Real Estate in Review: Thoughts on Recruitment
1 December 2020
Steve Osborn
Co-founder & Managing Director, Identity Marketing
I want to take a moment to talk about recruitment. Whether you’re already in a position to recruit or you’re fast becoming a high performer in the real estate industry, you need to take heed of what I’m about to say. It’s no secret that my methods to success often involve playing the long game and when it comes to recruitment that rationale stands truer than ever, even if you’re not in a place to recruit right now – listen up.
Don’t be a dick
If you own your business and you’re a dick to your staff, trust me others will know – and fast. This quite obviously impacts your ability to recruit the cream of the crop, because if you’re a high performer with options why the hell would you choose to be aligned with a dick?
Sharing is caring
I typically hate a cliche, but for this purpose sharing really is caring (for yourself). Following on from point 1, don’t take all the office leads for yourself and instead share them out amongst your team. By doing this you’re establishing yourself as a great leader and your team will become stronger, and this all leads to positive word of mouth in the industry.
Think beyond results
Hiring a top performing agent who regularly excels but is a rogue horse with a bad attitude is never a good idea. Sure, you’ll reap rewards initially but in the long term you’ll have other high performers who don’t want to work with your so-called ‘prized stallion’.
Constantly seek improvement
The journey to better is never finished with individuals, teams and agencies always having room to be bigger, better and stronger. Take the time to consistently refine your systems with the intention of making less work for your agents. This provides them with more time to succeed and who doesn’t want to be a part of that?
Additionally, assist your agents to seek continual improvement through excellent training and leadership. Sure, you might train them and they could leave but that’s still a more desirable outcome than having loyal but sub par agents?
Think 3 steps ahead
Recruiting the best talent is about thinking three steps ahead. For this I have two favourite approaches. Firstly, be a friend in the industry, rather than a salesman who keeps pushing high performers to join. Be social at events, catch up for coffee, congratulate them on their wins, give them small gifts for their birthday and when the time is right, they’ll seek you out. The second approach is to stay in touch with staff that move on by wishing them the best, keeping in contact and following the steps from above because they’ll likely come back to you with the added benefit of insight into another agency.
