Everything you Need to Know About Hiring an Assistant or Restructuring Your Team

As the market ramps up heading into spring 2024 and beyond, you may find yourself looking to add to your support staff.

Maybe you need to bring on a new assistant or replace your current assistant with someone more capable and dependable.

Perhaps you’ll be looking to restructure your entire process as you rebuild your business.

Regardless of the reason, if you’re looking to make a hire and/or restructure your team, this article will provide a concise overview of how to go about doing so in the most effective and efficient way.

When looking to add a team member or restructure your existing operation, there’s a simple method you can leverage, called the STAFF Method.

It stands for Systems Thinking and Five Foundations.

Systems Thinking is a problem-solving approach that considers problems as part of a larger, dynamic system. It prioritizes understanding the interactions, relationships, and interdependencies between the components of a system that lead to the system's behavior. 

In this case, the components of the system are the people and their personalities, unique strengths, character traits, experience, and skillsets.

Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on how a system's parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems.

You can look at this as how your team relates with and operates in the structure of your company.

It's a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. 

Systems thinking operates on the principle that when investigating any idea, one should always ask, “How do we deal with complexity without creating further unintended consequences?”

This is an issue that plagues many loan officers and managers. Oftentimes an attempt to fix something causes other downline problems. Rather than making things better, you’ve got a host of new problems to solve.  Then attempting to solve these problems opens other issues.

This becomes a viscous cycle.

The Five Foundations are the First Principles that govern success as a loan originator. They are:

-       Time Management

-       Lead Generation

-       Process

-       Scale

-       Mindset

When hiring or restructuring, pay careful attention to how the changes you're making will affect each of these foundational areas of your business.

To hire the right person for your team and create a virtuous cycle, follow the STAFF Method:

Step 1: Identify Your Highest and Best Use (HBU)

Determine YOUR role in the system by assessing your strengths, unique abilities, and priorities. Understand whether you are a technical loan officer, a sales-driven loan officer, or both. Knowing your highest and best use will guide your team-building efforts. You want to ask yourself a few questions:

-       What is it that you want to spend 80% of your time doing?

-       What are you great at?

-       What do you want to NOT do?

-       How will your life be different if you spend 80% or more of your time on your HBU?

-       How will you feel?

-       How many hours will you work?

-       What will change?

-       What will remain the same?

-       What do you not want to see change?

Step 2: Design Your Team

Once you know your highest and best use, design your team accordingly. Identify the tasks a support person should perform to allow you to focus on your highest and best use, driving business growth. Some questions to ask yourself are:

-       What are all the tasks that this person will complete?

-       How long will it take a person to complete these tasks daily, weekly, monthly?

-       Is this list of tasks enough to justify a full-time role?

-       Is this list of tasks too much for one person?

Step 3:  Determine the Ideal Candidate's Traits and Skills

Identify the personality traits, qualities, characteristics, skills, and experience the ideal candidate should possess. Use psychographic assessments like the DISC to gain a better understanding of your own personality and management style, ensuring that the new hire will complement your abilities. Ask yourself the following questions:

-       What type of person is needed to fill this role?

-       What qualities and personality traits must they possess?

-       What experience level do they need?

-       Do they need to be licensed?

-       What specific skills do they need?

- How will this person want to be managed?

Step 4: Write a Detailed Job Description

Create a detailed job description outlining every task, skill, and experience the candidate should have, as well as the personality and character traits they should demonstrate. Share the description on social media and consider offering a finder's fee to incentivize referrals.

Write this description is a way that outlines the specific type of person your role is for. How they should think and feel. What they should be motivated by and seek to accomplish. What success looks like both for you and for them.

The image to the right is the job description I posted to find the person that turned out to be the best hire I've ever made. If you'd like a written copy as well as the full job description we created once she was up and running, shoot me an email and I'll send them over.

Step 5: Assess the Impact of Hiring the Right Person

A massive component of how to hire an assistant, is to consider how hiring the right person would change your daily tasks and how you could use that change to close more loans. Hiring the right person should help you increase efficiency and time management, leading to business growth. Visualize going through an ideal day with this person at full capacity - You engaged on your highest and best use, and they engaged completing their job description effectively.

-       How specifically will you use your time differently?

-       What specifically will you do to close more loans?

-       How will it affect your business if you close 20% more, 50% more, or even double your production?

-       What will your next set of needs be? Think ahead.

Step 6: Structure Compensation

In determining fair market compensation, prioritize a performance-based component over fixed pay. Define key performance indicators (KPIs) and service level agreements (SLAs) for the hire, establishing a bonus system tied to these metrics. Ensure the hire's economic viability by targeting a 100% return on investment (ROI) through increased production. For example, if the monthly compensation is $5,000, aim for a $10,000 revenue increase. While exceptions exist, avoid making hires without a positive ROI, as this should not be the standard practice.

Step 7: Develop an On-Boarding Plan

Avoid a common hiring mistake by carefully planning the onboarding, management, and initial 90 days for the new hire. Clearly define their role to empower independent and proactive task completion. Develop strategies for effective management, performance tracking, and feedback delivery through feedback loops and structured performance reviews. Anticipate and plan for addressing underperformance or negative behavior, outlining disciplinary processes. Ensure alignment by mapping out a detailed plan for the new hire's first 90 days and confirming mutual understanding.

Summary:

By following the STAFF Method and focusing on Systems Thinking and the Five Foundations, you can successfully add to your team, create a virtuous cycle, and achieve sustainable growth in your business. Be mindful of the interconnected nature of your business and the impact of each decision, avoiding vicious cycles that could lead to stagnation or decline. Your team's growth should align with your vision for the future, and each new hire should pull the levers you don't want or need to, allowing you both to execute on your individual highest and best uses.