Yesterday, we discussed how market conditions are making it more difficult to source recruiting prospects. At this juncture, real estate organizations are tempted to make one of two mistakes: 1. Sit it out. Some brokers tell themselves: I’ll take a break from recruiting until conditions improve. This only works if you can get you can get all your competitors to agree to do the same. Unfortunately, there are always a few who don’t go along and use a challenging market to gain market share. 2. Rationalize lower sourcing volume. Getting a consistent number of new recruiting prospects to engage is difficult, so they rationalize that a lower number of prospects will suffice. I’m better at connecting with the right individuals—so I don’t need as many prospects. I’m better at interviewing and closing the prospects in my recruiting funnel—so I don’t need as many prospects. I’m really good at picking the winners, so I focus most of my effort on just a few high-potential candidates—so I don’t need as many prospects. This is the same line of reasoning athletes use to do fewer practice reps, fishermen use to make fewer casts, and agents use to make fewer prospecting calls. All these scenarios lead to the same outcome: poor results. After working with many high-performing real estate hiring managers over the last decade, here are the sourcing metrics they use to drive outstanding results: It requires about 30 – 40 recruiting prospects to produce 4 good interviews (10 – 15% interview rate). It requires about 4 good interviews to produce 1 high-quality hire (25% interview/hire rate). When things get difficult, the shortcuts always come calling. The best hiring managers know better than to listen.