by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Over the last week, we’ve discussed techniques for developing new recruiting habits.

Since habits control so much of our lives, it’s beneficial to transform your recruiting tasks into habitual actions.

These habits become the autopilot of your recruiting success.

To build a good habit, you’ll need a reason to change, a trigger, and some small micro-habit building blocks to ensure early success.

Next comes the hard part—practice.

In his best-selling book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle researched the commonalities among world-class performers in various disciplines (sports, music, business, etc.).

Effective practice was the most compelling ingredient each high-performer shared.

Of course these world-class performers practiced a lot, but they also broke down their performance into small components.

Then, they focused on becoming proficient in each step of the process through repetition and measurement.

You want to be a great recruiter.

What are the components (well-performed tasks) that would make you a great recruiter?

Once those are identified, practice each component in a way to recognize failures, make tweaks to improve performance, and celebrate small successes.

Practice does not necessarily make perfect unless it’s done in a way that effectively contributes to the overall goal.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Yesterday, I provided a list of the components necessary for building effective new habits.

To get started, you’ll need a clear and compelling payoff for making a change.

“Compelling payoffs” come in two flavors—those that benefit you personally and those that benefit others.

Personal payoffs are often simple and straightforward: “I’ll earn $10,000 more if I meet my recruiting goals this year.”

Payoffs that benefit others are more difficult to conceptualize: “I’ll be able to provide my daughter the wedding of her dreams if I meet my recruiting goals this year.”

Research from various sources suggests the payoffs benefiting others are more effective at creating change and helping establish new habits.

When identifying your compelling payoff, keep in mind that it must be:

1. Well-defined. Here’s exactly what is going to happen if I change this habit.
2. Time-related. Here’s the deadline for realizing the benefit.

What is your clear and compelling payoff for the recruiting habits you’d like to develop?

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Much of what we discuss in the Insight posts involves new ideas and best practices.

These insights only become useful if they cross the chasm from theory to tangible action.

According to best-selling author Michael Bungay Stanier, the jump is difficult because our actions are so controlled by habits.

It sounds simple: If you want to make positive changes, just change your habits.

But, simple and easy are often miles apart.

Stanier empathizes with the difficulty of making lasting change and outlines the necessary components for building effective new habits:

1. A Reason: the clear and compelling payoff for making a change.
2. A Trigger: habits are activated by small events or stimuli.
3. A Micro-Habit: change is more doable when it’s done in short and specific steps.
4. Effective Practice: to gain proficiency, each step must be practiced and measured.
5. A Plan for Failure: failure and missteps are an inevitable part of building new habits—building a plan for reneging when it happens keeps the overall mission moving forward.

We’ll spend some time this week unpacking these components.

In the meantime, start putting some thought into the changes you may want to make to your own recruiting activities.

What tasks produce the highest return in your recruiting process?

What are the least productive recruiting tasks you find yourself doing each day?

Jot down tasks for each category as you progress through your day. We’ll use these later.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Over the last 20 years, technology has been responsible for many of the changes in the workplace.

These changes have redefined how we work and have blurred the boundaries between our personal and professional lives.

According to the MetLife study we discussed yesterday, new trends are emerging that employers must consider.

[Researchers] are now seeing trends redefining why we work and what work means to people.

As employees leverage work to gain more fulfillment, pursue their goals, and align their values and experiences more authentically, they’re looking to employers to help them manage this new work-life world.

Employees need an ally, and employers can play this role by creating a workplace that not only recognizes employees holistically, but supports them holistically as well. One that provides experiences that enrich, a culture that accepts, and guidance that helps employees reach their individual goals.

This cultural change is great news for most real estate hiring managers and legacy brokerages. 

It informs us that financial considerations may not be the most important factors agents use when choosing a broker.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

MetLife just published their 17^th annual employee benefit trends study.

The most desired benefit among workers of all ages was unlimited paid time off.

There seems to be an emerging consensus among corporate workers that some of the most expensive and complex benefits being offered are not that great.

Many of the creative perks offered by workplaces are essentially designed to keep an employee at work longer by removing excuses, like the need to eat, or see a doctor across town.

The backlash among survey respondents is increasingly,

“Sure, that stuff all sounds great, but what we really want is to have a life.”

The report goes on to make the connection between paid time off and a flexible work schedule.

Most employees offered unlimited time off don’t end up taking more time off—they seem to value the perception they’re not being micromanaged and held to rigid standards.

This is a trend that should be noted by real estate recruiters and hiring managers.

If you’re recruiting new agents from outside the industry, a flexible work schedule may be the benefit that resonates most with these candidates.

If you’re recruiting experienced agents, focus on how your company can support not only a flexible work schedule, but also provide tools to make the agent more productive within such a framework.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

A checklist saves lives no matter what industry you’re in.

This is the point Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto, frequently makes in his speeches and writings.

So, why do really smart and competent people neglect to use checklists?

It’s because experience and repetition lull us into complacency. Take recruiting as an example.

Many of us have been working in and around the recruiting process for many years. While that experience is valuable and necessary to perform at a high level, it can also be the very thing that trips us up. 

When we start to see circumstances that repeat themselves, it’s human nature to get bored and start to skip steps. Before long results start to diminish and the cause is not obvious. 

We concentrate on what we perceive to be the most significant issues (the condition of the market, the quality of the candidates, our company’s offerings compared to competitors, etc.) and assume we have the basics down. 

A checklist is the safety net that keeps you from becoming a victim of your own success and experience.

If you’re not using a checklist for your onboarding process, you’re missing an opportunity to optimize an important part of the recruiting process.

A checklist may not save your new hire’s life, but it could save their career.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Real estate leaders often tell me they’ve tried using job boards to source agent candidates but experienced poor results.

This frustration can be traced to a common source–accepting resumes as a way of applying.

To streamline the application process, most job boards encourage job-seekers to upload a resume (one time) in order to apply to jobs on their site.

Once a resume is uploaded to a job board, a prospect can easily apply by clicking an “apply button” in a job posting.

As this scenario unfolds, job-seekers sometimes do more button clicking than they do reading.

As a result, the recruiter gets low engagement rates and/or confused prospects who didn’t read the job posting information.

One way to avoid this frustration is to opt-out of the job-board-provided resume apply system.

As an alternative, use a simple application form and a landing page to more directly engage the prospects while they’re applying.

On the screening page, you may want to ask a few screening questions and give prospects some other ways to learn about your company, but don’t get carried away. There’s always a balance between making the candidate experience too long or too short.

Finding the sweet spot between quality and quantity requires some testing, but it’s worth the effort.

The payoff will be connecting with the high-quality prospects who use job boards and career sites for their job search. There are millions of them out there.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Agents join new companies to get immediate gratification.

They may later discover you have a great culture.

According to community expert Richard Millington, this principle broadly applies to all communities and cultures.

A sense of community is something that sneaks up on you when you weren’t expecting it.

 [Over time]…you begin to feel a commonality with others. You participate in rituals and traditions. You get to know other members and feel you’re a part of something together.

The sense of community isn’t something you promote to visitors and newcomers, it’s something you promote to (and facilitate between) existing members.

Richard developed an infographic to more clearly illustrate the prerequisites someone needs to experience a sense of community.

When recruiting, always lead with the unique and personal benefits for your prospect. 

Unless you first solve their short-term problem, they’ll never have the opportunity to learn about your great culture.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

I’ve had several questions raised about the difference between an ATS and a CRM.

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software paradigm is well-known because it is used by most companies to manage the sales process.

For recruiting, a CRM is commonly used to nurture the relationship between your company and the recruiting prospect.

This relationship can take months to develop and culminates when the recruiting prospect says: “I’m ready to move forward in the recruiting process—let’s do this!”

Most CRMs are well-equipped to provide many low-key touches over a long period of time until the recruiting prospect self-activates.

The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is designed to efficiently process candidates who are actively engaged in the recruiting process.

In real estate, the ATS is similar to escrow software.

Once a purchase-sale agreement is signed, escrow software marches the transaction through a predictable series of steps that lead to a closing.

Similarly, an ATS should purposefully guide an active prospect towards becoming an agent in your company.

There is a cadence to the steps and an expectation that the end result will be a hire.

The most common ATS used across all industries is an Excel spreadsheet. Most hiring scenarios are simple, infrequent, and low-volume.

A custom ATS becomes valuable when the complexities and volume of the hiring process warrants something more powerful.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

When hanging a picture frame, it’s tempting to use the handle of a screwdriver as a hammer.

There’s a tension between keeping the project moving and making the extra effort to find and use the right tool for the job.

The same is true for recruiting.

The natural urgency of hiring pulls us toward getting the job done with whatever tools we have handy.

This works when you need to make one hire, but frustration mounts and productivity decreases when hiring volume increases.

When you’re evaluating new tools, ask yourself:

Where am I most frustrated with the recruiting process?

Where is my productivity suffering because I’m spending too much time on certain tasks?

Where in the process is my personal touch most needed to get the job done?

The answers to these questions will point you to places where your recruiting stack needs to be upgraded.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Yesterday, we covered the communication tools in your recruiting stack, and today we’ll start to look at software.

The basic software tools in a real estate recruiting stack are an ATS, a CRM and an Onboarding System.

Applicant Tracking System (ATS): An ATS is the software that directly connects active recruiting prospects to your company.

A recruiting prospect is typically activated in an ATS by responding to a call to action (ex. applying to a job-posting, uploading a resume, a referral from someone in your company, etc.)

Candidate/Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A CRM is the software that nurtures passive recruiting prospects over time.

It’s common for a company to have a list of individuals who are potential hires, but not actively seeking to engage.  A good CRM implementation provides multiple low-key touches with little effort from the recruiter.

Onboarding System: This is software that helps guide the initial actions a new hire. It ensures the new hire is following an optimal path during their first days in the company.

Most failed hires can be attributed to a poor onboarding experience. It’s worth the effort to design and track the onboarding of new hires.

High-performing recruiters and hiring managers come to work with the right tools and know how use them.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Yesterday, we learned a recruiting stack typically contains communication tools and software tools.

The basic communication tools include phone, email, text, and video conferencing.

There is an old saying that anyone with a telephone is equipped to be a recruiter.

The same is true today–most smartphones have the capacity to email, text and video conference in addition to place voice calls.

If you’re managing a small recruiting volume, this is all you need to get the job done.

However, if you handle more than a few recruiting prospects, manage a pipeline, or work with multiple hiring managers, a few enhancements to the basic tools will significantly increase your productivity and success.

Here are some common ways to enhance your basic communication tools:

Voice Calls:  Click to place a call from your desktop browser, voicemails transcribed into text format

Email:  Click to send an email from your desktop browser, templates for common emails

Texting:  Click to send a text from your desktop browser, templates for common messages, easy visibility of texting histories   Using a business-grade texting service to separate personal text messages from professional messages is also helpful.

Video Conferencing:  A reliable business-grade video conferencing service that has inoperability between various end-user devices

All of these are relatively low-cost/easy to obtain enhancements to your communication recruiting stack.

Implementing them will both increase your productivity and reduce your frustration.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Human Resources consultants estimate there are more than 20,000 HR software and technology products on the market.

It’s an incredibly fragmented market with new tools coming and going every day.

There is no one-size-fits all technology solution that fits the needs of recruiters in any industry.

Perhaps that will change in the future.

But for now, most recruiting professionals assemble a “recruiting stack” of tools best suited for their situation.

Here are the basic communication tools included in the recruiting stack of most real estate recruiters / hiring managers:

Phone
Email
Text
Video Conferencing

Also, the basic software tools included in the recruiting stack of most real estate recruiters / hiring managers consist of:

Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Customer/Candidate Relationship Management System (CRM)
On-Boarding System

Do a quick inventory.  Are you using these tools?

Are you utilizing and optimizing the use of these tools to increase your effectiveness?

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

If  you’ve been paying attention to the technology wars going on in the real estate industry, you may be familiar with what is sometimes called an “application stack.”

An application stack encompasses software applications, technical services, and other third-party enablers used to optimize your business performance.

There is a push among some large franchise organizations and nationwide brokerages to become a one-stop-shop for an agent’s application stack.

Other real estate companies (both large and small) would rather depend upon marketplace forces to provide a diverse offering of innovative applications.

Both philosophies have limitations.

Creating a universal application stack is not as easy as it looks.  Even well-funded technology-based real estate companies are profoundly struggling to deliver a single-system utopia.

For marketplace proponents, inoperability among applications and keeping up with the latest innovations is always a challenge.  With so many options available, it’s hard to tell if a new tool will really make life better.

Which philosophy makes more sense to you?  Shoot me back an email response to let me know your thoughts.

This week we’ll be discussing how application stack philosophies affect recruiting.

Much of what is first hashed out in the sales and marketing arena is later adopted by recruiting practitioners.

How this plays out may one day affect how your recruiting operation functions.

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by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

If you’re a real estate leader, it might benefit you to become a student of Satya Nadella.

Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014 and has architected a remarkable turnaround of this seemingly “old school” technology company.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but Microsoft quietly became the most valuable company in the world a few months ago topping Amazon, Google, and Apple.

If you’d like to initiate some self-study, here are a few articles to get you started:

Forbes / Wall Street Journal / Quartz (requires a subscription)

I believe his story is relevant because the real estate industry is being bombarded by new companies who are touting seductive technologies.

Nadella’s story contains many lessons on how to compete successfully when the sirens are singing.

Here is a bit of wisdom from Nadella to start your weekend:

“One of the things that I am grounded on—and any company that has had a lot of success will ultimately go through—is that there’s no such thing as a perpetual-motion machine.

Everything has a beginning and an end. And then you have large franchises that have run out of steam. To reinvent yourself is hard work.”

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