So You Want to be a Real Estate Recruiter

It’s your first day of school and like every year before, the teacher makes you stand up to say who you are and what you want to be when you grow up. Among your peers, you hear aspirations of being doctors, veterinarians, professional athletes, or an Instagram Influencer, but you… when you grow up, you want to be a real estate recruiter. Buyers’ agents, listing agents—you want to work with them all. Don’t be shy, don’t let the haters back you down from your dream. Being a real estate recruiter is no small feat and you should stand proud with your shoulders back. Graduation comes and the day is finally here, you hold that real estate salesperson license in one hand and shake your broker officers hand with the other. She pats you on the back and says “So, you want to be a real estate recruiter” and this is where your story begins.

What Does a Real Estate Recruiter Do Exactly?

We begin with the foundation, no better place to start, seeing as how you can’t build a mansion with a piece of sawdust. In most people’s minds when they think of real estate recruiters, their silly brains automatically go to college football. While I’m personally a rooting fan for ‘Ole Miss, the meaning of ‘option’ is going to be very different as a real estate recruiter vs a Nebraska Cornhusker.

Our friends over at Ziprecruiter, define the duties of a real estate recruiter as someone who “is responsible for seeking out and recruiting new agents to join a real estate team”. It’s a bit more complicated than simply walking up to new prospects and asking, “so you want to be a realtor?” I suspect you figured that part out, seeing as how this is your life long dream job, but we want to make sure everyone is following along.

What Kind Of Real Estate Recruiter Are You

Real estate recruiters come in basically three different forms, but all are focused on recruiting agents or a real estate broker. When a company is looking for a real estate recruiter they’ll think of a brokerage level recruiter, a team recruiter, or an agent recruiter. Deciding which of these categories you fall into will determine what is your main priority and what is your side hustle when seeking the right candidates.

Agent Recruiter

As an agent recruiter or real estate job recruiters, your number one gig is your real estate business. Buying, selling, and procuring new clients is how you keep the lights on. You may hang your license with a brokerage that encourages you to bring your real estate license holding friends to do the same, and if they do, you receive a bonus or profit share of some sort.

Some agents refer to these brokerages as multi-level marketing brokers or perhaps even the dreaded term “pyramid scheme” brokerage. However, it can be a nice way to earn some cheddar on the side of your commission from real estate sales and balance out your expenses if you can help bring on the right people. Make sure when you are considering one of these brokerages, that you understand the specifics of their policies, and whether X number of agent recruitment is required to be affiliated with them or if you are free to choose that path as icing on your bank account if you see fit. After all, in this role, your main focus is prospecting for clients not populating your brokerage or looking for a real estate recruiter.

Team Recruiter

A real estate team is typically established by a couple high producing agents, who instead of breaking off into their own brokerage, like the structure of their parent broker but still want to manage a small team. Typically you will find one or two leaders, then one to three layers of agents below them. As a team of recruiter real estate agent professionals, you may be rewarded with goodies and resources you wouldn’t otherwise receive, such as better cap rates, lead generation, referrals among the collaborative, and mentorship that you wouldn’t be able to get if you were off on your own. A real estate team may have a dedicated real estate agent recruiter or real estate job recruiters, and each of the salespeople may have a hand in being part of the recruiting team. Team recruiting may lean more towards inexperienced licensees with little prior real estate experience, as the team leads can assist them in gaining knowledge of the sales process by running their transaction coordination.

Brokerage Recruiter

The big dog, the head honcho, the big cheese! (Not to be confused with a Cheesehead for the Greenbay Packers) Call this job what you like, but a brokerage level real estate recruiter is bringing in agents on, you guessed it, at the brokerage level. Once on-boarded, these new recruits are welcome to join an established team within the brokerage or be single agents, but the broker recruiter is this person’s full-time job. In this role, brokerage recruiters will be expanding beyond just canvassing the subdivision in order to work their sphere of influence. For a broker level recruiter at top real estate brokerages, your recruiting circle may include targeting real estate professionals within the entire metro areas or state(s) depending on their brokerage’s size and reach.

How to be a real estate recruiter

Real estate agent recruiters have to headhunt agents the same way your Aunt Louise is out cougaring for her fourth husband. Maybe we should say similar since you (hopefully) aren’t wearing leopard print when on the prowl. Below is our real estate recruiter job description—this goes for finding experienced agents as well as candidates who just passed their real estate exam.

• Step 1. Do research to figure out your target.
  • Are you hunting new licensees, current agents who are seasoned pros with tons of years experience, or the monkeys in the middle.
• Step 2. Figure out your hook, shtick, spiel.
  • Whatever it is that you have to offer them that they can’t get where they are now or anywhere else they may look into going. Asking, “so you want to be a realtor” is only going to get you so far.
• Step 3. Get in touch.
  • This day and age there are 20 plus ways for a broker recruiter to get in contact the best talent. USE ALL TWENTY WAYS. This includes everything from email to social media to real estate agent recruiting postcards. Put all available tools to work.
• Step 4. Socialize.
  • You need to be where the wild things are, and by wild things, I mean agents. A real estate agent recruiter has to be a social butterfly, professional mingler, and master of the smooth ‘here’s my card, call me’ move. No magic tricks though. Nothing ruins a possible deal faster than pulling your business card from behind their ear.
• Step 5. Follow up.
  • Don’t take being left of reading lying down, this is no time for a fumble. You don’t have the luxury of being shy if you want to progress folks through your candidate pipeline. You are straight forward, business, get to the yes or no faster so I can move onto my next target, guy.

And then, magically (organic magic is allowed) you get your, Yes. Next, you and your real estate job recruiters proceed to on-board your new recruit. Or maybe that’s someone else’s related position and you just connect them with the next person in your relay.

Again, with the magic, I SAID NO. We’re not talking about a woman on a bulls-eye with throwing knives! Referring back to Step 1 above, define what type of agent your real estate job recruiters are pursuing and their real estate recruiter job description. When you figure out who, the how becomes easier for finding both new real estate agents as well as established, successful real estate agents.

If you dream of molding the minds of America’s youth, and having a hand in shaping the real estate culture of the future like Swayze with the pottery wheel in Ghost, I recommend focusing on the fresh and green newbies who are ready to dive in with their clothes on. The best part about starting with brand new licensees and training them is that they don’t have any bad habits yet. They step into your classroom—or more likely your real estate market—and are ready to learn. It’s your job to give them the correct coaching, training, and mentoring to help them succeed. Think back to your first year in the business and the type of mentor you would have liked to have. You can be that resource to this newly licensed agent. This is the time to channel your flair for relationship building, motivational speaking, and problem-solving. Plus you’ll get to use phrases like “Go get ‘em, Tiger!” and have the team call you Coach. Just keep the tushie pats on the game field or you might end up recruiting an HR department instead.

Veteran real estate recruiters will want to go after the big game for potential real estate agents to bring on. Top producers, Big wigs, heavy hitters—candidates with a well-established real estate career. You are a recruiter trying to poach from the other Hunters and Huntresses. Prior real estate recruiting experience is a huge benefit here. Your schmoozing skills have to be next level and confident yet never pushy, and especially if you have a new brokerage and are recruiting prospective top agents. Credibility is essential. You didn’t like the obnoxious salesman that tried to coerce that way-out-of-your-budget engagement ring on you, don’t be pushy in your recruiting either if you want the right agents. Hone and customize your messaging as part of your recruiter real estate agents initiative.

Refer to step 2 above and have a strategic outline of what you can do to help their business. Can you offer them better compensation by way of a commission split, fee caps, profit sharing, or maybe just better support, tools, and technology? Can you offer flexibility for example by bringing them on as a part-time agent? Whatever your message, be sure you have a plan for how you’ll communicate it whether that includes digital outreach or old fashioned real estate agent recruiting postcards. There’s no wrong answer. The best of the best did not get there by resting on their laurels, they are in it to win it and business is business. So, take a page out of the Godfather’s repertoire and “make him an offer he can’t refuse”.

Just kidding, they don’t like that. But do reach out! There is no excuse for not being able to attempt contact with anyone not living in a treehouse. And let’s be serious, even if they DID live in a treehouse, it’s 2020, I’ll bet it’s got WiFi. Pick your poison when it comes to outreach and communication. The most effective brokerage recruiters mix it up, set a schedule, and ditch the excel sheet for tracking. Did I mention it’s 2020? That means there is a CRM just for you, the recruiter.

In this case, D is for determination. The best broker recruiter approach is multi-faceted and persistent. For example: let’s say you call 50 agents on day 1. Day 2 those 50 get a text and a new 50 gets their day 1 call. Day 3, the first 50 get an email, the second 50 get a text and a new 50 get their first phone call. See where I’m going with this? The key no matter which outreach package for your recruiter real estate agent project you decide on, to stay organized, stay consistent, and track your results. Not sure what that looks like? We’ve got you.

Perhaps you have phone anxiety and freeze when someone actually answers your call. Because really though, who answers numbers they don’t know? REALTORS (and weirdos) DO! Anyway, if you aren’t down with using a recruiting script but don’t want to get stuck in a stammering, “Oh, well, I, Uh….” conversation, you’ve got a cornucopia of options for outreach when you are looking for a real estate recruiter.

Email

• Make it personal and individualized
• Blast a large amount at once
• Flyers/ info-graphics- we all like visuals
• Newsletter

Postcard/ Letter

Yes, there are people who still use USPS and walk to the end of their driveway daily to see things in print. Direct mail still has a time and place. Thoughtful real estate agent recruiting postcards still have the potential to make a big impact. So put together a professional flyer, slap a stamp on it, and see what kind of response you get.

That said, if you don’t know what USPS stands for or how to address an envelope, no judgment, just keep scrolling down this list.

Ring-less Voicemails

Our friends over at SlyBroadcast have taken the calling out of cold calling. Now we’re just cold voice mailing. Keep it short and simple, we all have a short attention span these days. Try to not sound like a robot, pretend you’re leaving a message for your best friend’s mom.

Text

The introvert and busy business women’s preferred method for literally everything. Stop with the chit chat and get to the point. What do you want and when?

Webinar

Powerpoint is just as useful today as it was when you were using it to explain the antiquity of Rock ‘n Roll in your American History class or your science fair presentation on moon rocks. Use templates to put together a nice production and host live webinars about your brokerage once a week.

Podcast

Start your own or jump on with the Pod-Pros as a guest to build your online presence.

Blog

I mean, obviously! If you’re hiding a knack for the written word, get it out there, man! Ink to paper or brain waves to keyboard taps. Keep a blog on information relevant to real estate, real estate recruiting, or just real estate humor that will resonate with agents today. Also, address the question, so you want to be a realtor? Anything that keeps your audience engaged and coming back, helps with organic leads finding their way to you and makes you and your team effective brokerage recruiters. For instance, I’m sure since you’re this far into this article, you’ll probably go Google me when you’re done soaking up this knowledge bomb I’m dropping and see what else I’ve written. Keep them engaged.

LinkedIn

• Ask to connect
• Message
• Endorse their skills
• Post and Share
• Use Job Ads

Facebook

• Like their business page
• Invite your friends’ list to like your brokerage page (if not done already, create said brokerage page)
• Post-info-graphics, brokerage and market updates (not just new listings, the agents you are after have MLS access already)
• Post in Realtor groups (but read the rules carefully)
• Start a Realtor group for referrals, tips, lead generation
• Facebook messenger
• Use this social media platform to post recruiting ads that direct people to a landing page like from Brokerkit
• Use Job Ads

Twitter

• Follow (not in a stalker way)
• Re-Tweet

Instagram

• Mention agents in your posts
• Hashtag everything

So, you still want to be a real estate recruiter after reading our real estate recruiter job description? Of course, you do, it’s the best role in the real estate industry! Like Bobby Boucher’s momma always says, “Dilly Dallying is the devil” so go out and be your own cheerleader. Who are we?-REAL ESTATE RECRUITERS What do we want?-RECRUITS When do we want them?-NOW How do we get them..really guys, we JUST went over this. Now, go get some real estate experience.