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Define Your Culture, Attract Top Talent
Good candidates don’t just want a paycheck—they want to belong.
Finding elite talent in private lending is no easy feat. The candidate pool is small, dispersed, and not often actively job-seeking. To secure the right person for your team, you need a compelling answer to one crucial question: Why should a top-tier professional choose your company?
If your best pitch is a better paycheck, you’re already losing. The highest-performing candidates don’t just chase money. They want career growth, work-life balance, stability, and—most importantly—an authentic cultural fit.
What You Say vs. How They Feel
A strong employer value proposition isn’t what you say; it’s what candidates experience. An example is a top five national credit union that has an incredibly strong identity. The company doesn’t just know who they are; they embody it. Their mission is clear: to serve current, past, and family members of military personnel. This call to serve isn’t just a tagline—it runs through the entire organization. Employees who work there aren’t just earning a paycheck; they’re on a mission. Service isn’t a corporate buzzword—it’s at the core of everything each employee does.
The company’s sense of purpose shapes their hiring strategy. They never have to “sell” candidates on their culture because candidates feel it from the first interaction. Unlike companies that simply claim to value service, this credit union lives it. Candidates join the team because they want to be part of something bigger than themselves: a team that gives back rather than one that simply maximizes profit. Employees who don’t embrace this mission don’t last.
The company’s hiring process goes beyond résumés and technical qualifications. During interviews, they ask about past roles, volunteer work, community involvement, and moments of service. They want to understand not only what a candidate has done, but who they are. In this organization, success isn’t just about hitting numbers—it’s about taking care of their members and staying true to their mission.
Compare the company in this example to companies that struggle to articulate their culture. If you have to explain the culture in interviews, it’s not strong enough. Candidates should feel it through how leadership conveys the vision, how employees talk about their work, and how the hiring process is structured.
Your culture doesn’t need to be glamorous or aspirational. If your company thrives on disruption, show candidates how you’re shaking up the market. If you’re grinding hard to gain market share, be up-front about that energy—some candidates want to be in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment where they can outwork the competition. If you’re a tight-knit, family-owned business that values loyalty and tradition, emphasize the stability and long-term commitment you offer employees. If you’re a cutting-edge tech startup that rewards innovation and risk-taking, highlight how employees are encouraged to experiment, fail fast, and push boundaries. If your firm is built on a mission of service, make sure every aspect of your hiring process reflects that, because the best employees are looking for a purpose, not just a job.
Whether your culture is about speed, creativity, stability, collaboration, or service, the key is to be unapologetically clear about who you are. The right candidates will be drawn to your authenticity, and the wrong ones will filter themselves out—saving you time, energy, and costly hiring mistakes.
Stuck in Your Bubble?
If you’re only searching within private lending’s small talent pool, you’re restricting your options and likely missing out on exceptional candidates. Although some roles demand deep industry expertise, many—especially in finance, marketing, legal, sales, operations, and credit—can be filled by professionals from adjacent industries with transferable skills.
One national private lender needed a credit executive with experience in DSCR and SFR products. The problem? The number of executives who had led large underwriting teams and had formal experience in business-purpose lending was limited. Instead of waiting indefinitely for the perfect BPL candidate, the lender broadened its search to include professionals from the non-QM sector, where there was considerable product overlap.
Suddenly, the lender had multiple strong contenders rather than just one. And guess what? They didn’t hire the BPL candidate. Instead, they chose a non-QM credit executive who was a much stronger cultural fit. The BPL candidate had all the technical qualifications, but the right hire was the one who aligned with the company’s leadership and long-term vision.
This principle applies across departments. Don’t get stuck in an industry-specific mindset. Look for professionals who can quickly adapt to your business. The broader your search, the more choices you have. And in hiring, choice reigns supreme. You don’t want to hire the only available candidate—you want to hire the best candidate.
To do that, start by identifying the core competencies the role truly requires. Instead of focusing on industry experience, ask: What are this role’s key responsibilities and challenges? What skills are essential, and which can be taught? What traits do our top performers share?
Consider industries with overlapping skill sets, ones in which professionals face similar challenges, use comparable technologies, or work in parallel business models. Evaluate how quickly a candidate can adapt to industry-specific nuances. Talk to your current team to pinpoint gaps a fresh perspective could fill.
Most important, separate must-have competencies from “nice-to-haves” to avoid disqualifying exceptional talent over non-critical industry knowledge. By shifting your focus from where a candidate has worked to what they can do, you expand your talent pool and position your company to hire stronger, more innovative professionals.
Refusing Remote Work Handcuffs Growth
Location plays a critical role in recruitment, especially in niche industries like private lending. Many top candidates are deeply rooted in their communities due to family commitments, lifestyle preferences, or even cost-of-living issues. No offer, no matter how enticing, will convince these people to relocate.
Still, many companies stubbornly insist on a 100% in-office policy, drastically limiting their talent pool. One lender’s corporate headquarters was in a city that once enjoyed a strong talent base. The bank needed a CFO; however, within a 50-mile radius, there wasn’t a single qualified candidate with experience at a lender of their size.
Initially, the bank was adamant about hiring someone local, including pursuing candidates who could potentially commute. But none were truly qualified. Eventually, the bank opened the search to include remote candidates and hired a CFO who lived across the country—someone who was not only a perfect fit but also brought in key team members remotely.
As the bank embraced remote hiring, it expanded its executive team with an industry-recognized CIO, head of compliance, and director of capital markets. The results? In a tough economic climate, the bank grew originations from $2.5 billion to more than $4 billion in a single year. The parent company’s leadership took notice, praising the quality of their executive hires. These remote leaders, in turn, recruited top talent faster, strengthening the company’s competitive edge.
This is today’s reality. If you cling to outdated in-office mandates, you’re shutting yourself off from the best talent. Hybrid models, remote work, and even flexible commuting arrangements let you hire the best person for the job—not just the closest one.
The data backs this up. A staggering 98% of workers want remote work options. Companies that embrace flexibility don’t just hire faster; they attract high-caliber talent that would otherwise be out of reach.
The Best Candidates Aren’t Looking
The best candidates in private lending are often not actively job-hunting. According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce consists of passive talent—professionals who aren’t searching for a job but are open to new opportunities if approached correctly.
When companies post job openings, they primarily attract active candidates; in other words, those looking for their next role, often as a result of layoffs or job dissatisfaction. Great candidates can exist in this pool, but the timing has to be perfect.
But what about high performers who aren’t scrolling job boards? They’re the ones making real impact elsewhere. Some executive search firms specialize in identifying and engaging these passive candidates, reaching out with personalized, one-to-one messaging that speaks directly to their needs, showcasing opportunities they may not have potentially considered otherwise.
Companies relying solely on applications from job postings end up sifting through hundreds of irrelevant resumes, with only a handful of qualified applicants. By targeting passive candidates, you can gain access to a wider, stronger talent pool.
The numbers prove their value. Research shows passive candidates are 17% less likely to require skill development than active job seekers. They come in ready to make an impact!
Is Your Hiring Process Pushing Top Talent Away?
Hiring delays kill deals. When too many stakeholders are involved—dragging out interviews and adding unnecessary steps—top candidates lose interest or accept other offers.
Even major corporations get this wrong. Google, for example, once had a hiring process that stretched over months, requiring candidates to go through more than 12 interviews. They assumed more interviews meant better hiring decisions. But when they analyzed five years of data, they found something surprising: Four interviews with four interviewers predicted a hire’s success with 86% accuracy. Adding more interviews barely moved the needle. Google slashed its hiring timeline, saving thousands of hours—and improving the candidate’s experience.
Yet many private lenders still cling to slow, bloated hiring processes. One company required candidates to spend an entire day in back-to-back interviews, meeting with seven or more people (many of whom weren’t even in the candidate’s direct reporting line). By the time video interviews were added, candidates had met with 10 to 15 people.
The result? Candidates walked away exhausted, frustrated, and often unsure of what the role even entailed.
Companies that streamline their hiring process by limiting interviews to key decision-makers and making every conversation count win the best talent.
Vacancy-Only Hiring Limits Your Growth
Hiring doesn’t end when a candidate accepts the offer. Rather, it is an ongoing process of relationship-building and talent management. Stay connected with high performers, even those you don’t hire. They could be your next key hire when the right role opens up.
In private lending, your people are your competitive advantage. Define a compelling value proposition, embrace flexibility, expand your search, engage passive talent, and streamline your hiring process. The cost of hiring an amateur is far greater than investing in a professional.
Be smart. Be strategic. And win.
Pay now or Pay Later
Investing in the right people is often less expensive than the hidden costs of hiring mistakes.
Success is powered by people. Every loan funded, process streamlined, and relationship managed ties back to the talent working behind the scenes. When you manage hiring correctly, everything else falls into place.
When it’s done wrong? The costs run far deeper than most companies realize.
Let’s take a look at the hidden costs of hiring gone wrong—and why investing in the right people is often far less expensive than you think.
The Real Cost of a Bad Hire
Hiring mistakes aren’t just frustrating. They’re expensive. A bad hire can lead to missed deadlines, poor execution, compliance issues, or customer churn—all of which affect your bottom line. In some cases, the wrong hire in a leadership or operational role can stall momentum across multiple departments.
Worse, it can cost you your best people. When top producers identify dysfunction in operations, credit, or servicing, they are more apt to leave. They won’t stick around if they feel like they’re doing battle alone, or when poor support jeopardizes their relationships.
According to SHRM’s “The Cost of a Bad Hire Can Be Astronomical,” the cost of a bad hire can reach up to five times their annual salary when you account for direct costs (e.g., salary and severance), indirect costs (e.g., lost productivity), and the time required to hire and train a replacement.
The Trap of Short-Term Thinking
Private lenders often hesitate when it comes to paying top-tier talent, especially for nonrevenue roles. There is a tendency to view hiring as an expense rather than an investment in infrastructure.
Here’s the reality: Hiring someone for $30,000 less today might cost you millions in the long run. A lower-salaried hire who lacks experience, strategic capability, or leadership instincts may hinder your team’s progress or fail to enhance your systems. That drag compounds over time.
Take for example, a private lender who had a choice between two candidates to lead their post-closing function. One was an experienced leader asking for $150,000 plus bonus, while the other was a lower-level manager asking $100,000. Despite no budget limitations, the lender selected the lower-cost option. Within four months, the post-closing team had unraveled—processes weren’t being followed, loans were stalling, and team morale had collapsed.
Eventually, the manager and the team had to be replaced. When the company brought in a consultant to assess the damage, the recommended solution was nearly identical to the plan the $150,000 candidate had proposed months earlier.
Top performers don’t just cost more; they deliver more. When the market tightens, they’re the ones who fill pipelines, protect your investor relationships, and create efficiencies that scale.
When “Almost Right” Is Dead Wrong
Another mistake? Trying to stretch a mid-level hire into an executive seat. Maybe they’ve been a strong underwriter or operations manager, and the company wants to promote from within. Authentic leadership requires a distinct set of skills, however.
Hiring someone who’s “almost right” may feel like a safe bet, but it’s often more damaging than waiting for the right person.
Misaligned leaders can slow decision-making, fail to inspire their teams, and frequently end up micromanaging because they lack confidence at the strategic level.
One private lender promoted a top-producing loan officer to a producing regional sales manager role, hoping their production instincts would translate into leadership. The new manager focused more on personal production than on removing roadblocks for the team, and morale dropped sharply. Within months, team performance declined, and they lost key loan officers to competitors. The takeaway: Top producers need coaching and support, not competition from their boss.
Compensation Mindset
If you’re still viewing compensation through a “how low can we go” lens, you’re missing the point. A company should consider its impact, not just its cost.
Great leaders build culture, attract talent, and fix broken systems. They protect margin by creating efficiencies, avoiding regulatory missteps, and improving execution. These aren’t line items—they’re force multipliers.
According to McKinsey, high performers are 400% more productive than average employees, and in complex occupations, that number can climb to 800%. This isn’t a result of working harder—it’s the result of working smarter.
Think about it: Would you rather save $20,000 on your base salary or generate an extra $5 million in funded volume because your team runs more smoothly and efficiently?
You don’t pay qualified talent more because it looks good on a comp report. You pay them more because they make your business better.
Stop Hiring for the Middle
Too often, companies approach hiring with a rigid compensation range in mind and then attempt to find the best available candidate who fits within it. But here’s the truth: When you lock yourself into a salary range, you’re also limiting yourself to the level of talent that’s currently earning it. You’re not hiring for what your company needs; you’re hiring for what you’re willing to pay.
In the private lending space, where roles are nuanced and stakes are high, this approach can seriously limit your upside. If you want a leader who can design systems, scale teams, or rework credit policy to unlock profitability, you need to build your compensation plan around that caliber of impact.
The goal isn’t to overpay; it’s to align compensation with the value the right candidate will deliver. That might mean stretching beyond your initial range, but it also means hiring a candidate who can hit the ground running, motivate your staff, and build a lasting infrastructure.
Set the bar based on outcomes, not averages. Don’t shop for leadership in the middle of the market if you’re trying to build an elite operation.
Build for the Long-Term
The best lenders don’t build teams to fill gaps. They hire with purpose, not just managing headcount but considering talent acquisition a crucial part of strategic planning.
That means budgeting for the leaders you need before you’re desperate for them. You can create scorecards for roles to ensure you hire based on competencies, not personalities. Prioritize talent as infrastructure.
When entering a new channel, such as wholesale lending, many lenders feel they need to hit the ground running by hiring a producing manager to generate volume. Although a small test volume helps evaluate early traction, it can be equally important to hire a channel leader who can validate the business plan, understand market intricacies, and develop a strategic growth road map. The right leader can identify pitfalls before they become issues, and scale methodically, starting small if needed, and growing sustainably in any market.
In a market as competitive as private lending, the difference between growth and stagnation often comes down to who’s sitting at the table.
Hiring qualified talent isn’t cheap. However, hiring the wrong person is far more expensive. Now’s the time to take stock of your leadership team and hiring.
What is your company doing to improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
Photo illustration by Leanza Abucayan, CNN
What is your company doing to improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion? President Biden’s Cabinet serves as a model for workplace diversity!
Politics aside, let’s review President Biden’s cabinet picks: 50% of nominees for Cabinet-level positions are people of color including Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the first female of Black and South Asian descent to hold the office of Vice President.
How diverse is the Biden Cabinet? By comparison, former President Barack Obama set the previous record for diversity with a Cabinet that was 42% people of color.
President Biden’s diverse cabinet appointments are a way of signaling broader initiatives and values – inextricably tied to policy, but also indicators of identity. Simply put his cabinet picks better reflect the American people – more than any other cabinet in history.
Diversity in the Presidential cabinet mirrors a similar, global workforce movement towards diversity at the management and executive level. Companies are increasingly striving to increase diversity because it better cultivates a sense of community within the company.
Studies show that higher rates of workplace diversity can help companies evolve, innovate, problem-solve, and be more efficient. Moreover, highly diverse workplaces offer employees a better sense of community, increased worker engagement, and a more positive corporate culture.
It’s a good bottom-line business decision, too! Companies with a more culturally and ethnically diverse executive team were 33% more likely to see above-average profits.
Above all else, employees are now demanding diversity in the workplace. Highly educated young professionals want employers to be equally committed to changing themselves. This includes hiring a more diverse workforce, helping employees of color advance through the ranks, giving them more decision-making power and facilitating uncomfortable conversations about systemic racism.
According to a recent Glassdoor survey, 76% of employees and job seekers said a diverse workforce was important when evaluating companies and job offers. Nearly half of Black and Hispanic employees and job seekers said they had quit a job after witnessing or experiencing discrimination at work. And 37% of employees and job seekers said they would not apply to a company that had negative satisfaction ratings among people of color. These numbers show that workplace diversity is driving how talent looks for jobs in the current economy.
Despite overwhelming evidence showing how diversity improves production, profitability, engagement and retention, many companies are still far from building a Management team and workforce that represents a proportionate number of women and people of color.
#HuffmanAssociates #HireAmbitiously #DiversityandInclusion #DiversityInLeadership #womeninmortgage #NAMMBA
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How Banks Can Benefit from Fintech Partnerships
In 2020, few people view paying a friend or family member $20 for last night’s dinner over Venmo as something extraordinary. Actions like these, by now, already seem like an ordinary function of daily life, like starting your car from the warmth of your house, or your phone reminding you when it’s time to wish your mother a happy birthday.
But it wasn’t long ago that the transaction mentioned above was, in fact, quite revolutionary. Since then, financial technology, or fintech, has steadily invaded more channels of modern life, changing the ways in which payments are made, finances are accessed, and disrupting the traditional financial and banking industries forever.
Initially, it was reasonable and expected for traditional banks to view fintech companies as intruders and threats to be snuffed out. Today, though, there is a trend towards more diplomatic, collaborative efforts as some banks are cleverly strategizing ways to capitalize on the ever-expanding presence of fintech.
We’ll cover a few of these below.
Data and Identity Security
Headlines reporting major data breaches have become so commonplace that there is a level of desensitization among the public: privacy, perhaps, is viewed now as a luxury.
But it shouldn’t be, and there’s much to be gained from offering a future where privacy and the protection of that privacy is a right.
Several fintech companies offer services to help track and respond to ever-increasing breaches, making the process much more effective for both the consumers and the banks that possess their information.
Breach Clarity, for example, monitors every reported data breach in the US and then advises consumers on the best course of action to take in response. Notifying individual consumers of these breaches proved to be an issue until Breach Clarity began integrating its data protection services into banks’ digital banking platforms.
As identity protection continues to be an important marker of financial health, banks can continue to look towards partnerships like this to enhance their connectivity and trust with their customers and open up new revenue opportunities.
Brand Reputation
A study conducted by Accenture in April of this year yielded staggering results: only 14% of consumers who experienced a financially impactful life event in the past five years sought help from their bank. The precise reason for this low percentage of consumers trusting their banks is contested, but consensus suggests much of it stems from the fallout of the 2008 recession, and, over a decade later, only a third of consumers report having high confidence in their banks.
Conversely, 75% of consumers report trusting the technology sector. Here lies the opportunity for banks who connect with respected fintech companies to offer services. Partnering with a reputable fintech company for an app, for example, can help engender trust and loyalty among a customer base.
Wealth Transfer Management
Consider this statistic from Cerulli Associates, a Boston-based global research and consulting firm: Boomers will account for 70% of the $68 trillion in wealth that will be transferred by US households over the next 25 years.
As posited by Forbes, many banks may be far too concerned with losing management of a portion of that massive figure listed above instead of the opportunity of capturing the management of the transfer itself.
Traditionally, the wealth transfer process is complex and arduous for consumers, and they’d prefer not to spend time and money just to get the money that’s coming their way. A few notable fintech startups, Atticus and Trust & Will, in particular, are set to remedy this pain point with simple, user-friendly, and affordable digital services for probate, estate settlement, and estate planning.
Forbes argues the benefits of bank partnerships with fintechs in this instance as twofold. One, banks help to generate a new stream of revenue. Two, facilitating wealth transfers can better position banks to further manage the money after it’s transferred.
This is but a brief overview of potential benefits banks can reap from smart partnerships with fintech companies, and, looking forward, it is likely that the number of opportunities will only increase. Currently, fintechs represent approximately $1.6 trillion in domestic payment volume, and the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of payment volume generated by fintechs is expected to soon exceed 80%.
Find this article helpful? For a deeper dive into the relationship opportunities between banks and fintech, follow this link to a podcast on the topic from the PaymentsJournal Podcast.
How To Mitigate Unconscious Bias In the Hiring Process
Topics centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace have skyrocketed lately: and for good reason.
Besides the nationwide, humanistic push towards more just and inclusive communities, institutions, and organizations, there are real, demonstrable business reasons for having a more diverse workforce and leadership team.
For as much as an organization can tout its commitment and steadfast resolve towards D&I initiatives, there is one confounding variable that can subtly but persistently obfuscate these efforts if left unaddressed: unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias, after first being introduced as a concept to the public in 2006, is unlikely to be unfamiliar to anyone in the working world by now, but, for clarity’s sake, a clear definition is in order before we proceed.
The traditional belief that we are guided entirely by explicit beliefs and our conscious intentions has been overturned, quite convincingly. The amount of influence that our subconscious mind contributes to our attitudes, thoughts, and ultimately decisions is much larger than we may care to admit.
For example, when considering between two otherwise equal candidates for a position, you may recognize one earned a degree from a university of high regard. Unbeknownst to your conscious mind, your subconscious mind has instantly provided you with numerous positive (yet biased) associations that may cause you to automatically view that candidate in a more positive light. Thus, they’re more likely to receive an offer sheet, even though all other qualifications may be equal. Notice how even a positive bias can lead to unfair evaluation.
This unconscious bias can extend to age, gender, race, and many other traits, immutable or acquired, and can actively work against your efforts to create a more diverse workplace regardless of how loudly you’ve championed your efforts.
But luckily, there are clear, practical ways you can mitigate the inherent unconscious bias operating within us all and make your hiring process as fair as possible.
Let’s take a look at a few of them.
Partition Candidates into Different Categories (per Harvard Business Review)
In a study involving 121 experienced HR professionals who had an average of eight years of HR-related experience, researchers found that when candidates were categorized on a given dimension (gender, ethnicity, nationality, university, etc.) rather than randomly interspersed, people consistently chose more diverse candidates.
For example, the researchers asked participants to download a folder containing 16 resumes from candidates who graduated from one of four top universities. In the control group, the order of the resumes was random and did not vary by university. In the other group, the resumes from each school were sorted alphabetically.
The study found that, when resumes were randomly interspersed, 14% of managers chose candidates from all universities. But when the resumes were grouped by university, this number increased to 35%. The study found similar results when candidates were grouped by gender, ethnicity, and nationality as well.
Grouping candidates together in the hiring process can increase the diversity of selected candidates without reducing the quality of candidate selected or the hiring manager’s ability to choose freely.
Curate Job Descriptions to Eliminate Gendered Wording
Grouping the resumes you receive on specific dimensions won’t help much if there’s another variable at work affecting who submits a resume.
Research has found that women are far less likely to apply for certain jobs if the descriptions are heavy in “masculine-coded” language such as “active,” “confident,” and “driven.”
Simple processes like auditing your job descriptions to ensure they don’t contain biased language can drastically improve the diversity of applicants.
Utilize a Diverse Interview Panel
Increasing the number of interviewers has also been shown to dramatically decrease potential biases in the hiring process, especially if the interview panel is diverse across age, gender, and racial dimensions.
Google has even gone as far as involving managers from unrelated fields to provide a “disinterested” party.
Multiple interviewers from different backgrounds can create a “checks and balances” effect where the influence of potential unconscious biases are being diluted across multiple parties. A diverse interview panel can also help eliminate the “thin slice error” where an interviewer can bond strongly with a candidate over one or a few qualities while overlooking more important characteristics that better predict the candidate’s overall fit and suitability.
Unconscious bias is a ubiquitous quality of humankind, and there’s nothing damning about realizing where it exists and how it operates within us. But, if left unchecked in your hiring processes, it can pose a real threat to your DE&I initiatives. Addressing its existence and mitigating its effect with intentional effort is a necessary and effective step to take as we collectively strive towards creating truly inclusive and diverse workplaces.
Diversity in 2020: The Importance of Retention
Earlier this year, we wrote about the real benefits organizations stand to gain if they strive to create a more diverse and inclusive work environment.
In the months since we published that piece, nationwide focus on diversity and inclusion has increased exponentially.
By now, any given organization’s D&I efforts have long moved past PR sleight of hand to display political correctness—they are now a matter of financial viability.
The body of literature providing real, measurable evidence for the causal relationship between diversity and performance seems to double every few years.
As more and more companies become aware of the data-backed links between diversity and productivity, the number of board members and leadership teams in financial services committed to making real efforts towards fostering D&I within their own walls also grows.
And while this trend is incredibly important, especially in financial services where diverse representation and various diversity metrics are often below the watermark of other professional industries, these initiatives too often stop at the point of acquisition, or, at the very least, are skewed too heavily towards the hire and are not focused or thoughtful enough towards what happens after.
Nearly one out of three industry executives within financial services report that they’ve successfully hired key diversity talent only to fail at retaining them due to a lack of inclusion or engagement after they were hired.
Put frankly, there’s a retention problem for many firms in financial services.
For firms that report healthy diversity metrics and retention rates, however, there is one characteristic of their organization that is nearly ubiquitous: employee resource groups or ERGs. ERGs are employee-led groups focused on fostering a diverse, inclusive workplace and identifying and executing strategies to support it.
Organizations can have LGBTQ, female-focused, and cross-generational ERGs, which, at a high level, are focused on educating employees on the differences, highlighting the strengths, and supporting the inclusion of certain groups.
ERGs are an incredibly effective and collaborative method to expose and address specific issues or biases that may be present within a particular organization. In this case, specificity is critical because, too often, organizations attempting to enact diversity initiatives use generic solutions or a standard set of D&I strategies rather than honing in on the unique pain points of their company.
Raise awareness of your D&I efforts and poll your organization to identify volunteers who might be passionate about participating in potential employee resource groups. One is great, but the more, the better: having multiple ERGs can help engender inclusion and belonging and drastically improve diverse employees’ retention rates.
Beyond just ERGs, another component of a holistic D&I initiative is to help diverse hires gain access to mentorship opportunities. A study from the Harvard Business Review points to the correlation between mentorships and increased engagement and, thus, healthier and more successful workplace diversity programs.
Women and underrepresented minorities consistently report valuing mentorship as a crucial part of their career development, but often cite the difficulty of identifying mentoring opportunities. To help remedy this issue, leaders can intervene by communicating with new hires and helping pair them with potential mentorships directly or help identify mentorship opportunities within their own networks.
Beyond a sense of belonging and inclusion, diverse employees want to feel valued for their professional ability at their organization. Communicating openly about and assisting with their career development is a fruitful way to address that desire for both parties.
Fortunately, age-old barriers of entry to underrepresented groups are crumbling due to powerful social momentum and the genuine efforts of board members and leadership teams. As we continue to witness these barriers dissolve, the impetus is now placed on those leadership teams to adequately welcome, engage, and include their diverse talent—the work isn’t done just once the hire is made.
Finance and Accounting Functions in High Demand as Lending Volume Surges
Initially, the global pandemic dramatically disrupted virtually every existing industry worldwide. The banking and consumer lending marketplaces were no exceptions. Widespread layoffs, record unemployment spikes, and a highly uncertain future became the norm for consumers and small businesses. However, banks and other lending institutions became inundated with the demands of forbearance requests, PPP loans, and a spike in volume due to the plummeting rate environment.
Many financial institutions quickly realized they were unprepared for such a shock to the system and scrambled to adjust strategies, adapt to a rapidly emerging new normal, and brace for further disruption.
Several months removed from the onset of the crisis, however, across the board lenders are experiencing a continuing surge of demand month after month. Here are just a few excerpts that encapsulate the volume spikes we’re seeing.
An article published just a few days ago touches on just how starkly lenders are experiencing, frankly, explosions in demand. Rocket Companies (owners of Rocket Mortgage and Quicken Loans), a relatively fresh name on the stock exchange, recently released its Q2 results, reporting a “net revenue increase of 437% on a year-over-year basis to $5 billion. That was on the back of loan origination volume that more than doubled over that stretch of time to more than $72 billion—a new record for the company.”
Another article published recently by the Washington Post provides insight on the link between a 49-year low for the 30-year fixed rate mortgage (a record that has been set eight new times since March) and rising purchase applications:
“Purchase applications dipped slightly the last week of July, but have risen on an annual basis for an impressive 11 straight weeks,” said Bob Broeksmit, MBA president and chief executive. “Homebuyer demand has remained strong all summer because of record-low mortgage rates and households looking for more space during the ongoing pandemic. Refinance activity was more than 80 percent higher than last year and has consistently outpaced year-ago levels.”
In an effort to not deprive you of sources, yet another article from Mortgage News Daily, provides more proclamations of unprecedented numbers for lenders, beginning with sharing that builders have reached a 32-year old record this August for confidence, measured by the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI).
Providing additional context, the article reports:
“NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz said the August reading is a sign that housing continues to lead the economy forward. The demand for new single-family homes continues to be strong, he said, and low interest rates and a focus on the importance of housing has stoked buyer traffic to all-time highs as measured on the HMI. Single-family construction is also benefiting from a noticeable shift in housing demand to suburbs, exurbs and rural markets as renters and buyers seek out more affordable, lower density markets.”
After initial efforts to proceed through and emerge from the coronavirus pandemic with their teams in tact, organizations are now struggling to keep up with the pace, close the books, and analyze information quickly enough to get actionable information to their originations teams so they can react to the market as quickly as it’s moving.
Companies that buckled down by putting key strategic efforts on hold when the pandemic started are realizing that they don’t have the structure in place to keep up with the influx of business they are experiencing. For example, many finance teams are struggling to close the month end books and analyze information quickly enough to make it actionable for their originations partners.
Without the depth and experience in finance and accounting teams leadership doesn’t have the transparency they need to manage sustainable and intelligent growth. In order to responsibly manage, lenders must be provided accurate timely data quick enough for them to react before it’s too late.
Huffman Associates provides executive search services to the mortgage and consumer lending industry nationally. We help our clients keep pace with changing times by identifying and placing the leaders needed to scale and grow their business.
How to Maintain Productivity and Engagement With a Remote Workforce
As we march our way through a period of prolonged social distancing, working remotely has become the new standard for many organizations. While we work in an age more suited to this type of disruption than any before, still leaders are faced with the challenge of maintaining productivity and engagement with teams working primarily from their homes.
Below, we’ll cover some best practices for ensuring productivity and healthy communication among your remote workforce.
Keep everyone updated: You’ve heard it one hundred times already, but these are truly unprecedented times. With circumstances being so fluid, consistent and transparent communication is the best weapon to fight uncertainty or uneasiness among employees.
Keep everyone up to speed on the state of affairs to the best of your ability. As states slowly begin to reopen, share your safety plan you have in place to eventually get everyone back to working as usual.
Set clear expectations and check-in regularly: While some people are more suited to being productive from home, many people can struggle with the distractions and lax environment working at home presents. Encourage healthy working-from-home habits, and help provide employees with everything they need to set up a well-equipped home office.
Be sure to encourage management to check in with individuals as often as they can. Emotions are high for everyone right now, and some may be struggling to cope with personal challenges while balancing their workload. Make sure they have an avenue to air out any concerns and provide support in whatever way you can.
Collective goal setting: One thing we lose when we transition to working remotely is the collective buzz and energy of the office. One way to recapture that inspiration is to create a thread or channel on whichever internal communication platform you use where people share one goal they are aiming to complete for the day each morning. Any initiative that promotes a sense of mutual goal-completing can help recreate the buzz of connectivity present at the office.
Leverage internal communication software: Teams, GoTo, Slack, Zoom—whichever platform your company uses, lean in on it now more than ever to promote an office-wide sense of connectivity and purpose when nearly every other stimulus encourages disconnectedness.
As much as possible, try to provide opportunities for everyone to get some face time with one another. Hold a weekly or bi-weekly all-hands meeting via video conferencing to update everyone on the latest news and acknowledge employee achievement. Encourage individual teams to have morning “huddle-type” meetings for colleagues to check-in on one another and update each other on projects or new developments.
Small steps like these can help create a greater sense of cohesion and productivity while we all combat the current conditions and do our part to get back to business as usual.
Huffman Associates
Huffman Associates is a national executive search firm providing innovative solutions to help companies build leadership teams to meet their business challenges and navigate change. Over the years, our team of dedicated executive recruiters has partnered with great organizations to help them find the leaders they need to drive their business forward.
Get in touch with us today to learn more.
Reviewing Leadership as Part of Your Strategic Plan
Everyone knows how crucial having the right senior leadership and management team is to an organization’s health, success, and future.
Unfortunately, at many firms, executive leadership (CEO, BOD) fails to include a review of their senior leadership and management team (their single most important asset) annually as part of their strategic planning process.
If you believe that your senior leadership and management team play the leading role in your firm’s success, defining your culture and enabling future growth, then having an annual review would seem to be in order. What better time than at the time of your annual strategic planning process?
What are the chances of the firm meeting or exceeding its goals if there are deficiencies in management structure or leadership in finance, operations, technology or any other area? What areas of your firm are not important to achieving the company goals? Is there any area that does not affect another if the function or department needs a leadership upgrade?
As a major part of your management team’s responsibilities, building high-performing teams, managing change, building bench strength, succession planning and inspiring employee engagement are always critical aspects that senior executives are expected to carry out.
What’s the Risk If You Don’t?
For as much good as a great leader can do, an underperforming leader can be just as damaging to a company and its mission. As a company grows it is logical that some managers will have their ability to manage span of control and, as an expanding function, get ahead of their ability to out-perform on a regular basis.
It is common for firms to upgrade when it becomes obvious that a manager is struggling, but many times that occurs only when there is an operational break, a negative audit finding, or worse.
In order to catch potential deficiencies in senior leadership before there are real consequences for an organization, executive leadership should firmly establish a comprehensive review at a regular interval. Typically, annually is considered to be best practice because if your leadership review coincides with your overall annual strategic review process, you can then seamlessly add any new hires to your annual budget and planning timeline.
Once the review has been conducted, leadership is then best positioned to make as accurate an evaluation of their management structure as possible to identify whether they need to expand, collapse, maintain, or reorganize.
Without a regular, reliable means of reviewing your senior leadership, organizations can be inhibiting their potential and exposing themselves to an unnecessary amount of risk.
Huffman Associates
If you find you’re in need of building out or upgrading your senior leadership team, partner with the proven executive search consultants at Huffman Associates. Our team of veteran recruiters specializes in management and executive-level recruitment across multiple practice areas. Get in touch with us today to learn how our extensive network of proven candidates and 50 years of experience in search consultancy can help you overcome whatever hiring challenge your organization is facing.