No Experience Necessary? Some Think it's Best.

Grayslake, IL -- The mortgage market became a very different animal when U.S. subprime's woes crunched the availability of credit.

But Dale Vermillion, president and chief executive officer of Vermillion Consulting Inc. here, believes certain recruiting and training strategies that he has long recommended remain applicable. That is because the somewhat contrarian strategies Mr. Vermillion recommends for the cyclical mortgage market position those who use them for change, something the industry is going through now, he told this publication in a phone interview.

One of his recommendations is to hire employees with no experience.

"Things have changed so much, [you] want those [who can] start from scratch," he said.

Even when the market was booming, Mr. Vermillion said he considered this wise, given the lack of questioning of policies and loyalty hiring inexperienced staff builds.

The strategy does require some training and some clients question this, he said. But he said that he often has helped them understand the strategy by explaining that training actually is the key to getting full value out of one's marketing expenditures. Without training, marketing efforts that lead customers to contact the business fall short as they leave potential customers talking "to people who don't know what they're doing," Mr. Vermillion said.

"This is not a hard business to learn," he added.