It’s easy to picture Peter, Michael and Samir- sensitive ears beware – on the where-not-to-work reel. It’s a little harder to purge the reel from your credit union and recruit well.

At the beginning of Filene’s 30 Under 30 experiment, we polled the participants on how many had planned to work at a credit union. The answer: not one. Here are four things that will get good employees flowing into credit unions … but only if we make it so.

1 • Consolidation

Blasé as this may sound, credit union consolidation doesn’t scare me. I think it’s good. One of the main reasons is that growing and large credit unions (along with a progressive cohort of smaller peers) can carve out a better place for talented employees. Heritage CU ($146 million) in Madison, Wisconsin, is big enough to have a VP of Innovation; their $40 million neighbors are probably unable to justify, let alone support, the expense.

Walter Biernacki was the first person in my short business stint who articulated growth as a recruiting and retention imperative. This CEO of Arkansas FCU, which grew assets by 20% last year, told me that if he doesn’t grow, he won’t have a place to keep the rising stars at his credit union, and he’ll have fewer places to put any new ones.

2 • Better tools

When CUhire.com launched earlier this year, I caught an inkling of of how credit union recruiting could go: Great young employee loves the credit union > Credit union painlessly taps great young employee’s electronic social network > Much great employment ensues.

As far as I can tell, CUhire doesn’t do that. It’s a well-executed take on the traditional post-and-publish recruiting model. They do have an in-site “talent network” for submitting resumés and one of their senior partners has a LinkedIn network that exceeds 500 contacts, but it’s still an agency-driven approach.

Much more powerful (and local and inexpensive) is the prospect of letting the employees you’d like to replicate actively push your job descriptions through their Facebook or MySpace or Stache Passions profiles. Hey, even have them send an old-fashioned e-mail to their college friends, fellow parishioners or military buddies. If they love you already, they’ll do it for free. If you want them to love you more, you’ll pay them a commission when you hire the kid who sat across from them in French 5.

3 • Not social responsibility (yet)

I kept trying to write up social responsibility as a recruiting tool, and I just couldn’t find the meat. That’s not because I don’t think it’s a good attractor in today’s business environment; instead, it’s because most credit unions are plain vanilla deposits-in, loans-out places. Social responsibility is in the credit union genotype, but it’s rarely expressed.

Credit unions as a whole used to be progressive when progressive meant giving out small loans, giving you a peer-reviewed shot at a larger loan, or providing the right place to cash your paycheck. One hundred years in and ALL the novelty has worn off of those differentiators. What’s left? Slightly better rates and the memory of when our service used to be better.

Try a quick Google search for “hybrid auto loan” and you’ll catch a full list of credit unions. Take a look at what REAL Solutions is trying to do. Sign up for a Zopa account, or take a look at Amplify’s online tools. Today, the system is not progressive, but individual credit unions can be. In a world where the up-and-comers are searching for the right kind of employer, being progressive in your business will make a difference.

The Filene Research Institute is doubling down on this one: Stay tuned for details of our upcoming partnership with Net Impact.

4 • Pay

I’ve never filed a W-4 at a credit union myself, so I’m only going on statistically significant hearsay: Credit unions need to pay better.

“Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.” – Office Space

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Ben is driver of the Filene Research Institute’s CU Tomorrow project, chairman of the National Directors’ Convention, and a big fan of tweed.