Do Job Boards Work in Hiring Exceptional Sales Managers and Loan Officers?

Great mortgage companies are built with exceptional people!

With the goal of hiring talented mortgage sales managers and loan officers, recruiting professionals and mortgage companies utilize various strategies to find the right candidates. These include company websites, participating in social media platforms, sending out email campaigns to candidate databases, direct mail pieces, attending trade shows and industry events, and posting job ads on the various job boards. However do job boards really work?

Let’s start by understanding who makes up the job market. There are three overlapping candidate pools in the employment marketplace. First, there are the unemployed job seekers. Secondly, are the employed job seekers. These are individuals who have a job, however, they are not happy or motivated by their current status and therefore are looking elsewhere to advance their careers. Third are non-job seeking employees or passive candidates. These individuals are motivated, happy, and contributing to the success of their current company. While they are not planning or taking active steps to find another job, most would consider a better opportunity if it would advance their career.

Candidates in the Job Market

There are positives and negatives to utilizing online job boards:

Positives:

• Easy to place and duplicate ads

• Easy to search resumes in the job board database

• Easier to respond to someone who applied for a job than to source a passive candidate

Negatives:

• You have to go through a lot of unqualified applications

• You’ll have a high turnover rate with the candidates that are hired

• Many of the best candidates never respond to job posts or add their resume to a job board.

• The job posts and database searches can be expensive

If you decide to utilize a job board, try the following strategies to increase your likelihood of success:

1. Well-written job descriptions. Create a compelling and professional job description that motivates the candidate to want more information and respond to the job ad.

2. Include responsibilities and requirements. Provide information on the day-to-day responsibilities along with licensing, experience, and education requirements.

3. Utilize relevant keywords and popular job titles. With proper keywords and job titles, it is more likely that your job ad will be found or appear near the top of the search results. Placing an ad for a mortgage loan officer with the title "chief lending specialist" is not recommended.

Utilizing Internet job boards to find talented mortgage sales professionals is like buying non-exclusive Internet leads without setting specific criteria for credit, income, LTV, etc. to originate loans. Big job boards are designed for a massive number of general job seekers, therefore, you will be sorting through a high percentage of unqualified applicants. Plus, like mortgage Internet leads are sold many times, responses to job ads are automatically added to the resume bank on the job board. Many recruiters actively search these resume banks attempting to find qualified candidates. There is no competitive advantage in sorting through an overfished pond of job seekers at a job board.

The bottom line, passive candidates are better than job seekers. The most successful sales managers and loan officers are headhunted from one position to the next. They’ll never download their resumes to a job board or reply to an online job post. The only way to reach passive candidates is to go out and find them. Ultimately, the most resourceful recruiters and talent management departments win.