The perennial struggle to find and retain talented employees, particularly when companies can’t offer Google-level perks or Wall Street-level salaries, is keenly felt regardless of industry. While it can, in some cases, be mitigated, each employee turned over can be counted in dollars, often at a loss to the company. Time and money are required to recruit, train and keep all employees, let alone those in the top talent tier.
The industries hardest hit by the recession, in particular commercial building, still struggle in its aftermath. After turning to recruiters to source top talent at the height of the recession, companies are continuing the practice after the traditional method of soliciting applications in response to a job posting fails to attract qualified candidates. Though the job market is improving, many are still worried about jumping ship.
Sometimes it’s not a lack of talented candidates, but of candidates with the proper training. Commercial loan officers are thin on the ground at local banks and many are approaching retirement. Since many training programs were phased out, there’s not a lot of lenders rising to fill the void. A new program from CCSU will help train the next generation of commercial lenders, but for now, banks continue to poach top talent from one another.
In some good news for the housing industry, local Realtors seem to think those awful Millennials may be good for something after all. Millennials are coming into their own as homebuyers, experts say, as they age into their upper 20s and begin to come out from under staggering student loan debt burdens. As more of this generation buy houses of their own and see their peers do the same, they’ll start to see real estate as a viable career path – good news for the industry as the leading edge of retiring Boomers picks up speed.
While finding and attracting talented candidates can be difficult, keeping them within your organization is another challenge altogether. A lot of effort goes into creating happy employees – benefits, company culture, location, work-life balance, etc. – and one unhappy wheel can derail a whole train.
It’s a fine line to walk even when the talent pool is deep; when it’s shallow, sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Change can be difficult and slow, particularly in older, more established firms, where tradition and the old ways rule. Sometimes the traditional way is the best way – community banks would have more up-and-coming CRE lenders if the training programs hadn’t fallen by the wayside – and sometimes it’s not, as commercial design firms’ recruitment efforts show.
As with most things, the best approach is a measured one, equal parts respecting the old while embracing the new.
Email: cmurphy@thewarrengroup.com
