If you want to become a real estate recruiter, one thing you have to understand is that it’s a busy job in a highly competitive space. You can click here to get a glimpse of what real estate recruiters do every single day—and more.
What you have to keep in mind is that, at their core, real estate brokerages are all the same. It’s your job as a recruiter to convince the best real estate agents that the company you’re working for is different and will be good for their careers. As such, if you want to succeed in this field, you need to have and develop a variety of skills. Here are just a few of them:
Listening Skills
As a real estate recruiter, you need to be a good communicator. You have to be able to talk up not just the brokerage, but also the perks of the job you’re hiring for. Do you offer great base salaries and bonuses? Do you have better commissions for agents who consistently close transactions for homes for sale? That being said, it can be argued that the more important half of being a good communicator is being able to listen well. This is because listening helps you gather valuable information to make the best decisions.
For one, listening allows you to better understand what the job requires of the candidates. This then enables you to gauge candidates more effectively based on their skills, as well as how they would fit or complement the company culture. In addition, good listening skills can help you foster stronger business relationships (more on this later) that can help you find and place more candidates.
Time Management
As previously mentioned, being a real estate recruiter is busy work. You need to be able to squeeze in a lot of tasks, which include both menial or repetitive tasks and more nuanced ones, within your daily schedule. Unfortunately, not everyone is good at managing their time. Fortunately, effective time management can be learned.
Your main focus in developing your time management skills is to be efficient, not just quick. After all, it won’t matter that you always finish your tasks on time when you have so many mistakes to go back to and correct later.
Tech Aptitude
While the job of a real estate recruiter can be tough at times, there are many technological tools that can make tasks so much easier. In fact, if you aren’t using technological tools like applicant tracking systems (ATS) and client relationship management (CRM) software, you’ll be left behind by your peers.
The good thing is that these tools are now more accessible than ever. If you aren’t using them yet, it’s time to consider investing in them now. It’s also important to learn how to use social media and other internet platforms effectively. These sites have a lot of features, such as built-in analytics tools, which can help you derive plenty of actionable insights to improve your results.
Data Literacy
In relation to tech savviness, it’s important for recruiters to be able to gather the correct data and interpret them. This is crucial for streamlining processes, improving the quality of hires, and saving on recruitment costs. In addition, gathering and interpreting data can be useful in requesting additional resources. For example, if you can use data to prove that social media produces the best hires for your company, your managers will find it easier to approve a larger budget for ads.
Relationship Building
The job of a recruiter can not be more people-centric. In particular, it’s centered on developing connections so that you can find the best person for the job. An important element in this is trust. If a candidate doesn’t believe in you and your capabilities, they won’t even think about submitting an application or want to be part of your network.
To cultivate healthy professional relationships, you also have to work on qualities like approachability without compromising professionalism. When you strike that balance, people will be more inclined to work with you.
Negotiation Skills
Another crucial skill of a recruiter, particularly if you work in real estate, is negotiation. Remember: you’re going to be talking to agents, whose jobs literally require them to negotiate property prices and close deals. Therefore, if you want to convince talented real estate professionals to join your company (or the brokerage you represent), you need to ensure that everyone’s happy with the outcome of the recruitment process.
Cultural Awareness
Being culturally aware as a recruiter opens you up to so many more opportunities. It’s not just for the sake of diversity hires, either. By getting to know and understanding people from all walks of life and different cultures, you can recruit more people who can contribute more than just their skills. You can also benefit from their fresh perspectives, which can then allow you to innovate more easily.
Patience
Last but most certainly not least, a real estate recruiter must be patient. With literally thousands of applications and job hunters in the market, it may take some time before you can find “the one” that’s truly suited to the job. Don’t settle for anything less. You may be tempted to compromise to hire for an urgent vacancy, but you’ll likely end up repeating the process, wasting time, money, and opportunity.
Patience also means being persistent, in the event that you do hire someone who’s not a good match. That said, by developing the rest of the skills mentioned in this list, you can minimize the occurrence of such incidents.
Any job requires you to have the necessary competencies in order to be good at it. If you want to be a great real estate recruiter, make sure to hone the skills mentioned here.
