Headquarters: San Jose, CA
Year Founded: 2008
Number of Employees: 30
“We are in the customer service and education business,” says Arcus Lending CEO Shashank Shekhar. “We just happen to do mortgages.”
And he does mortgages well. Starting Arcus in 2008 – at the beginning of the Great Recession – Shekhar has grown the company by more than 1,000% into a 30-person operation with an outstanding work environment. Immigrant-owned, the company has a diverse and inclusive workforce that’s majority female and future focused. For example, nearly half the company is millennials and they actively recruit from the next generation workforce.
Starting at onboarding, each employee is provided with constant, extensive training – including access to the CEO’s MLO Master Class online training modules for loan officers – and they are continuously evaluated. Other highlights feature marketing support, such as customized apps, personalized websites, and social media help, and a sustainable culture that eschews paper products in favor of digitizing everything. Meanwhile, team building exercises feature holiday dinners and off-site field trips, including a recent trip to Las Vegas.
Then there’s the extremely flexible work schedule. “At Arcus, the focus is not on tracking hours but on actually getting the work done,” says a company representative. “We offer this flexibility to our employees. They get to pick when they work so they can decide when they will be the most productive and when they can achieve the best results.”
