Richard Milligan explains why mortgage recruiting is broken: interest rate swings and regulatory changes eliminated the pain points that used to make candidates jump ship. The old playbook of hunting desperate companies no longer works, so recruiters need new phone scripts, better LinkedIn presence, and repositioned messaging to rebuild what he calls their bridges of excellence.
Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan here with Forsee Recruiting, and it's Friday. And for a lot of you, that's kind of a high five. I'm heading out of the office. I can't wait to end the week. I want to leave you with something that's really sticking with me here on a Friday afternoon, and it's the context of a lot of conversations that I've had this week and the week prior. And the context of the conversation is this: a lot of people are struggling in the space of recruiting right now inside the mortgage industry. Now, I've got some beliefs around why that is, and ultimately I believe that there is a perfect storm here that's been brewing for a while. Some of it's our own making as individual recruiting leaders, and some of it is actually being dictated by the market. But it's up to us to solve the problem as recruiting leaders, and that's why I'm going to deliver this message to you today. So here's my take On why people are struggling in the space of recruiting, and I boil it down to really 2 reasons. Okay, one, yes, the market has changed. And as someone who struggled at times in recruiting, having spent 15 years inside the mortgage industry, I was one of those people that struggled recruiting at times. It's really easy to blame things on the market, right, instead of taking personal ownership. I've done it, and I know it's easy for everybody else to do, for us to just say the market has changed. I'm not I'm not sure why. I'm trying to figure it out why. I love this statement: there's either a problem to be solved or there is a tension to be managed in this. Okay, and that's true of most issues that we bump up against. There's either a problem to be solved or a tension to be managed. So with that said, is this a tension that we should be managing or is it a problem to be solved? And I would tell you that it is something you have to solve. This is not going to change. This is not going to go away. And here's why. For the last decade, most of us have had success recruiting, and that's because we've been in a wind in time where regulations changed dramatically, probably more dramatically than they ever will or ever have inside the mortgage industry. In that regulatory nightmare that we were dealing with, a lot of companies got exposed and got exposed because they were struggling either moving toward the regulations, or they got exposed because then all of a sudden they had these spikes I remember when rates got into the upper 4s and everyone was like, this is insane, I can't believe that we're here. And there was all this volume, thank you to rates, you know, getting in the 4s. And suddenly mid-4s and low 4s happen, and suddenly upper 3s happen, and suddenly we're in the low 3s. And at points we're even in the 2s on a 15-year. And those created spikes in volume. Now spikes in volume actually exposed a lot of companies. Those companies were either moving into new LOSs, trying to get through some of the regulations that were— that needed to, you know, be achieved, timelines that needed to be achieved within those regulations. And so it was an absolute nightmare. Because of that, most of us at the recruiting leader level changed our mantras, and our mantra became more of a hot-button approach. We were in the market looking for people that had issues. All right. So, yeah, there's 2 reasons here. Number one, the reason why people are struggling recruiting is that the market has changed. But the second part of this, we've got to take ownership of. Okay. The message of the past doesn't work in the present. There's a great quote by Newt Gingrich, and it goes like this, and I'm going to try and get as close as I can. But the quote goes like this: At some point, we've all built our islands of success and we got there by building our bridges, our bridges of excellence to get there. But the lake of mediocrity always gets on the bridge of excellence and tears it down. So we always have to be building new bridges of excellence to get to that island of success. And that bridge of excellence that most of us have gotten to the island with over the past decade has been a recruiting model that's been built around figuring out the issues in the market, our recruits that were aligned with those companies that were having issues, meeting with those recruits, problem-solving with them, finding out their hot buttons, and then bringing them to our team because our solution The thing that we offered was better. Okay, what do you do when that doesn't work anymore? What do you do when the market doesn't have any issues that are overwhelming? What message do you deliver then? And that's a question that many are trying to figure out in this moment in time. Look, there's a way to have continued success in this market. It involves how you position yourself from the very beginning with recruits. You do it through your phone scripting, you do it through your behaviors on LinkedIn, you do it in your face-to-face meetings, you do it Right. The next steps that are in your recruiting process of how you actually pursue somebody, there are ways in that to have continued success around recruiting, but most don't understand how to position themselves well. Those are gonna be the ones that fail miserably in the space of recruiting. And note, I'm not gonna place blame on you because you've adapted over the last decade to the environment, and that adaption has led to a lot of success. But the truth is that in 2018, And so the ones that change, the ones that understand how to adapt, will win on a large scale in 2018. In fact, I got an email earlier today from someone that I meet with on Fridays at 2 PM. The email that I got was, I'm not able to make the meeting today because I have 4 recruiting visits scheduled for today. And I don't know how many people couldn't benefit from having 4 recruiting visits scheduled on a Friday, but I know that those appointments are being scheduled, those face-to-face meetings with recruits are being scheduled because he's following A different model than most are in the business. So if you're watching this and if there's any way that I can help, simply click the link on this post and schedule a time to speak. It's the— the link is bookrichardnow.com. Simply bookrichardnow.com and you can— you'll see my calendar live. I'll give you 30 minutes of my best input for free, and beyond that, no strings attached. Would love to help. This is something that I'm extremely passionate about, and I'm simply gonna tell you and teach you in those 30 minutes to do things that will make you a continued success Even in this market. So with that said, it's Friday. Have a good weekend, and you know how to reach me if you need to reach me. All the best, and I'll be back on with some videos soon.
