Experiences at Nationstar Mortgage/Centex Home Equity

Sales, People Management, People Development, Leadership, Decision Making, Company Image, Internal Sales, External Sales, Business Development, Profitability, Managed Remotely, Auditor

Most of the blogs were myspace.com, CNBC, cnnmoney, madmoney. Obviously the first one was more social, but the last three were industry related.

The best team of people I worked with was in my Tempe, Arizona office. I was surrounded by smart hard working people that were as competitive as a championship caliber sports team. We were cut throat competive with each other which made everybody work harder, and stronger, we also did everything together such as breakfast runs, lunch, dinner, basketball, softball, etc. The team set every record the company had in retail branch lending, and continued on after I took my promotion to Northeast Region....

I found my job through a former co-worker at Ford Credit Motor Company. We were sitting down catching up after a year or so, and she starting describing what she did. She was a loan officer who worked with all types of credit risk on an individual basis. I was making a great living at Dell Inc, and was enjoying what I was doing, but the career path seemed slow, and Dell was seeking to control more market share and selling the systems at a break-even level. My quality of life was dropping, and I liked the idea of working outside vs inside with customers directly. I took the liberty of getting an interview to investigate NSM/Centex and fell in love with it. It was a very well kept secret in my opinion....

To strive to be consistent, and earn your way into not having too much managerial influence. Once you reach that level you have acheived financial success, numbers, and leadership traits that make you a candidate for promotion.

I learned a lot about slowing down and making a better calculated risk. The industry is typically a fast moving one, and early on in my career I wanted to go faster. I learned to be a little more patient through leadership training, and reversed how I reacted to a read/react vs react/read method. The outcome was more responsibility and less being managed. Prior to coming to Nationstar Mortgage/Centex Home Equity I was always an individual contributor, and learned that as a manager you need to be unselfish, and get your people paid prior to yourself being paid, and the results will follow....

The career path was excellent, I was able to move from a loan officer with management in my sites to regional vice president in four years time. We carved out everybodys goals and career path pretty much after 90 days of employment. In regards to compenstation it was a paid for performance type company which allowed one to write their income. The open door policy was a great feature because you got know who your confidents were on a personal as well as professional basis....

I had a manager that lost control of his office and staff. Confidential customer files were being farmed out to broker shops, and the manager had no understanding of what was going on around him. I had to conduct a two day employee audit, and take each employee through a series of questioning to determine who or how many people were involved. The issues are very common, but the teaching the leader how to continously be involved in their operations was the tough part. I educated and worked with him on leadership, presenting a clear concise message on practices so his employees weren't tempted to steal company resources. That manager is now running another operation in the company, and doing very well....

The most challenging aspect was to acheive buy-in from your staff. I maintained seven offices in five different states. I obviously couldn't be there all at the same time. Managing remotely can only get one so far. I challenged my people by staying on top of them, and moving them step by step daily and reinforcing "best practices" to get them successful. Once my people acheived some success, I acheived buy-in to the business model. I also challenged them by keeping them involved in training other managers, as well as their staffs through accountability reporting on certain tasks....

In Vice President leadership one needs to be a "jack of all trades". I drove sales by aiding and putting together "best practices" as well is enhancing and changing them to adapt to market conditions. I hired specific individuals whom I felt had certain characteristics such as competitive nature (had to be #1), intelligent (somebody who could grasp concepts quickly), driven (somebody I had to make go home at the end of the day). I managed seven managers so I was quickly making decisions around the clock. I had an open door policy so no matter where I was or anytime a day I would accept employee phone calls. I reported directly to the Executive Vice President of Nationstar Mortgage Retail Channel, and I had to quickly place the corporate message into the field operations. I sold internally dealing with internal channels: Underwriting, closing, funding, H/R, Training, Accounting, and externally calling on businesses such as banks, credit unions, home improvement companies, lead sources, title companies, and any legitimate referral source to help drive business. I admisistered Human Resource practices to resolve conflict, hire, terminate, and make sure fair practices and treatment of employee's were in play. I wrote branch manager handbooks and daily checksheets to keep the managers organized. I used internal ad hoc reporting tools to track sales statistics and to enhance performance based on trend analysis. I performed compliance audits to make sure our organizations where in compliance with all laws and state regulations. I did spot quality audits to make sure we weren't missing opportunities on the sales floor. I roll played with managers and employees to practice how to handle situations. Like I stated above one must be a "jack of all trades"....