COLLEGE RECRUITING IDEA

Three Key Factors for Successful Agent Recruiting

Traditional recruiting methods aren’t enough anymore, especially when it comes to recruitment of real estate sales agents. You need and want to find the right overall match for your company. Ability and past experiences are good, but equally important is their potential to thrive in your business environment.
A holistic approach is essential in today’s complex and rapidly-changing real estate environment. And a more fully integrated process will enable you to achieve profitable, long-term results.
1. USE TOOLS
• Find Them – Use the best tools available and create a process. Before you can market to prospective agents you have to find them. Use every avenue available to find prospects. In your market where are talented individuals looking for a rewarding real estate sales career? Savvy professionals are online, and social media can be a very effective means of inbound recruiting. Even your own agents can be valuable recruiters through their own Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, other social media outlets, or in-the-field exposure to other agents.
• Hire Them – Hiring is largely marketing. You want to attract the most promising prospects including experienced sales agents, but to close the sale you need to sell your company as the best workplace for their specific needs. Limiting your search or failing to promote your company as a great place to work could cause you to miss out on someone truly special. Marketing includes presenting your branding message on your company’s website, job board postings, social media postings, email signatures, career resource portals, and much more.
2. PLAN and USE A PROCESS
• Follow a process – Do you have a plan to stay in touch with prospects over time? What will you discuss with them? How will you become their broker of choice when they are ready to make a move? In effect, recruiting real estate agents is a matter of data management. Using all available tools to optimize the processes and streamlining your procedures will give you the most compelling results. Since you’re recruiting a “whole person,” base your plan on company goals and culture.
• Customize Recruiting Plan – Based on their interests and data gathered from pre-screening tools and specialized real estate sales assessments you can customize your recruiting plan to each individual’s needs. In addition, this data can provide the greatest insight regarding each candidate’s relevant abilities and likely successes.
• Hold Accountable – Following a plan and process and holding your team accountable on recruiting will ultimately save time for recruiters and avoid inadvertently overlooking great candidates.
3. MEASURE SUCCESS
• Every company defines “success” differently. Knowing which skills and personalities blend best within your real estate company will help uncover top quality sales agents. Systematically gather and analyze data, using key performance indicators and milestones achieved.
• Selecting poor performing sales agents is extremely costly. There are direct and indirect costs you should not ignore, such as your manager or recruiter time (that could have been spent on a better performing sales agent), training costs, etc. Relevant data and effective analysis help manage risk and significantly reduce these avoidable costs by more accurately predicting good choices.
• Focusing on selecting the best real estate salespeople will provide an immediate ROI, greatly improve retention, and build long-term success for your real estate company.
In summary, planning and following a structured recruiting process is fundamental to successful growing the number of sales agents in your brokerage. Your company has an important branding message, so follow a process that ensures that brand is promoted effectively. Ultimately you must hold your managers and recruiters accountable to ensure success in recruiting the number of agents necessary to reach your recruiting goal.
For more discussion or information on this topic and real estate agent recruiting, you are welcome to visit Real Estate Recruiting Solutions or feel free to contact Maria Mull, VP of Business Development, AlignMark at mmull@alignmark.com (919)436-6500.