How Can Credit Unions Apply the "People Helping People" Philosophy to Find the Right Employees?

By: Cornerstone Resources

The credit union industry isn't like any other part of the financial sector. There's an attitude around credit unions that's more focused on providing assistance and being helpful. While credit unions earn profits, that's not their only mission or guiding principle.

This philosophy can reach into many different facets of the way credit unions do business — but what about how they hire? If you're in a position to make hiring decisions at your credit union, you have the ability to help people get started in the credit union sector. While this goes against some of the established hiring practices in the industry, it can be a net positive — for candidates and the business.

Credit Union Hiring Trends vs. Talent Crunch

There's a common refrain among credit union hiring managers: They want to employ people who have worked in banking before, preferably at other credit unions. This is understandable, considering these candidates presumably already understand the industry's practices and values.

The "keep it in the industry" mindset only gets stronger when credit unions don't have solid mentoring practices in place. In these cases, essential knowledge and skills can be lost when key employees leave. This makes leaders and HR departments especially eager to bring in new hires with credit union experience who can fill the gap. However, this strategy feels restrictive amid talent crunches and skills shortages.

Applicants from the credit union world may be few and far between, leaving employers in a challenging situation. The candidates they want are scarce, so to hire them, they may have to leave openings unfilled for a long time or raise their offers beyond their comfort level.

The answer to these issues may be to expand the scope of the search and open the door to candidates who come from outside the credit union world. These potential employees may not have worked at a comparable business, but their talents and experiences apply.

See the Value of Skills that Transfer Between Industries

The credit union space is unique in its financial offerings and philosophy, but its crossover with other sectors may be more substantial than it appears at first glance. After all, a talent dealing with customers or keeping up with internal processes is worth appreciating, even if that talent was honed outside the financial space.

All public-facing sectors demand customer service skills, so targeting top performers looking to make a cross-industry move can be a great way to build a credit union team. However, the potential goes deeper than that type of hiring decision. Credit unions can also fill some roles with people whose skills apply more or less perfectly to their new roles. Opportunities include:

●      IT and service personnel: Keeping advanced technology running is a universal value at today's digital companies. Businesses across industries are securing sensitive data, running efficient internal app environments, and other priorities that will be highly familiar to credit union leaders. That means, when hiring for IT, there's an opportunity to reach outside the financial space.

●      Human resources and other internal employees: Any position that doesn't directly relate to the credit union's product offerings should be very open to accepting applicants from outside the industry. This can be a way to find high-quality hires for teams like HR. These skilled new people can find and train the next generation of credit union staff.

Of course, these are just the roles most compatible with hires from outside the industry. What about the pivotal roles working with loan origination and other specific credit union skills? These jobs are more complex to fill, but there are similar opportunities for organizations with solid training and mentoring practices.

Employee Education and Mentoring: Your Secret Weapons

Do credit unions apply the "people helping people" approach to educating and preparing employees? If they genuinely embrace this role as teachers, they can become incubators of fresh credit industry talent.

Focusing on training and mentorship is a valuable idea from multiple angles. First, it can address talent crunches directly. While other businesses struggle with open positions or aggressively chase a thin class of talent, credit unions with great employee education departments can create their own new generations of top performers.

Second, when there's a robust mentorship process in place, talent crunches tend to be less damaging in the first place. This is because skills are passed down from senior to junior employees, so losing a long-tenured expert doesn't create the same kind of massive gap that it would at a less prepared company.

A credit union that finds a candidate from another sector — for example, retail or food service — and instructs that new hire on the specifics of financial products may attain better results over time than one that waits to find someone with a credit union background.

One successful credit union in talent development described its philosophy as a "teaching hospital." It served its customers while attracting people into the credit union sector and starting them on exciting new career paths—a case of "people helping people" in action.

People Helping People: Mentor for the Future

A quick change in philosophy can unlock new possibilities for credit unions hungry for new talent. Such a step can help businesses dodge a drawn-out, expensive talent search and return to their primary business of serving their customers. It's an idea worth investigating for at least some hiring decisions, if not all.

When credit union leaders use their businesses as a gateway to the industry, the result can be a valuable new talent pipeline. Add in the fact that better employee education and mentoring functions have evergreen value, and this method's potential is clear — will yours be the next credit union to give it a try?

ABOUT CORNERSTONE RESOURCES
Cornerstone Resources is a service corporation for credit unions. Resources has what you need at a price you can afford. The goal of Cornerstone Resources is to be the leading provider of business solutions for the credit union community.