A big office expansion in Guaranteed Rate’s home town will enable it to hire hundreds of loan originators who will handle online mortgage leads.
The Chicago-based company is running a recruiting campaign dubbed the Liftoff Program. No mortgage experience is needed to join the program.
Recruits will receive
an instructional sales itinerary that includes industry guest lecturers and all certification exams required for loan originators.
Once they graduate from the program, they will originate loans generated through digital marketing and adverting channels.
In an announcement Wednesday, Guaranteed said around 280 new positions will be created in Chicago this year for the program.
Staffing at the non-bank lender has expanded from just 680 employees in 2006
to 3,228 as of year-end 2016. So far this year, 90 people have been hired.
Room for the new positions will be created through a 22,000-square-foot expansion of its office space at two locations in the Windy City. One of the locations is just a block north of its headquarters where new recruits will have access to an on-site chef, nurse practitioner, fitness facility and masseuse.
Guaranteed, which originated
72,784 loans with an aggregate principal balance of $22.9 billion last year, reports that its revenues have grown from around $43 million in 2006 to nearly $778 million in 2016.
“Guaranteed Rate is a hometown success story and I’m proud to see the company thriving here in Chicago where it was founded,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was quoted as saying in the announcement. “Chicago, with its world-class talent and technology, is a great place to do business and Guaranteed Rate’s tremendous growth is an excellent example of that.”