Case Study #3

The "Fear of Change" Monster

And then there was Darren. Darren was an up and coming lender with an idiosyncratic bank - out of state, no local presence, no branding, no marketing but willing to pay their lenders well for the hardship. Darren was stymied. He wanted to move to a bank that was more progressive with their compensation and loan programs. He had taken this job, he explained, because his old boss had moved over to this bank about a year ago and brought Darren with. We would see what we could do.

Fast forward to a job order from a large regional bank. Dennis, the hiring manager for SBA was in the last handful of years of his career and looking forward to an extra day on the golf course and early evening walks with his wife. To get from here to retirement he needed to build out the Pacific Northwest with an SBA lender in every major metropolitan area. He could offer a competitive base with a highly lucurative incentive program and an up and comer in the commercial lending field that would learn the trade of SBA would do just fine. You know where this is going.

Darren was but one of 30 names that we presented to the Dennis. After letting Dennis take a black magic marker to cross out the names of his private candidates, those who would just not do and those who had the wrong background for the role, we were left with 22 (Darren survived), just enough to likely get the three candidates necessary to complete the search successfully. "Go forth into the market and cold call" said Dennis. And they were off!

Some eight days later, Darren passed a phone interview and was scheduled to meet Dennis at the hotel. There were two other candidates of course. We'll name them Jeff and Greg. Darren actually had stiff competition from Jeff and both walked out of the meeting suggesting that they were looking forward to receiving an offer and would accept. It was a coin toss and Darren won. Hooray - all that was left was the signatures.

Then time did an interesting thing - it sped up. What started out as a routine sign off by an executive took one day, then two, then three. We tried to keep Darren warm but the tone and frequency began to change. Darren was now not quite as "in" as he was before. Was he concerned about the offer? Yes it would be a haircut but that would be overcome by the increases with incentive pay not to mention a better bank and better opportunity. The hangup was the safety and security of his present job and familiar boss. "I've worked with him for a long time, I'm just not sure I can walk in and resign." The "Fear of Change" Monster reared its ugly head and was growing stronger and more fearsome with the passage of time.

We were calm, especially because the same hiring manager that so intimidated Darren from making a difficult but right decision had himself given us his resume before (the audacity!). But the "Fear of Change" Monster is fearsome - it can halt progress in many ways: Borrowers fearful to take out loans; candidates afraid to seize good opportunities and even stalling aspiring business owners from...ahem...starting up their own recruiting firms.

Fortunately for Darren we were able to remind him of the fundamentals. "And Darren, you can trust us when we remind you of your original concerns about your present job and the virtues of this new opportunity because....from a business perspective, we don't CARE if you turn this job down. We have a backup candidate." Darren took the job, produces well, and Dennis gets right on track to bothering his wife full time.