Need advice for finding employment as an MLO

[Joshua Smith]

So a little background on me..I live in the northern Virginia area. I am a full time career firefighter. I only work (8) 24hr shifts a month leaving me time for other ventures. I recently obtained my Mortgage Loan Originator License. I am in the process of trying to find employment to get started in the mortgage industry. It seems like every position I see is for experienced MLO’s only. I don’t know anyone in the industry to tap into so I am just seeking some advice not a mentor.

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @Joshua Smith:

So a little background on me..I live in the northern Virginia area. I am a full time career firefighter. I only work (8) 24hr shifts a month leaving me time for other ventures. I recently obtained my Mortgage Loan Originator License. I am in the process of trying to find employment to get started in the mortgage industry. It seems like every position I see is for experienced MLO’s only. I don’t know anyone in the industry to tap into so I am just seeking some advice not a mentor.

 The industry is contracting. Interestingly, as this has occurred, we seem to be seeing more inquiries like this both online and in person.

Traditionally when rates are down you hire Joe off the street, who has some previous sales or marketing experience, and get him in offering people rate/term refinances to save $30/mo because rates are down. Low hanging fruit, not a lot of experience needed. There is not a lot of low hanging fruit currently ("do you want to refi to increase your interest rate AND your monthly payment?!"), so why would I invest 6-12 months to hire you and train you up to be basically competent? And since the best way to learn is doing, and there is no low hanging fruit, how am I supposed to train you?

But that's not the end of the world. I started off as an assistant to an assistant making minimum wage. That might be the best way to look to get your foot in the door. Don't bother looking online, go randomly walk into 20 different local mortgage offices this weekend with your resume. Someone is hiring, assuming you have realistic starting salary and responsibility expectations. One 30+ year veteran I know has 25 assistants and is a powerhouse, she hires directly out of college (myself being an example), and most of her hires are female because the young men with their fancy humanities degrees from fancy universities are mostly all delusional and want to start off with some lofty high foluten title and position that they frankly aren't qualified for (I obviously did not have this delusion), no matter what non-mortgage experience they have... if you join the Marines after 15 years in the US Army and six deployments to Iraq/Afghan, you start off at recruit training with the 19 year olds, and you get promoted "demoted" from Army Staff Sergeant to Marine Private. That's how it works in the mortgage world, too, except that maybe a decade of sales/marketing experience gets you the metaphorical Private First Class status instead of Private.

Once you do get your foot in the door it is very much a pure meritocracy. I went from minimum wage to top 20%, surpassing people with decades of experience on me, in less than 5 years.