Educating Next Wave of Employees Vital to Industry’s Future

We're guessing that like most title companies across the country, your staff is more likely to have listened to music on albums rather than downloading songs to computers or streaming them through smartphoneas.

How you listen to music isn’t the point. The issue is that the majority of our talented and knowledgeable workforce is moving closer toward to retirement. To replace the people in these positions, we need to turn our sights to educating the next generation of employees, and making them aware of our fabulous and essential industry.

Traditionally, we’ve thought of ourselves as secondary to the rest of the players involved in real estate transactions. But why shouldn’t we proudly promote a career as a title professional? There’s nothing too glamorous about being in our industry, but it’s definitely nothing to sniff your nose at. It’s been a rewarding career for many of us and for many of our family members as well. There probably aren’t many of us who said to their parents as a teenager that we wanted a career in the title business, but there’s a large group of untapped potential employees in the younger generations.

According to a recent survey of more than 500,000 workers born between 1982 and 1993, the best opportunities for America’s young workers were in technology (telecommunications and Internet services), medical, aerospace, and gas and oil. These industries provide annual income for these Gen Y workers ranging from $55,000 to more than $90,000. Compare this to the pay of a cashier ($17,000), which is the lowest-paying job commonly held by Gen Y workers.

Meanwhile, the title industry offers a great career and should be considered a viable option for those entering the workforce. As reported in the June edition of TitleNews, the average hourly earnings for abstracters and settlement agents is $23.67, which translates to more than $45,000 per year. The average annual pay for a similar position for a direct operation is $10,000 more.

In August, our Title Topics webinar series addressed recruiting and rethinking how the industry grows. Cynthia McGovern of Orange Leaf Consulting outlined key steps for recruiting from within and outside the industry in order to hire talented employees and meet the needs of today's marketplace. Here's a recording of the webinar:

 

McGovern also wrote this great article for TitleNews Online titled "Recruiting to Sustain the Title Industry." She'll be presenting at ALTA's Annual Convention at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., in October. Her session "Recruiting Reboot: Attracting Top Talent to your Organization" will address what the industry should start doing now to attract talent fpr the next generations. Click here for more info on the Annual Convention!

attract talent from the next generations.

Recruiting to Sustain the Title Industry

As the industry implements ALTA’s Best Practices, it will be essential to have trained employees to replace positions of those who retire. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 130,000 people working as abstracters, settlement officers or with direct operations. That’s a lot of potential employment opportunity. We just have to reach out, connect and educate prospects.

This is an important discussion at ALTA because we deeply care about the future of this great industry. To help with this, start thinking about what education and information would help produce better qualified employees. Is there anything your company does now to educate younger generations? Does your company reach out to local universities or career centers? If so, how and what do you say? Please share your ideas and thoughts with us at [email protected].

Let’s start preparing our future workforce now!