HIRING
In Chapter 5, I outline a hiring process that agents can use when adding members, especially assistants, to their teams. In general, I’ve found our industry to be pretty terrible at hiring. Very few team members have written job descriptions, receive performance reviews or can even outline how their role contributes to the goals of the team.
When I wrote the chapter, I was responding directly to the memory of an inquiry a few months earlier. “Hey, Blaine, can you help me? I’m about to fire my assistant. She’s not getting the job done. Worst of all, this will be the third assistant in a row that I’ve had to let go. Why can’t I find anyone to do a good job?” Hmmm. I immediately wondered if the problem was the employer rather than the employee.
That was in late 2017. Little did I know that helping agents hire effectively would comprise 60-70% of my work over the next six years. It makes sense now – the years between 2017 and 2021 were strong growth years, and agents always need more support when times are good. The fast pace of business made the problem worse, though. No one had time to undertake the process that I outlined in the book. Agents started hiring me to undertake the entire hiring effort on their behalf. I was writing job descriptions, creating interview scorecards, conducting the interviews, selecting the finalists, negotiating the employment agreements and crafting the onboarding programs.
If I had to boil the entire process down into a single piece of advice, I would offer this: focus on the attributes of the person you are considering for a role on the team. You can teach a lot of skills, but you cannot teach someone to be take initiative, follow through, be oriented toward accuracy, be empathetic to teammates and clients, or have a can-do attitude. You have to “hire” those attributes.
One agent said to me, “I don’t get it. She has a degree in real estate, grew up in a real estate family, is a wizard at Excel and she knows a lot of people in this area because she’s grown up here. For some reason, she is just not getting the job done.” Which of these characteristics sound like innate attributes to you? Is it possible that these experiences and learned skills seduced this agent?
Take a moment to crystallize the attributes that must be present in the person who will fulfill the role you’ve created. You’ve found the right person when these attributes shine forth.
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