#OPENTO WORK

“He told me not to chase being a part of the mortgage industry right out of high school. He told me I was too young, so I decided to get a job at Ford Motors,” Frankiewicz said with a chuckle. “But as it turns out, I was getting my father leads from the guys I worked with at Ford. I figured to myself that if I could get my father 2-3 deals a month, then I ought to try my luck at the industry.”

At age 24, Frankiewicz got laid off from Ford. “That was in 2004. I decided to try my luck at the industry as a loan originator, which proved to be mediocre at best given the market at that time,” he said. “I managed to stay in the industry the whole time, which was scary because I saw people falling out of it left and right.”

Frankiewicz said that he and his father, Larry, worked as a team from

“I always go after people [for jobs] in the industry that I know from the past or through social networking,” he said. “It’s hard to go out there and hire when I’m still a loan originator because I want business to be the best it can be, which is why I’m looking for people in my network before advertising a position outside of that network.”

Michele Kryczkowski

After Michele Kryczkowski got laid off from Planet Home Lending, she decided to embrace LinkedIn — not just for the open-to-work button, but for social outreach.

“I’ve been laid off before and at times when I didn’t have a strong network, it was devastating,” she said. “Now, I’m taking everything that I’ve learned from being laid off and putting out videos to help others navigate being laid off.”

Kryczkowski, who has been in the industry for 21 years, got her start as a processor at a brokerage out of Omaha, Neb. From there, she worked in several different industry positions: loan officer assistant, account executive, senior loan processor, mortgage operations manager, and vice president of national wholesale.

“I only ever panicked when I got laid off right after 2008,” she said. “I was unable to find work where I lived in Michigan, and I was considering waiting tables again because I was worried that I would need food stamps.”

After relocating to Texas, Kryczkowski found a job at Nationstar Mortgage as a mortgage operations team manager. As her network began to grow and she grew into a managerial role, Kryczkowski found that other doors kept opening.

“I had clients that tried to recruit me to work for them,” she said. “And after I got laid off from a place, I would have clients and friends from the old workplace offering to put my resume out there for me.”

Now, Kryczkowski said that she’s using this time after getting the pink slip in January to focus on helping her network accept that being laid off is not the end of the world. She knows from prior experience that job searches can trigger self-doubt and discouragement.