Nobody is going to send you a memo

I'm carrying the same job at five banks right now. Commercial RM, C&I preferred, a strong CRE book considered. Sacramento, Walnut Creek, San Jose, San Francisco, Napa. Four of those seats are in Sacramento alone, and I owe a client a West LA producer on top of it.

That should be a good market to be a producer in. It is. And I still can't fill them quickly, which is the part worth sitting with if you're in one of those chairs today.

My outbound has gone silent

The searches aren't the problem. The outreach is.

My funnel used to be predictable enough that I could plan a week around it. 25 or 30 emails out, 5 or 6 come back with some interest, and 2 or 3 of those are people I'd actually put in front of a hiring manager. LinkedIn DMs ran better than that, and for a long stretch they were the best tool I had.

The DMs have fallen off badly. Email gets me almost nothing now.

The only people who write back are the ones who already know me, and that's the part that should get your attention more than mine. Bankers are staying put and ignoring recruiter outreach as a category.

The replies I do get come from the wrong altitude. Market managers. Division heads. People running entire lending divisions. Good bankers, every one of them, and almost none of them want a bag to carry.

Some of that is on me. My Rolodex has aged along with me, and the people I can reach in a single call aren't sitting in RM chairs anymore. So I've been reseeding, which is slow work.

The rest of it is the RM level itself. Those people haven't left the industry. They're sitting still.

Why they're sitting still

I asked a banker I've known for years about it this week. He's been a candidate and a client, and somewhere in that time we became friends. But he always shoots straight, even when it's not pleasant to hear.

His read was short. People don't move because moving means working again.

Change platforms and your book doesn't come with you. You start over. New credit box, new committee, new referral sources, a year of eating what you kill before anybody knows your name. If nothing at your current bank hurts and nobody is giving you a hard time, why volunteer for that?

I don't think he's being cynical. I think that's just the math most people are quietly running.

The question that gives it away

He pointed at something I've been noticing for a year and hadn't named.

When a candidate's first question is how many days a week they can work from home, that's the whole interview right there. Ask about the credit culture. Ask who approves what and how fast. Ask whether the last three RMs they hired are still there. The answers to those questions decide whether you make money. The commute schedule decides whether your morning is pleasant.

I've stopped presenting candidates who lead with the hybrid/remote question. Clients hear it the same way I do.

The change won't be announced

Here's the line from that call I keep coming back to.

If your job genuinely depended on it, if you were told plainly that keeping the seat means five days in the office, eight to five, you would figure it out by Monday. Almost everyone would.

But nobody's going to tell you that's the deal. The expectation shifts first and the memo never comes. Banks aren't going to send an email warning you the bar is moving. They'll just start reading pipelines and deciding who's producing and who's been coasting on a portfolio somebody else built.

Two answers, one outcome

When he lays this out to bankers, he gets one of two responses.

The first is agreement with an escape hatch. You're probably right, but you can't tell me when. So I'll ride it out.

The second is flat disagreement. You're wrong, the market's fine, I'm fine.

His guess is that covers nearly everybody working today, and I don't think he's far off. What's missing from both answers is the same thing. Neither one leads to anyone doing anything differently on Monday.

I'm writing this from a glass house

Earlier this year my own pipeline thinned out and I spent longer than I'd like to admit looking for a reason that wasn't me.

I'd gotten comfortable. I was working the relationships I already had, taking the calls that came to me, and calling it being selective. I spent the first quarter watching four deals die due to process, before realizing that the market had shifted and my own pipeline was way too thin.

What fixed it was going back to what I did from 2001 through 2005, before LinkedIn existed, which is call people until somebody says yes. That's it. That's the whole fix, and it's annoying because it works.

What I'd actually do

Know your numbers cold, and not the flattering ones. New relationships this year, not renewals. New money in, not the book you inherited. If the answer is thin and you've decided it's the rate environment, check that story carefully. I told myself a version of it in March.

And take the call when a recruiter rings. You don't have to move. But being a stranger to your own market is how you end up with one option when you need four.

The bankers who come out of a turn like this in good shape are almost never the ones who saw it coming first. They're the ones who were already in the habit of working like it had.

If you're a commercial banker thinking through your next 12 months, let's talk.

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