How brokers are hiring in the tight labour market 

For many brokers, being a one-man band is no longer feasible. But with the unemployment rate at near-record lows (3.6 per cent in September 2023), bringing on new team members is a challenge in itself.

So, how are brokers doing it?

Principal mortgage and finance broker, along with owner and founder of Go Mortgage, Xavier Quenon, said that while he had previously used his employment marketplace such as Seek, more recently his brokerage had taken advantage of the in-house recruitment support TalentForce offered by his aggregator (LMG).

“[LMG] has a channel and they help out as part of the proposition to help us grow our business, so we leaned on their recruiter and their internal recruiting methods, which include seminars as well as more conventional [methods],” Mr Quenon commented.

“Lastly, we relied on our reputation and internal to the industry, there are always people keen to move around from one label to another. We made it known through BDMs and other connections that we were looking for people.

“For the last three or four recruits it has been a mix between that.”

However, to overcome the lack of potential hires in a tight labour market, he said his company had shifted its gaze to young or new-to-industry individuals that they could train.

Mr Quenon stated that his brokerage began putting in place a career path “early in COVID-19” when the market was booming, which he said enabled the brokerage to “employ more junior or inexperienced people into the industry and train them up”.

This includes a team member a year out of university and a new-to-industry broker (which he suggested was beneficial as it enabled the business to attract people with different and, sometimes, unconventional talents).

“So that is quite cool because we can also mould them into what our business needs rather than sometimes employ someone who could have bad habits or preconceived ideas or warped by the industry itself,” he added.

He advised brokers looking to recruit to keep “an open mind when looking for talent as if you’re too rigid on who you want [or] what you want them to have or not have, then you might actually miss out on the other things you’re not sure about [or that] you didn’t expect/didn’t know you needed.”

Mr Quenon concluded: “That is where people talk a lot about diversity and inclusion, so we open it right up. In our staff, we have people from 21 years old to 60 years old, males and females, different ethnic backgrounds and also from different walks of life in terms of previous career employment or experience.

“That has given us a lot of depth and colour and the people we bought on helped us change or perfect some of the processes, how we do different things internally, so it’s been really good.

“In a job market that is quite thin on the ground you need to be prepared to think a little bit outside the square.”

Director and senior lending manager at Innovative Home Loans, Lee Rosenfeld, added that ahead of his next hire, he would begin planning in advance and also recommended those looking to add to their team to not “just look at experience, go off the person’s personality and how that would fit in within your business”.

Mark Kevin, principal and director at Mortgage Advice Bureau Sydney, told The Adviser in October that to grow his business, he looked to outsource the process, using a business in North Sydney called ProForce, which attracts graduates to its recruitment system.

“They take a brief off a business like mine, and I say: ‘I’m looking for graduates coming out of a finance, business, or even a law degree that are looking to develop a career in financial services’. Then they’re able to short-list them and bring them into our business and we find the right one,” he explained.

Similarly, Two Birds One Loan founders Elouise Dooley and Alissa Childs recommended that brokers look to outsource tasks such as loan processing as a way to grow.

Ms Childs stated: “There [are] even options if it’s not affordable to bring someone in. There’s a lot of companies that you can just pay per loan and I think everyone from day dot should be doing that because why spend your time putting out an application online when you could be going out and talking to a new referral partner.”

[Related: Teamwork makes the dream work]