Old School Recruiting meets New Tech in the Mortgage Sector


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Feb 03 2021 28 mins   2

Max: Hello everybody and welcome back to the 'Recruitment Hackers Podcast'. I am your host Max Armbruster, and today I'd like to welcome to the show Mr.Doug Updike, who is VP of National Sales Recruiting at Nations lending. Welcome to the show Doug.

Doug: Thank you. Appreciate you and what you are doing and thanks back.

Max: Thank you. Doug connected with us listening to some of our content and feeling we were just talking about the fact that we are feeling a little cooped up in 2020 and that we miss the opportunity to connect with others and so this is the chance to connect and to connect with the audience as well. So for the audience, tell us what you do and the company that you work for?

Doug: Sure. Yeah

Max: that's about Nations lending.

Doug: Yep. Nations lending, I'll start with the company. Company is at top 80 lender in the US, traditional retail mortgage lender so our customers are first time home buyers but people who are buying you know moving up in the market place or in the last year we finance here in the US within a huge marketplace for so a top 80 mostly in the central US and I was brought on a year ago for national expansion and then brought my team from top five competitor with me over to the nations almost exactly to the day a year ago.

Max: Happy anniversary.

Doug: Yeah

Max: So refinancing is a hot topic in 2020 you are saying?

Doug: Absolutely! In my lifetime I have not seen rates like this in you know in giving people opportunity to get into their dream home or first time buyers to get in the market when they didn't think they could not afford a home, so.

Max: Right. Alright, I am curious to hear more about this firms but perhaps before, for the first to understand where you're coming from, can you tell us how you ended up in recruitments? I am looking up at your Linkden profile now and I can see it was sometime in 2004.

Doug: Naah before that

Max: No it was before this century. It was back in

Doug: You guys were calling me in grade school or before that. Let's not make fun of me too much. Like most folks I did not think I was going to end up a recruiter. 100% by accident, fun story. I had sold a company was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next and a recruiter, nice fellow, he had been calling me I had a non-compete and all through the year he would call and ask me-do I know a person this wasn't a bank card/credit arena but you know do I know a person in Salt lake city that I might give a name he could connect with and this went on throughout the year like I say, so he invited me and wife I was living in San Diego and he invited me to a dinner and I made the mistake of asking him 'you know the folks number I gave you, did you make any money at all?' you know how does that work, and I didn't know the industry one bit.

Max: Yeah

Doug: He happened to tell me that he made quarter money dollars on the leads that I'd give him and all of a sudden the steak and wine didn't taste as good as I thought it was going to because I was trying to figure out what to do. So I actually worked with him for a few years and learned it, he knew that I was going to start my own company, went on to start my own staffing company which I integrated into a mortgage company right before the credit crisis. So that's how I got in, again 100% by accident, just happened to ask the right question at the wrong time and decided to jump in.

Max: So you have been in this industry specifically not just recruitment but mortgage recruitments for a long time and I suppose some of that is because you know the people, you know the industry, so you go from one opportunity to another organically but are there some specific profiles and skill sets that this industry has homed in the recruiter in you?

Doug: In the arena, yeah absolutely, but I think like most one of the reasons I picked mortgage right is the freedom. I'd like to have some freedom in what I was doing, the other piece it was an industry that had when I had back when I got in it, there was a wide gap between the folks that were doing it for a long time and I didn't find any rookies any folks that were newer in the industry that changed probably in the last three years, but I saw this huge gap and so being a connector of people, I kinda just went where people weren't. Mortgage is really sleepy. They kind of it was old school recruiting it was a yellow pad, believe it or not and who did you meet at a conference and so some years ago and then you know stuck in it dabble the outside of edges and you go back to what is comfortable. The biggest part of the mortgage arena that I love is you know personal friends that it was one arena where you stay in touch really the rest of your life. So I have this round table of folks that either you follow me or that I follow them that you know they became colleagues and friends at the same time.

Max: There is always that advantage of you can probably dig and do a background screening on a lot of people indirectly you know where only one or two connections removed away from somebody in mortgage by now.

Doug: Yep. I would take that. The other piece in staying in one arena that's very much helped me and my team with that is you know when you get to know people and you like people, people refer you a lot of business so staying in that probably still today 65% of what I do is somewhat referral based. Now I might just be that I heard that you know you guys did a great job for my aunt and my uncle who lives in Florida, can you help him? but there is an awful lot of texts, quick conversations and to that I think a big part of a way that I recruit, I wanna help folks even if it doesn't help myself so if I can open the door and it's in a different arena or different part of mortgage I am gonna do that everytime, just especially in these times I wanna help folks you know a lot of people got kicked in the butt that didn't have any idea in February and March that life was gonna change. So taking that platform and making it bigger than just mortgage and being able to help folks if they need it with an introduction could be any industry but staying put has allowed me to do that.

Max: Yeah. I heard that it's less and in 2020 would be explosion of volume and digital hiring and digital channels that it's a bit less about who you know and little bit more about what you know that now for a recruiter that there is more talent available than ever before if you know how to use the tools and so you're gonna be less likely to use the buddy network. On the flip side what you are saying is you are all scoring points with your network inorder to build good karma and referral for the future. So the network remains critically important, though perhaps on the sourcing side less on than before, right. I mean if you source your talent digitally I assume.

Doug: Yep, a good portion. I think you nailed it too. If you were to look a year and half ago I came from a place that didn't have much technology to Nations and Nations afforded me this look into technology that I'd never experienced. A lot of your audience would laugh but I mean I didn't know what to do with the salesforce li...