In a post from the archive, recruiting expert Aaron Hurst shared some of his research on the common characteristics of high-performing recruiters.

According to Aaron, productivity and success sprout from a recruiter’s sense of purpose.

Recruiting is the most social of jobs in an organization.

Recruiters spend most of their time connecting with people.

Sure, salespeople do that too, but they are selling a product or service.

Recruiters are selling relationships and culture.

They have to make people feel like they are going to be part of something bigger than themselves.

More than that, recruiters have to first believe that about themselves — they have to be able to get meaning from their own work before they can help candidates find their own meaning in work.

It may seem like a subtle distinction, but what you believe about yourself and your organization taints all parts of the recruiting process—for the good or for the bad.

Recruiters have a tremendous amount of power as change agents in their companies, so a purpose-driven recruitment culture can help create the change that is needed to better attract talent.

You’ve all heard the old sales adage: The fortune is in the follow-up.
 
It’s true. The agents who consistently stay connected with those in their database are the highest producers.
 
Does the same principle apply to recruiting?
 
By far, consistent follow-up activities have the highest correlation to the number of hires, quality of hires, and overall recruiting success.
 
In the recent podcast with Sarah Dzeb, she confirmed it is her most important recruiting activity.
 
It takes a minimum of five follow-ups for a prospect to become a hire, and usually more.
 
Follow-up is critical because the normal timeline for an experienced agent hire is 8 to 12 months.
 
Those who follow-up the best and most consistently hire more agents.
 
Raising follow-up to the level of being the most important recruiting activity requires many hiring managers to make a paradigm change.
 
The interview/recruiting appointment is the not the end of the recruiting process, it’s the beginning.
 
It just gives you the right to compete for this prospect’s attention in the months ahead.

In previous Insights, I’ve encouraged you to spend some time quantifying your ideal recruiting prospect.
 
It may also be helpful to go one step further and convert your collection of desirable characteristics into a checklist.
 
For a new agent, your checklist should include some basic screening items such as:
 
The recruiting prospect is…
 
-willing to focus full-time effort on being a real estate agent.
 
-financially stable and capable to work in a full-commission environment.
 
-able to use basic technology tools (email, texting, etc.).
 
But your checklist should also include more specific items that relate directly to your observations. For example:
 
Individuals who excel on my team…
 
-love competition and typically played sports during their formative years.
 
-have always wanted to start and own a business.
 
-use systems to get things done in their personal and professional lives.
 
How long should you make your checklist? Try to keep it to 10 items or less.
 
The purpose of any checklist is to reduce the number of errors that happen when a process is being executed. Recruiting is no different.
 
As we recently learned, hiring managers are often driven by appearances, emotions, and other biases.
 
The checklist will help you from being harmfully swayed.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the CEO of a large real estate company in the Midwest.
 
The company operates in several metro areas and aggressively recruits experienced agents from competitors.
 
This company meticulously tracks their recruiting and retention data and looks for patterns they can use to optimize their efforts.
 
They also track the recruiting and retention performance of their competitors for the same reason.
 
After reviewing data from more than 7600 offices in the service areas, I asked the CEO:
 
What causes agents to move from one company to another?

He answered:
 
There are no macro patterns that make agents move in-mass around the marketplace–almost all of the movements are the result of micro patterns.
 
Agents move for reasons such as:
 
An office gains the reputation of being the new pace to be and picks up four agents.
 
A popular manager leaves a company and takes six agents with him.
 
An office changes their commission formula or reduces their service offering, and a few agents become disgruntled and leave.
 
An agent decides to make a change, and her closest friend in the office decides to leave too.
 
If agents mostly change companies due to micro patterns, recruiting execution is more important than ever.
 
The most diligent recruiters end up the with most hires—regardless of the company for which they’re recruiting.

The final component we’ll cover on emotional intelligence is social awareness.

Socially aware individuals are able to read and interpret other people’s emotions, often through non-verbal cues.

In order to be socially aware, Daniel Goleman says these competencies are necessary:

Empathy: You pay full attention to the other person and take time to understand what they are saying and how they are feeling. You always try to put yourself in other people’s shoes in a meaningful way.

Organizational awareness: You can easily read the emotional currents and dynamics within a group or organization.

The components of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness) combine to equip high performing recruiters and hiring managers to excel beyond their peers.

If you’re lacking in any of these areas, here’s some good news and encouragement from Dr. Goleman:

Emotional intelligence competencies are learned – and can be improved at any point in life.

But first you have to be motivated – ask yourself if you really care.

Then you need a well-structured learning situation where you have a clear picture of what you want to improve and can practice specific behaviors that will help you enhance the targeted competence.

I know this may seem tedious, but initiating these types of changes pays big dividends.

Being able to know what you’re feeling and why (self-awareness) contributes to the next component of emotional intelligence—self-management.
 
Self-management is the ability to keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control.
 
Daniel Goleman’s research has found that individuals who are proficient at self-management have these competencies:
 
Emotional self-control: You stay calm under pressure and recover quickly from upsets. You know how to balance your feelings for the good of yourself and others, or for the good of a given task, mission or vision.
 
Adaptability: This shows up as agility in the face of change and uncertainty. You’re able to find new ways of dealing with fast-morphing challenges and can balance multiple demands at once.
 
Achievement orientation: You strive to meet or exceed a standard of excellence. You genuinely appreciate feedback on your performance, and are constantly seeking ways to do things better.
 
Positive outlook: You see the good in people, situations and events. This is an incredibly valuable competency, as it can build resilience and set the stage for innovation and opportunity.
 
This is a concise and powerful list of competencies you’d want to see in every real estate agent on your team and every recruiting prospect you hire.
 
Why? According to Dr. Goleman, high performers from every industry tend to have these characteristics.

Daniel Goleman is best known for his research and thought leadership on emotional intelligence.

In an insightful HBR article, he explains how his research applies to the topic of recruiting:

Companies today are increasingly looking through the lens of emotional intelligence when hiring, promoting and developing their employees.

Years of studies show that the more emotional intelligence someone has, the better their performance.

Goleman defines emotional intelligence as the ability to identify and monitor emotions (your own and others).

And he says it’s best understood by grouping it into these four traits:

Self-awareness: the capacity to tune into your own emotions.

Self-management: the ability to keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control.

Social awareness: accuracy in reading and interpreting other people’s emotions, often through non-verbal cues.

Relationship management: the interpersonal skill set that allows one to act in ways that motivate, inspire and harmonize with others, while also maintaining important relationships.

From a broad perspective, it’s easy to see how these traits would signal the likelihood of a recruiting prospect experiencing success.

What’s not so obvious is the ability to recognize these traits in those you’re evaluating for your team.

In the next few Insights, we’ll spend time digging into these concepts so you’re more aware of the emotional intelligence of your recruiting prospects.

It’s a great day to recruit, and today we’re making a stop in Minneapolis and checking in with Ryan O’Neill.
 
Ryan is the founder and team leader of The Minnesota Real Estate Team. This is an appropriate name because they have been the #1 selling team in the State of Minnesota for many years. 
 
Ryan started his team in 2005 (long before teams were common on the real estate industry) and built it into an organization that is much larger and prominent than most brokerages.
 
Last year, they were ranked #14 on the Real Trends list of the highest producing mega-teams in the country. They got there by closing over 2,200 transactions and $750 million in sales.
 
Of course, it takes a lot of recruiting to achieve this level of success, and Ryan is one of the best in the industry at attracting and retaining the best agents in his marketplace.
 
In fact, he’s so good at attracting talent, the Minnesota Star Tribune named Ryan’s team the #1 Mid-Sized Company to work for in Minnesota.
 
This isn’t the top spot for real estate companies, this is the #1 ranking among all companies. It’s rare when a real estate company wins an award like this, so he must be doing something special.
 
Let’s jump in and see what we can learn from Ryan’s achievements.

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In his book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Dr. Travis Blackberry outlines some of the most common body language tendencies and what they communicate to your audience.

Slouching: a sign of disrespect.

Exaggerated gestures: stretching the truth.

Turning yourself away from others: uncomfortable and distrustful of the person speaking.

Crossed arms/crossed legs: not open to what the other person is saying.

Exaggerated nodding: feeling anxiety about approval.

Fixing your hair: anxious, self-conscious, and distracted.

Avoiding eye contact: hiding something or lack confidence.

Sustained eye contact: communicates confidence, leadership, strength, and intelligence.

Eye contact that’s too intense: perceived as aggressive, or an attempt to dominate.

Getting too close (nearer than 18 inches): low self-awareness and understanding of personal space.

Since more than 50% of the information in a conversation is passed nonverbally, great communicators make sure to use it to their advantage.

I’m a big fan of Sean Cannell.
 
Sean helps aspiring entrepreneurs develop YouTube businesses.
 
While he’s really good at sharing his video domain expertise, he’s even better at online marketing.
 
He has a knack for connecting with newbies and inspiring them to accomplish things they didn’t think possible (hmm…sounds like the job description of a real estate manager).
 
One of the techniques he frequently uses is to identify a common problem that most individuals in his target audience share.
 
For example, one of his recent marketing emails said:
 
With all the competition, it may feel intimidating (as a beginner video maker) to create videos as good as the more experienced YouTubers.
 
Then he adds this phrase: Trust me, you’re not alone.
 
It’s a subtle distinction, but Sean is not offering a solution to get people to engage.
 
He’s offering an opportunity to join with others who are struggling with similar problems and together find a solution.
 
There is something disarming about this approach, and it can be applied to recruiting.
 
When engaging recruiting prospects, spend more time identifying and validating their problems and less time delivering solutions.
 
It feels less intimidating to join in with others who are also struggling than talk with the expert who has all the answers.

We all want to avoid making the mistake of hiring the wrong people. But that’s not as easy as it sounds. 
 
Why? Because our brains often tell us to hire the wrong people through something called confirmation bias. 
 
Dave Mashburn explains this frequent error in a podcast from the archive:
 
Some studies have shown that we actually make up our minds on whether we will hire a candidate in the first 10 seconds of the interview because of confirmation bias.
 
Confirmation bias, just like it sounds, makes the decision early and then spends the remainder of the interview justifying that decision.
 
Once we’ve decided we like someone, our brains go about finding reasons to continue liking them.
 
By contrast, if we don’t like somebody, our brains go about finding reasons to not like them.
 
We do this by asking questions and only listening for answers to confirm what we’ve already decided.
 
Since we like to be right, we favor information that confirms our beliefs and discount information that might change our minds.
 
How do you avoid confirmation bias?
 
Dave offers several ideas in his podcast, but the easiest one to implement quickly is using a structured interview process.
 
Develop a common set of questions for your interviews and record the answers (take notes) candidates provide.
 
And then try to hold back judgement until after the interview, and you’ve had time to review your notes.
 
Remind yourself, you’ll often get it right by being wrong about your biases.

At the GOE conference a few weeks ago, Tom Ferry reported that 648,000 real estate agents in the U.S. have not completed even one transaction in 2022.
 
As we discussed earlier this week, these agents (and a bunch more who got licensed in the last two years) are amateurs.
 
When things get difficult or even unpleasant, amateurs fail, lose interest, and leave the industry.
 
This creates more opportunities for the professionals who are left.
 
In the same presentation, Tom Ferry said there is a “land grab” going on right now.
 
The professional agents are getting bigger and stronger because they know how to adjust to the changing market conditions.
 
And many of them learned how to do this during the last downturn when they were new agents.
 
There are a couple of takeaways a professional hiring manager can learn from all this:

1.) Support your professional agents. Be discerning with your current agents. Who are the amateurs and who are the professionals?  Spend your time and resources on your professionals. The amateurs are here for the wrong reasons and most will not be able to make the adjustments necessary to survive.

2.) Hire more professional agents. It’s a mistake to stop recruiting. There are now some natural economic and mindset barriers that will deter many individuals from pursuing real estate. Who’s left? The professionals who are not deterred by these obstacles.

There will be a new crop of agents who will start their real estate careers in the next few years.
 
And a higher percentage will grow up into high-performers because they’re learning real estate during challenging times.

When designers conceptualize a glove, they have a hand in mind.

Why does the hand need the glove?

What tasks will the hand be doing that would make a glove helpful?

Does the glove need to be waterproof?

Is the hand trying to look better by wearing the glove? Does it need to match other accessories?

What caused the last glove to get discarded?

Once these, and many more, questions are answered, the designer is better equipped to make the glove.

In the end, the consumer will find value in a well-designed glove and feel a sense of satisfaction when they pull it onto their hand.

Recruiting should work the same way.

Doing the work of crafting a value proposition that uniquely meets the needs a specific group of agents reduces the friction later in the recruiting process.

If your strategy is to sell a me-too glove that looks a lot like what your competitors are offering, plan on selling it at a low price.

The higher margins are reserved for those who design and articulate unique solutions.

In a blog post a few years ago, Seth Godin defined three types of business owners.

The amateur contributes with unfiltered joy.

There’s really no other upside–create your work because you can, because it helps someone else, because it makes you feel good.

The professional shows up even when they don’t feel like it.

The professional understands the market, the customer and the price to be paid for work that’s worth paying for. But the professional isn’t a hack.

A hack is a professional who doesn’t care.

The hack has a short-term view, able to do what the client asks, without regard for how it will impact the culture or his long-term prospects.

It’s tempting to hire an amateur as a way of showing kindness and compassion.  But they won’t consistently contribute to the organization’s goals.

No one wants to hire a hack, but once they are hired (and reveal themselves to be a hack), it’s hard to fire them because they produce revenue for your office.

So what do high-performing managers do?   They build for the long-term and insist on surrounding themselves with professionals.

They hire slow to weed out the amateurs from the professionals, and they fire fast to get rid of the hacks.