The fact of the matter is that recruiting real estate agents can take a lot of time, especially if you want to hire the best of the best. However, there are certain situations when you can’t afford to wait. What’s more, if it always takes a long while for you to hire one or two agents, then there might be something wrong.
One of the best things to do to avoid this scenario is to streamline your real estate recruitment process. Not only will you be able to fill posts faster, but you’ll also be able to save on costs. Here are a few suggestions to achieve this goal:
Use Tech Solutions
Nowadays, almost everything has a technological solution—recruitment included. Click here for some suggestions on how you can employ CRM software, online recruiting services, and other tech innovations to streamline your real estate agent recruitment.
The bottomline here is that there are plenty of individual tasks involved in recruiting, and each of these tasks can take a lot of time. By using the appropriate software or service, you can easily automate some of the steps or even eliminate unnecessary ones. There are also recruitment tech solutions that can help you with scheduling, interviewing, and assessing. You can even find services that offer consultations so you can optimize your job ads!
Determine Priority Positions
There are times when you have to fill multiple positions at the same time. When this happens, it’s important to determine which ones are the most urgent. This allows you to allocate more resources to fill that job post much faster. If there’s no urgency, then you can afford to slow down a little.
Take note that “as soon as possible” is not a good answer when determining urgency simply because of its vagueness. You need to be specific. Find out the important details, such as the target date for when the post is expected to be filled. This way, you can work with a definite schedule and also manage expectations.
Eliminate Bottlenecks
There are some parts of the recruiting process that you might feel are necessary but are actually slowing down the process. For example, conducting background checks is all well and good but do you need to do it for every single applicant? It can take up a lot of time and resources to do this. A better idea is to narrow down the pool first and then conduct background checks only on those candidates that make the cut.
Identify bottlenecks like these in your process and find ways to eliminate or reduce them without compromising the quality of the output. Sit down with your team and perform a thorough, objective evaluation to hash out a more streamlined method.
Conduct Video Interviews
Personal interviews are an important part of recruitment, particularly for real estate agents. That’s because a face-to-face meeting can help you better evaluate their communications skills, not to mention their personality (which are both crucial for a people-facing job). However, interviewing everyone in person can be time-consuming.
Instead of face-to-face meetings, consider video interviews instead. Again, there’s a tech solution for almost every step in the recruitment process. In this case, you can rely on video conferencing apps or even a simple messaging app. You might be surprised at how much time you’ll save when you reserve the in-person interviews for the final round of evaluations.
Hire Your Own
One of the best ways to speed-up your hiring process is to look within—the person you’re looking for might already be working for you! If you notice someone who deserves a promotion, why not offer the post to them? Some of your team may also be interested in lateral movement, particularly if they have adjacent skills.
Hiring your own also comes with a lot of benefits. Aside from being less expensive, you’ll also deal with less risk of turnovers. Everyone will also have an easier transition, because there’s no need for a period of adjustment or “settling down.”
Build a Pipeline
Last but not the least, it’s important to be proactive in building a talent pipeline. Don’t just look for candidates when you need them. The better thing to do is set up a network so that it’s easier and faster to reach out once you need to hire. This way is also less expensive, particularly when you’re filling an urgent position.
Building this talent network is also valuable in terms of establishing your brokerage as a company that can be trusted and who builds meaningful relationships. Having such a reputation is useful in attracting the best agents.
Finally, do note that there are times when it’s actually better to take things slow and hire right the first time. Nevertheless, there’s something to be said about having a smooth process from start to finish because it saves everyone time and money. A faster, more streamlined recruiting process also creates an overall better experience; even if a candidate doesn’t get hired, they’re likely to remember your brokerage in a positive light.
April 13, 2021