Hiring Rookies

Don’t pass up the opportunity to hire those less experienced

Insider

Contributing Writer

This is a topic that has been on my mind constantly during my 40 years in the mortgage industry (I started when I was 7, by the way). You see, when I started, I was a rookie. No real estate experience, no mortgage experience, and no sales experience. Why did I get an interview? I played racquetball with the owner of a real estate company and the president of the mortgage company (and a few others). I was working as a manager of a Congressional office and expressed the desire to leave.

Here is what they said: You are really aggressive on the court. You would do well in our industry.

Seriously, that was the assessment! I first went in to meet the president of the mortgage company and he said I should become a real estate agent. It did not occur to me at the time, but later I figured out that, while he liked me, he was not enamored with hiring a rookie. I then went to see the owner of the company and he said, “You are going to be a loan officer.”

So, I went back to the mortgage president and repeated what the owner said. His response? I guess you are going to be a loan officer.

I then started my training, which consisted of reading some program guides and a little booklet on real estate finance. Luckily the second in charge was nicknamed “momma mortgage” in the DC area and she fielded the six thousand questions I gave her in the first week. (OK a light exaggeration.)

They sent me out to the real estate offices and the agents basically said, we don’t use your company because they messed up so many times. Stupid me, I thought they were supposed to give me business. Isn’t that an agent’s job? Well, I ignored the criticism, and I kept coming back. As far as the agents were concerned, my nickname was bad penny, because I kept turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How did I do? I closed approximately 600 loans in my first 18 months. That excludes the three months I took to get a pipeline as back then it took 90 days to close loans as we had to send them to FHA or VA for approval. I swear some of those loans are still wandering the halls of VA 40 years later! I closed 60 loans in my 12th month in the industry.

And the only reason I was hired is that the owner of the company forced me down the throat of the president, who became a good friend, by the way. Though I still have a bad taste in my mouth because he used to kill me in racquetball. In reality, if I had walked into any other mortgage company and asked to be hired, I would have been turned down flat.

A quality rookie is better than a less than quality experienced loan officer with a license.

What did they do with their top producer? They made me a manager, which is par for the course in the mortgage industry. Then I got to hire people. And I always had a soft spot in my heart for rookies because of my own start. As a matter of fact, other managers in the industry used to send me rookies they knew personally because I actually trained them. Years later, this became OriginationPro Mortgage School.

Keep An Open Mind

Now the purpose of this article is not to convince all managers out there to hire rookies. After authoring the first book on management for the Mortgage Bankers Association, I started teaching hiring and management practices. One focus would be the assessment, training and mentoring of novices. The purpose of this article is to ask managers to keep an open mind when they hire. A quality rookie is better than a less-than-quality experienced loan officer with a license. Anyone can get a license if they take the test seriously. I know because I have mentored so many through the testing process.

How can you tell if they are quality? Success is not an accident. There are ways of weeding out those who are not serious about this career and those who are serious but could not originate their way out of a paper bag. More on this topic next month!