Saw this press release earlier today touting open positions at Countrywide:

Financial services provider, mortgage and home loan specialist, Countrywide Financial Corporation (NYSE: CFC), today announced it has launched an aggressive campaign for recruiting mortgage professionals, including prime and nonprime sales professionals. In addition to recruitment of sales professionals with either retail or wholesale lending backgrounds, the campaign seeks qualified candidates with experience in information technology, underwriting, banking, insurance sales, customer service and loss mitigation. Potential candidates can review Countrywide’s open positions at www.countrywidecareers.com.

Housing slump be damned — it looks like Countrywide’s moving quickly to acquire talent and steel itself to get even bigger while the rest of the market sleeps (or goes out of business). But what’s really interesting is that the company issed the release on PRWeb, a free wire service — not on PR Newswire, a for-fee wire where most of its corporate releases are put.