by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting
I had the privilege of spending some time in the recent past with the executive team of a high-performing real estate company in California.
When I say they’re high-performing, I’m not referring to the traditional metrics describing the performance of a real estate company (market share, # of transactions, per agent productivity, etc.). Although, they are high in all of these categories, as well.
I’m referring to recruiting performance. This organization does an outstanding job of finding and hiring talented individuals from outside of the real estate industry and launching them into prosperous new careers inside their company.
Here’s the shocking part. When I visited this company 18-months prior, they were terrible at this task. In fact, they were one of the worst performing recruiting companies among those organizations using our company’s candidate sourcing services.
Now, that’s all changed.
In the last half of 2013, they grew their hires by 50%. In 2014, they doubled (100% growth) the number of hires from the previous year. In 2015, they were on track to grow again by more than 50% (compared to the 2014 finish).
What’s going on?
Did they discover some new recruiting technology? Did they hire some high-performing recruiter who’s exceeding expectations? Did they figure out a new training and compensation model to draw in the masses?
Nope. None of these. The answer is much simpler than you might imagine.
The hiring managers in this company committed themselves to performing the basics of the recruiting process with a high level of skill and effectiveness.
They stopped looking for shortcuts and did the hard work of conducting lots of interviews, being relentless in their post-interview follow-up, and becoming students of human nature.
It’s paying off. Their results are outstanding.
Moore’s Law for Batteries
I’d like to share an analogy illustrating how simply focusing on the hard work of recruiting produces such outstanding results.
It’s similar to what Apple learned in the design of their newest laptop: There are appropriate uses of technological innovation, but there are also some places where technology can’t solve problems.
If you pulled the cover off of a new MacBook (pictured above), you’d quickly see a reality of modern day computer design. Computer processing power continues to get faster and smaller (this is Moore’s Law) while battery technology is not changing very quickly.
If you buy one of the new MacBooks (a very thin, light, and powerful computer), you’ll be mostly carrying around a bunch of batteries and a display. The actual computer is quite small.
Do you think Apple loves big batteries? I don’t think so. They would welcome the opportunity to integrate a small battery that lasts 12 hours, but this technology doesn’t exist. Instead, they design and integrate the smallest computer imaginable and accept the realities of battery design.
Moore’s Law for Recruiting
Many real estate companies are looking for the Moore’s law of recruiting. They’re desperately seeking a technology solution that will cause talented individuals to engage them with minimal effort.
Such a technology solution would require hiring managers to do fewer face-to-face interviews, do less personal follow-up after the interview, minimally engage the problems and obstacles candidates face, and do less of everything else that takes time and emotional energy in the recruiting process.
The problem with such a solution? It doesn’t exist.
Like the small, removable battery delivering 12 hours of laptop life Apple was hoping to put into it’s new Mac Book, not everything can be solved by technology. At least, not yet.
There is no Moore’s Law for recruiting. While technology has helped real estate companies make incredible gains in efficiencies in almost every aspect of their businesses processes, recruiting will always lag behind.
Why? Because it involves shaking up the lives of human beings. This happens at a different pace. It always has, and it probably always will.