Here’s How to Recruit Top Real Estate Agents

Just like any industry, real estate brokerages face the same dilemma — how to find the best talent. But that’s not the only obstacle the industry faces because the agent turnover rate is incredibly high. These two points combined require brokerages to have a laser-focused recruiting strategy. 

Since we’ve worked with some of the nation’s top brokerages, we have seen successful recruitment strategies in action. Regardless of your company size, established or brand new, we wrote these five tips to help you find and retain the top real estate agents in your area. 

1. Continuously recruit real estate agents 

We cannot stress proactivity enough. We’ll put it this way — what are the odds that the best possible fit comes along in the recruiting process at the same time an agent gives you notice? It’s not likely. In order to find the best possible fit, you have to recruit realtors on an ongoing basis.

Start by opening up that recruiting funnel full time to maintain a pool of candidates. Check out a few ways to do that: Make your website an easy channel for potential agents to express interest in your brokerage… put that Careers tab to good use! 

• Be open to new agents and build a strong business relationship with them. Once they’re established in the industry, you want to be their first choice. 
• Be active on LinkedIn to find successful agents and stay in contact. 
• Utilize the power of digital and social media by creating recruiting videos. 
  

2. Invest in simple, streamlined real estate tech

We’ve written about this before, but the real estate industry itself is lagging in the tech race. It’s super easy to stay in a comfortable position with your current back office and account management software even if the software is confusing and outdated. 

Offer tools and software that is both different and more unique than competing brokerages. Solutions like Zipi offer a full-featured back office and accounting platform with something for everyone involved in the real estate process: brokers, agents and clients. Plus, future-focused technology makes the agent’s job simpler while also providing them with added value for clients. Often, agents come from all backgrounds, which means they’ve used a massive variety of software. Tech needs to have bidirectional data so that data moves seamlessly between platforms. Offering anything less to your agents is a disservice to your recruiting efforts. 

3. Market more than just the commission split

In business everywhere, employees look for more than just a paycheck. They want to work for a company that not only fits their personal beliefs, but employees want the right fit. According to the 2018 Global Talent Trends, the three things that job candidates look for in a company include workplace flexibility, a commitment to health and well-being and working with purpose. 

While we won’t downplay the draw of a large paycheck, you have to be aware of what agents look for in a brokerage. Consider what makes your company different. Do you have excellent collaboration between agents, top of the line tools, professional development, or opportunity for growth? Whatever it is, market that culture to pique the interest from top agents around. 

4. Maintain a strong online presence for attracting talent

The world around us is rapidly evolving, and that means we have access to loads of information at the power of our fingertips. Clients know more information about listed homes than ever before and can access what once was agent-specific info. 

Agents are no different. If an agent is looking to transition, they will seek out a brokerage that understands the power of an online presence. This means a modern and responsive website, strong SEO that pulls top search results, online listings, virtual tours, social media presence, etc. is important in recruiting all realtors. Any way that clients are finding agents, you need to be first in line. Just remember that industry leaders attract the top talent. 

5. Build and keep relationships with potential agents

One thing that comes with ongoing recruitment is the ever-growing stack of resumes. But this is a valuable aspect to make part of your recruitment strategy. Keep relationships with candidates even if they weren’t the right fit at the time, or they decided to stay in their current situation. Circumstances always change, and you want to be top-of-mind when that agent decides to make a move. Consider a management system for keeping track of applications and contact information, or utilize applications and websites like LinkedIn to stay in contact.

Zipi is a back office and accounting solution that aims to make real estate simple for agents and their deals to commissions and billings. Request a demo to get in contact with one of our expert team members.