When I ask recruiting leaders why they are not recruiting, the number one answer is time. It is not a lack of desire or a lack of skill. A file will not close, a loan officer needs you on a call with a realtor, pricing changed again, and by Thursday afternoon the recruiting you planned on Monday has slid to next week. Recruiting is important and it is almost never urgent, so it loses to the fires every single time.
I believe the leaders of the future will be great recruiters for one simple reason. They will have more time. AI is how they get it, and it does not happen by replacing the conversations you have with recruits. It happens by taking the prep and admin that surround every one of those conversations off your plate, so the hours you do have go to the part only you can do.
This matters most right now. Loan officers make more moves in the fourth quarter than any other time of year, and I broke down why in When Do Loan Officers Change Companies? The Q4 Data. If you want to be the leader they call in January, you need the time to start those conversations in October.
Where your recruiting hours go
Look at any single recruiting conversation and you will find a pile of work wrapped around it. There is research before the call, notes during it, a follow-up after it, and content in between so that when a recruit looks you up, they find a leader worth talking to. The conversation might take 15 minutes. The work around it takes far longer, and that surrounding work is exactly what AI does well.
Here are the five jobs I coach leaders to hand off first.
5 recruiting jobs AI handles for you
1. Recruit research and call prep
Before I call anyone, I walk their NMLS record (it reaches back roughly 26 years of work history), their Modex production data, their Google reviews, and their LinkedIn profile. That used to take a long time. Now I paste the production data into AI with one command and ask it for four things: affirmations, outliers, red flags, and a few ready opening lines. The outliers are my favorite, because a spike month is something a loan officer remembers and is proud of, and naming it tells them you did your homework.
Use what it gives you to affirm their character and core values before their production. You have about a 37-second window to earn permission to stay in front of someone, and specific, sincere respect earns it faster than anything else. I will walk through the full prep prompt in an upcoming post on building a recruit brief in 10 minutes.
2. Meeting notes
Most leaders walk out of a great recruiting conversation with nothing captured except what they remember on the drive home. I want you to bring an AI recording assistant to the table instead. Fathom works well for virtual calls, and Otter or Plaud work for conversations in person. Ask permission at the start, every time, with something like this:
If you're okay with it, I'd love to use my AI tool to capture our conversation. It'll give me any notes or action items I need, and I'm happy to send you a copy. Would you be open to that?
It is disarming because it gives something back. You get the verbatims and the action items, the recruit gets a copy, and you get to listen fully instead of scribbling. Those transcripts become the raw material for every job that follows.
3. Follow-up drafts
Once someone says yes to a relationship with you, you have 72 hours to deliver extreme value before you become a stranger again. That window is where most leaders lose recruits, because the follow-up email sits in their head for a week.
Drop the transcript into AI and ask for a follow-up that references what the recruit told you, in their words. Then tell it how to sound like you. I have my clients instruct AI to write longer, flowing sentences, drop the dashes and the choppy formatting, and make the email read like a leader wrote it with care. Feed it your best writing as a sample, because writing is your refined voice and speaking is your unrefined voice.
One of my favorite moments in coaching is when a leader reads an AI draft trained on their own material and says, "That is the best version of me." Judge the draft against your best work, the email you would write with a clear afternoon and full focus, and not against your fastest.
4. The value piece that wins the recruit
Recruits do not move toward generalizations. "Come here and we will help you grow your business" means a hundred different things to a hundred loan officers, which means it means nothing. The leaders who win replace that promise with a specific plan the recruit can hold in their hands.
Great recruiting AI runs on four inputs:
- A sharp command that tells the AI exactly what to build
- The recruit's production data
- Your playbook, the way your team sells and grows
- The recruit's dream, in their own words from your conversation
Put those together and AI builds a 12-month roadmap in four 90-day phases, with volume and unit targets tied to what that person wants. To the recruit, it looks like you invested 120 hours in their business. It took you minutes, and no competitor can copy it because nobody else has your playbook or heard that dream.
If your playbook only lives in your head, record six one-minute voice memos explaining how your team works and let AI organize them. You do not have to write it from scratch. You only have to say it.
5. Content that keeps you visible
When I wrote How to Dominate Recruiting in a Digital World in 2022, I told leaders to block two to three hours a week for content. That math has changed. With your voice captured and a little context, you can create strong, human content in minutes.
The two reasons leaders give me for not posting are that they have no time and they have nothing to talk about. AI removes both. Upload a photo from your weekend and ask your AI for three content angles tied to your leadership message, or hand it the transcript from Tuesday's team meeting and ask for ideas. This is visibility before relevancy at work, because when a recruit gets that personalized roadmap from you, the first place they go is your LinkedIn profile.
Where the 5 hours come from
Content alone used to cost my clients two to three hours every week, and AI brings that down to minutes. Stack the research, notes, and follow-up for even a handful of recruiting conversations on top of that, and five hours back is a conservative number. If you want to see your own number, run a one-week time audit. Set a timer for every 15 minutes, jot down what you just did, and at the end of the week drop the whole log into AI and ask it to sort your time into eight to 10 categories. You will see exactly where the hours leak.
What stays human
AI agents do not replace people, and the reason is that building them takes a great deal of human judgment. You decide who is worth the call, what to send and when, and what counts as a real next step. The relationship is yours, and it always will be.
I have watched the same CRM produce two very different results. In the era of hardcore recruiting, it took an average of 2.1 years to recruit someone. When we shifted to relationship building, that dropped to 62 days. Same tool, different leader behavior. AI will not change that truth, it only gives you more hours to live it.
People move from desire, not pain, and nobody can learn a recruit's dream except the person sitting across from them. That is you. Let AI handle everything around the conversation so you can be fully present in it.
Build it in the right order
Leaders get overwhelmed when they try to build everything at once. I teach AI in four levels, and the order matters:
- A skill, which is simply an elaborate prompt that can run hundreds of lines
- A brain, a knowledge base with your voice, your stories, and your playbook
- Connectors, so the AI can work across your email, calendar, and drive
- A schedule, so it runs on its own
Most leaders I coach are well served staying on level one and two for a while. Pick one job from the list above, get it working, and only then add the next. It took me a couple of years to build my own system, one small step at a time, and you do not need to finish it this month to start getting time back this week.
One thing to set up this week
Record your next three recruiting conversations, with permission, using the script above. That one habit feeds every job on this list: the notes, the follow-up, the roadmap, and the content. Three transcripts in, you will have enough of your own voice to start training your AI, and you will never walk out of a great conversation empty-handed again.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can mortgage recruiting leaders use AI?
The fastest wins are the jobs around the recruiting conversation: researching a recruit's production and history before the call, capturing notes during it, drafting personalized follow-up after it, building a custom growth roadmap for serious candidates, and creating content that keeps you visible. The conversation itself stays with you.
Will AI replace recruiters or recruiting leaders?
No. Building useful AI takes human judgment about who to call, what to send, and when. Recruiting is relationship work, and AI gives leaders more time for the relationship, not a substitute for it.
What AI tools do I need to start?
An AI assistant you can paste text into and a recording tool. Fathom works well for virtual meetings, and Otter or Plaud work for in-person conversations. Start with one job, like meeting notes, before adding more.
Is it okay to record recruiting conversations?
Ask permission at the start of every conversation and offer the recruit a copy of the notes. Most people say yes when you frame it as a benefit to them. Check your company's compliance policy for any additional requirements.
How do I make AI sound like me?
Feed it your own material, not the internet's. Give it your best writing, transcripts of your real conversations, and clear instructions on style, such as longer flowing sentences and no dashes. The more of your voice it has, the closer the draft gets to your best work.
Bring the recruiting task that eats your week to Working Lunch
Next session: Friday, October 9 at 12 pm Eastern.
Working Lunch is my free live session every other Friday. There is no pitch and nothing to buy. Bring the job that keeps stealing your recruiting time, and we will work it live together and figure out what AI can take off your plate.