How to Recruit Real Estate Agents For Your Company
Recruiting talented real estate agents is a huge contributor to your brokerage’s success. Indeed, it can be challenging to achieve your business goals if you don’t ensure the quality of people in your ranks. Thus, you need to have a solid recruitment program in order to entice the best and the brightest to join your brokerage.
If you already have a program in place, Brokerkit has a few tips on how to improve your real estate recruitment. For those who don’t have one yet, however, you need to get started immediately. The steps below can help guide you through the process of creating a recruitment program to meet your brokerage’s needs.
Identify Your Goals
Obviously, the goal of your recruitment program is to find talented agents. However, you should be as specific as you can. This makes your job as a recruiter so much easier. What’s more, setting specific goals gives you measurable values for proper performance tracking.
Some recruitment goals you may want to add include the number of agents you want to hire and the share of newly licensed, experienced, and inactive agents out of this number. Make sure to include the qualities you want in an agent as well.
Ideally, you should also have separate plans for the different types of agents you want to hire. For newly licensed agents, training and guidance are a must.
For experienced agents and associates, you need to focus on unique benefits to convince them to make a move. For inactive agents, on the other hand, you need to give them good reasons to work in real estate again.
Maybe you want all of your agents to be Realtors and not just a real estate agent? There is something to be said about an agent that strives to follow the strict code of ethics in real estate. Who wouldn’t want a group of agents who put their client’s best interests ahead of their own – ALWAYS!
Having agents that naturally work towards overcoming the pitfalls of being a Real Estate agent without complaining all day long will undoubtedly be a plus.
Write Down Your Strategy
At its core, recruitment is a form of sales. Instead of products or services, you’re selling your brokerage’s brand and company culture. As such, you need to develop a recruitment strategy that’s akin to sales.
Devise a daily, weekly, and monthly action plan that includes a variety of strategies to achieve your goals. The most important part here is writing things down. Not only will this help you visualize your success, but it also reinforces the ideas in your mind. It also gives you a readily accessible document that you can consult at any time.
Building an exceptional group of real estate agents won’t be that challenging if you have a solid plan in place to get exactly what you want. In other words, you’ll want more than a warm body, which is better suited to just sitting behind a desk and not doing much more.
For example, the best real estate agents in the industry aren’t working for a flat fee MLS agency, which does little more than enter your home in the multiple listing service.
Focus On Your Strengths
You can’t recruit talented real estate agents if you can’t convince them that your brokerage is worth joining. Thus, you need to focus on your strengths as you’re developing your recruitment program.
Mention to prospective talents the kind of training and mentorship your company offers, along with benefits such as high commission splits or free insurance. You can also highlight the successes of other real estate agents from your brokerage, whether they’re still working with you or not. Building strong relationships with your real estate agents should be a significant focus for any owner or manager.
The critical thing here is to avoid bragging and making general statements. Be specific and back your claims with data and other relevant details. You should be honest and realistic, so as not to disappoint your new recruits once they join you. Finally, just like your strategy, prepare a physical list that you can consult at any time.
Set Realistic Expectations for Agents
No matter how clear you might be on paper, there will always be potential hires who will have the wrong or impractical expectations. As the recruiter for your brokerage, it’s your job to establish realistic expectations, from the workload to the earnings. Giving a prospective recruit a clear picture right at the outset can prevent misunderstandings. In addition, realistic expectations can also better set up your new agents for success.
Have an Accountability Partner
The next step is to share your recruitment programs with a broker or manager. They will serve as your accountability partner so that someone can ensure that you actually carry out your plans. In short, they will be the ones to push you so that you can make things happen. Having an accountability partner can also help you track and measure your performance so you can continuously improve.
Have a Plan for Passive Candidates
In any industry, there will always be passive candidates. They might not be looking for a career change just yet, but it will do you well to keep them in mind. Take note of the rising stars and establish a plan on how you can keep in touch with them.
You can try connecting with them on social media, for example, particularly on Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s also a good idea to ask them to sign-up for email newsletters so they can stay updated about your brokerage and potential opportunities. Maintaining professional contact with passive candidates will make you top-of-mind once they decide that they want a change.
Final Thoughts on Recruiting Agents
Over the years, real estate recruitment has become more challenging. This is not due to the lack of qualified talents, but rather that the industry overall has become more competitive.
Develop a strong recruitment program using the steps above and then continue to refine it once you’ve gathered sufficient data. This way, you can continuously improve the quality of people in your team and keep your brokerage growing.
Hopefully, these tips on how to recruit real estate agents to your brokerage have been helpful.
About the author: The above article on how to recruit real estate agents to your company was written by Monica Mendoza. Monica is a PH-based digital marketer by trade who’s on the lookout for a new home. As part of her home buying research, she has taken a hard look at how the real estate industry works and how she can find agents who can help her get a solid deal. When she’s not working at home, she can be found baking and looking for new recipes online.
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