to lead with was my vision and my core values. Okay, and so I began to actually realize I was having conversations with people that were happy where they were at. They weren't discontent, and I didn't fully understand at the time why they were even engaging in a conversation with me. I remember a specific story, a young man that I recruited, a great producer in my market doing 10 to 12 units a month. And I had a conversation with him for the very first time over the phone, and 2 and a half weeks later he was sitting inside my branch. And I couldn't believe it. And to some degree, with a little bit of arrogance, I was kind of beating my chest saying, man, Milligan, you have this recruiting thing figured out. What I didn't realize is that I had made some changes to present a vision and to present my core values over trying to figure out what his problems were. And because of that, I was able to motivate him very quickly. Motivate him even though he was in a place where he was happy where he was at. I remember almost 3 days into being inside my branch, my door's open, his door's open, and I hear him on the phone calling his real estate agents, and he was saying this: here is the reason why I left one company and went to the next. And to my amazement, he wasn't talking about my company value proposition. He wasn't talking about being in a lot of pain where he had been and moving to a better place. He was actually talking about my own, my own leadership vision and my own leadership core values. The importance of this is this: in this new season where 95% of people are content, the best way to move someone from being content and happy to moving them to a place where they actually just sense some discontentment is to lead with your core values. In this world, there's always 2 types of opportunities. One opportunity is what I always call the opportunity improvement offer. That— what that means is that this company's a little bit better in some way, shape, or form. And I would dare say most people are leading with that. My company has better marketing. My company has better compensation. My company has better support. Whatever you're leading with, it typically falls into that opportunity improvement offer. What I'm asking you to do is to go to what I would call a new opportunity. In the lens of business, we understand this best when we look at companies like Google. Like Google was a new opportunity. Look at Amazon, new opportunity. They weren't trying to improve a product, they were actually the product. Facebook, the same thing. You can even look at Starbucks. Starbucks was a new concept, a new idea that launched. Now today, there's lots of opportunity improvement offers that are out there in the Starbucks space, but no one's been able to rival Starbucks because they were the new opportunity. What we do as leaders, when we actually move towards our vision and our core values is we create something that is so unique and so different that nobody can duplicate. When God created you, he created you original and authentic and he broke the mold. And so your core values can't be my core values. They might be similar, but they're never going to be the same. Your experiences and your stories might be similar to mine, but they're never going to be the same. Your vision, unless you cut and paste it from my website, It's not going to be your vision. Your vision will be dramatically different. So when you lead with those core values and that vision, you now move into what is known as a new opportunity. People can show up with all this stuff that's a little bit better, but when you show up with your vision, your core values, you now fall into that space which is now a new opportunity. So I encourage you, get clear on this. Begin to lead with this. In fact, stop leading that first meeting or that first phone call that you have with a candidate, with a recruit, stop leading with your company value proposition and begin leading with your leadership value proposition. In a future video, we'll talk more about leadership branding, the importance of leadership branding today, because ultimately it is everything to you as a recruiting leader. If you enjoyed this video, you can find others like this at my website, 4crecruiting.com. You can also find me on my YouTube channel underneath 4C Recruiting. And until we meet again, All the best to you, and remember, recruiting is done best when it comes through the lens of you being a new opportunity, which is your vision and your core values.
