The ultimate real estate hiring process

One of the key components of building a company or a real estate team is acquiring and keeping talented people and one of the quickest ways to derail a company is to hire a poor fit. To hire smart for sustained growth requires learning and applying a proven process of attracting and hiring the right people.

Often, entrepreneurs hire based on instinct or emergency rather than through a well-developed and rigorous process. Only by carefully applying a smart process, can real estate leaders attract and close the talent that will best help them achieve the growth and development they want.

With a smart process, you hire employees that fit and perform better, which reduces costly turnover. It requires having expectations and culture set out. In fact, studies in recent years have determined that the costs of a bad hire can be anywhere from two to three times the annual salary of a position.

In this post, we outline all the steps of a smart hiring process that will help you build your most valuable resource – talent. The process has many steps, in fact, we’ve written a book on hiring, but in this post, we provide just a high-level overview.

There are three components to a thorough talent acquisition process: pre-hire, the hiring process itself and post-hire.

Pre-hire

Before you begin the hiring process, you need to prepare, so the process goes smoothly. The first steps involve:

1. Creating a Job Description

2. Developing a Talent Profile

3. Generating Candidates

A job description lists the key tasks, functions, roles and responsibilities required for each position and outlines the most productive activities that a talented hire would perform.

The job description only tells you what you want them to do. The Talent Profile identifies who you want them to be. This reduces the subjectiveness of the process by defining the specific characteristics that must be present to set one candidate apart from the rest.

Finding candidates is a numbers game. The more you have, the better the odds that you will find the person that best fits your position. Strategies vary, but they range from head-hunting talented prospects at other firms to reviewing job boards to scouring your network and that of trusted advisors.

Six-step hiring process

To help real estate companies make the best hiring decisions, we recommend a six-step success hiring process with the following steps: Prescreen, face-to-face interviews, winnowing process, a test assignment, due diligence, final decision and offer.

Prescreen

The prescreening process provides an opportunity to speak with all qualified candidates on the phone using a specific set of questions to determine which candidates meet your criteria and which ones you want to meet in person. The prescreen will help you make sure that only candidates who are a possible fit get in-person interviews.

Face-to-face interviews

Every candidate will go through an initial interview using the same set of questions. Once again, collecting data using the same set of questions helps you compare candidates to determine if there will be additional in-person interviews. We recommend a second interview for any role that is director level or higher.

Select finalists

Once you have completed the initial in-person interviews, you will determine which candidates you want to continue in the hiring process. Additionally, part of this step should include administering and validating a behavioral assessment, such as the DISC, a popular behavioral evaluation tool used by many companies. Other well-known profiles are the Myers Briggs and Strength Finders.

Finalists perform an assignment

An experiential assignment will demonstrate if candidates can do the job and their ability to stretch themselves, think outside the box, work under pressure, follow directions and pay attention to details. A good example is giving a graphic artist candidate a design project to see what they produce.

Due diligence

In due diligence, you work to verify what you have learned during the previous steps. This is part of the final winnowing process, and will help you identify your top candidates. Part of the due diligence process involves conducting reference checks and verifying information from additional sources to uncover as much about a candidate as possible. This can also include background checks.

Make a final decision and an offer

This step includes extending an offer and reviewing the performance conditions you expect. This is your last chance to determine whether the person is the best fit and determine the. Conditions of Performance, a conversation about job requirements and expectations.

Post hiring – First 90 Days

The first 90 days is the most critical time after the hiring process. Before new hires start, complete a results form for each item on the job description. On the first day of work, review the priority and what they can do to meet the conditions of satisfaction for each. Explain how they can get an excellent rating versus a good, fair, needs improvement or poor rating. This ensures they know expectations and, because it is in writing, it will be easy to communicate around performance, and will make it easier to fire them, if it comes to that.  

Takeaway

If you consistently apply this process to your hiring strategy, you will end up with great talent and your company will thrive. Remember, this is a high-level overview of the process. There are many details, resources and best practices to each step. Building a great business requires finding and hiring great talent, and learning this skill will help you as you continue to grow your organization.

To discuss your hiring or job search needs, click here to schedule a FREE 30-minute consultation session with the T3 Talent team.