As title companies explore the best ways to recruit new talent, they sometimes overlook the obvious: their current talent pool.
“The best way to recruit more people is to have all the employees raving about their experience of the company, to their friends, to their competitors, their colleagues, posting on social media,” WFG Senior Vice President, New England Regional Manager Northeast Janelle Rosenbaum told The Title Report. “Those kinds of experiences come from the company culture you’ve created.”
That is assuming the company has put a lot of time and energy into its culture, WEST Vice President, Marketing Technology Director Manager Sam Trimble added. For employees to be an effective recruitment tool, culture has to be more than lip service.
“You can’t use it just as a talking point,” Trimble said. “You actually have to live it, because recruits will see right through you.”
Trimble has so much trust in his team that when interviewing potential team members, he’s encouraged candidates to go to the company website, pick any team member, call them, tell them that they are considering working there and talk with them about the company.
“And they had a great open, honest conversation about what the environment was like, what the expectations were like, what the growth potential was like, and what the culture was like,” Trimble said. “If I was uncomfortable with our team, if I was uncomfortable with our culture, there’s no way I would be willing to do that. But I did that with confidence.”
Sell your company
Self-promotion is another helpful recruitment tool, Trimble said.
“No one knows what you’re doing unless you show them, and in today’s world, we can show them through social media, digital advertising, or websites. It’s easy to snap a picture of your team with a bunch of milkshakes together in the break room, showing that you have a culture of appreciation,” he said.
How you say something on social media can be as important as what you say when it comes to job candidates forming opinions about your company.
“There’s a fine line of how your outbound marketing walks the line between being honest and touting your accomplishments or sounding pretentious,” Rosenbaum said.
Leading with genuine gratitude can solve that dilemma, Trimble added.
“If I were a title company that just closed a big office deal, and I put some posts on social media, and I say, ‘We just closed a $200 million office deal, one of the biggest deals of the year with many more to come, exclamation point, strong emoji,’ I just sounded like I’m braggadocious, I don’t care who the client is, I don’t care about the impact that has on the community, I’m all about money, and frankly, I’m a pretentious jerk,” he said. “When I say, ‘It was an honor and a privilege to be a part of ABC development’s new high rise on North Main Street, clocking in at over $200 million of investment within our community. Thanks for allowing us to be a part of it. Amazing things to come for that part of town, heart emoji,’ I just did the exact same thing. But using semantics and a genuine care for my community, I went from being braggadocious to inviting people to celebrate with me, and I’m lifting up the developer. I’m lifting up the community.”
That post is also lifting all the team members behind the scenes who helped with the transaction who often go unrecognized, which again speaks to company culture, WFG Vice President of Agency, Mid-Atlantic Business Development Tim Hooper.
Hire for fit
It’s important to take the time to make sure that new hires are a good fit for both the job and the company, Agents National Title Insurance Co. President and CEO David Townsend said.
“Being really careful on the hiring is important to us. We hire for fit with our team. And if we can do our work on the front end, on hiring the right person to fit in with our culture, with our team, it saves us down the line having to work on any retention issues, because then we know going in this is a person that wants to be here, that is going to like who we are,” he said. “They’ve got to feel comfortable with us and vice versa, so it’s ‘measure twice, cut once’ when we hire.”
It’s not only important that a new team member fit in with the culture, but that they have something to add to the culture, Townsend said.
“How can they help us be a better company? Do they have expertise in social media? Can they help us grow here? Where are they strong where we’re weak? We don’t have all the answers. That’s why we’re hiring more people. We need them to come in and help us grow,” he said.
Get creative
Title companies need to be thinking outside the box when recruiting, Hooper said, especially considering the consolidations happening in the industry.
“It requires thinking differently about things, getting creative in where we pull talent from,” he said. “Maybe your marketing and sales person isn’t the leading marketing salesperson at the title company across town. Maybe your strategy shouldn’t be to ‘poach’ people as much as it has been. Maybe you should look outside the industry at bringing in new blood, getting creative.”
Townsend, too, looks to outside of the industry for talent.
“Maybe finding somebody who works in a different aspect of the industry, and then having them come over and learn a different skillset,” he said. “Just because you’ve always sold software your entire life, that doesn’t mean you don’t have good agency connections, because you sold software to title agents. Even though there are multiple career paths within title, those can intersect at times.”
Hooper also gets creative when it comes to compensation packages, Hooper said.
“I’ve had to get creative with every person I’ve brought on, with base salaries, benefits and bonuses,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t, there’s going to be natural limitations, but sometimes you can. The person who wins the negotiation is the person who thought of the thing the other person didn’t think of.”
One company recruited its paid interns through a Tinder profile of the company, Trimble said.
“This is not our grandparents’ recruiting world. It’s very different now,” he said. “When you can mix something fun and interesting and outside of the box, with the fundamental basics of caring for people, compensating them in a way that you’re showing that you value them, and then retaining them by lifting them up, showing gratitude and being inclusive, you have checked all the boxes and you’re going to be successful, even in a market like this.”