How to create a recruitment strategy that works

Recruiting high quality mortgage broking professionals that will help to grow your business can be tough. It’s often time-consuming, stressful, and effort-intensive. But it doesn’t need to be like this. Start by getting your team together and workshopping your processes for recruiting.

Define your employee value proposition
Your employee value proposition is what will make your offer attractive to the right candidates.

Consider:

• What do you uniquely have to offer candidates? (things like great culture, flexible working arrangements, support and professional development opportunities)
• Why is your business special? (are you achieving great things in the industry, loved by your customers, or known for taking care of your staff?)
• Why is this vacancy special? (what’s exciting about the role itself?)
• How are you going to stand out and get noticed? (will it be through word of mouth, by creating videos, or by running employment campaigns?)

Audit your recruitment channels
Take stock of how you’re finding candidates right now. This might include:

• Through job ads on Seek or LinkedIn
• By advertising in the local paper
• By creating social media posts
• By emailing your professional networks for recommendations.

What’s working, and what isn’t working? What’s costing you money?

Take a moment to think about what channels your target candidates are likely to be using. Are they more experienced professionals who’ll be reading The Financial Review? Or will they be young, eager graduates who you can target on social media platforms?

Review and update your techniques
A recruitment strategy goes beyond slapping a job ad up somewhere. It involves things like:

• Qualifying candidates
• Interviewing
• Following up applications
• Performing HR checks
• Arranging a shadowing session (a few hours of half day in the office)
• Onboarding.

Consider how your complete recruitment process may affect the quality of candidates that come through – or retention rates, if you get it wrong. Don’t forget, the experience you provide new recruits in the first 30 days will set the scene and expectations for that new employee – so make it a memorable experience.

Look to outsourcing opportunities
Your recruitment strategy could benefit by looking beyond the Australian market. We’re seeing a shift towards offshore recruitment, with larger mortgage broking businesses holding a key team of brokers in Australia along with a team of virtual assistants hosted offshore who can complete administration tasks and assist with loan processing. Offshore resources can help local loan processors boost their performance levels by assisting with customer service.

If you’re thinking that outsourcing overseas sounds risky and strange, it can be a lot more cost effective than you may think, while still being ethical and fair for offshore talent.

Consider getting recruitment assistance
Recruitment can put stress on your resources and affect day-to-day operations and cashflow. If your team isn’t in a position to dedicate hours to recruiting, consider working with a specialist recruitment agency. They can manage the recruitment process for you, so your team is left to focus on what they’re best at, and high-quality candidates are brought right to you.

Roland Youakim is Director of specialist recruitment agency Platinum People GRoup. He has been guiding businesses within the mortgage broking, aggregation, financial planning and retail and third party banking sectors since 2010. Roland is passionate about building creative recruitment strategies and efficient processes that deliver better candidates in less time.