I was doing some planning over the holiday weekend and came across a recruiting framework a client shared with me several years ago. The framework was developed by LeadingRE and adapted by Carpenter Realtors in central Indiana. And it’s helpful because it reminds us that hiring is cyclical in nature, and it takes proactive energy and focus to staff an office for both productivity and growth. Here’s the Carpenter hiring framework: Prospect: Create opportunities to talk to individuals about a career in real estate or changing brokerages. Select: Choose only those who meet your criteria and your company’s mutual expectations. Hire: Convince the best prospects to commit to a long-term career with your company. Develop: Train, mentor, and challenge your agents continuously throughout their careers. Weed: Terminate agents who are not meeting your company’s mutual expectations. Retain: Communicate regularly and work to build a meaningful relationship with your agents. As you move into the 2021 home stretch, it’s a great time to take inventory of your hiring and retention strategies. Do you have good systems for attracting and hiring talented agents? What needs to be tweaked or retooled to make you more effective? Are there some agents on your team you need to let go? What needs to change so you can develop and retain more effectively in the year ahead? This framework will help you set the big picture and apportion your effort to all the parts of the process.