It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at the entire job market or just mortgage finance, competition is extremely high for top talent. With the U.S. unemployment rate sitting around a 50-year low, employers need to stop letting their company culture operate on autopilot. If you asked your employees today to define the “why” behind your company, would they know the answer? Would you?

It’s an important question, and one of the things you can explore at HousingWire’s engage.talent summit on Feb. 6 in Dallas. We’ve developed an entire agenda to help you, with a panel dedicated to discussing the impact of company culture on retaining and attracting top talent that features panelists from Better Mortgage and Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation.

The truth is, the mortgage industry desperately needs more talent if it’s going to continue to grow. That means recruiting young people as they graduate from college, and attracting professionals from other fields with a compelling message.

There’s a common misconception within the industry — which the Mortgage Bankers Association helped debunk a couple years back — that its aging workforce is having a negative impact on getting young buyers into homes in large numbers.

But the reality is much less about a giant swath of “old” loan officers who can’t connect with younger buyers and much more about attracting new talent, plus limiting the amount of poaching from other lenders. In fact, a study from the STRATMOR Group found that the average loan officer is in their late 40s — not late 50s, as many think.

Positioning your company to be attractive to these new workers is one of the overarching themes of engage.talent, and we’ve recruited some incredible leaders to share insights you won’t hear anywhere else, including how to compete and win against the nation’s top brands.

One area that’s been getting a lot of attention as companies compete for scarce resources is the impact of company culture on attracting and retaining top talent. While putting greens and giant slides are easy things to spotlight as “fun” parts of a company culture, is that really what is going to make a difference? Much more importantly is the company’s reason for being, or their “why.”

Around 10 years ago, Simon Sinek, a top motivational speaker, gave a TEDx talk in Seattle on “Defining your why” that has since gone viral and is still making the rounds in social feeds. Sinek reshared his thoughts around the topic years later in a video with marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk.

Sinek states that every single organization on the planet and every single person knows what they do, the things they sell, the services they offer, and how they do it. “It’s the things that we think make us stand out or differentiate us from the world outside, but very, very few of us can clearly articulate why we do what we do,” he said.

But when looking at the greatest leaders, the people with the capacity to inspire action in those around them, he explains that “every single one of them, regardless of their industry, thinks, acts, and communicates starting with why.”

Sinek takes this concept and ties it into how companies can use their why to grow their team, adding, “What you’ll find is that the better you are at communicating your why, people will want to work for you, regardless of the opportunity that you afford them. They want to be a part of it.”

Once a company knows their why, they can better share their vision and mission in their recruiting efforts. It’s a universal concept that goes beyond mortgage companies, and is something that other companies are already using to attract talent. If a company knows their why, they can better build a strong team, hire digital talent and go to battle for talent against top brands.

We’ve built our engage.talent agenda to help you take your talent strategy to the next level, whether you are hiring top originators, the cream of the crop in operations/fulfillment, or need to improve your bench strength. You will not only have a better grip on your company’s “why,” but also the very important “how.”

Don’t miss this opportunity! Register here for the engage.talent summit.