By: Holly Priestner, Director of Talent Acquisition and Engagement for Xperience Growth

During a recent talent consulting session, a team owner admitted that he does not follow the same recruiting process with his candidates each time. 

A few days later, I had the opportunity to be on the Defense Panel for another team owner who was hiring a new agent. After the defense, he sent an email recapping his key takeaways from following a recruiting process as it is intended for the very first time versus how it compared to his “check the box” mindset with previous hires. In his case, he was following Keller Williams’ Career Visioning. 

He admitted that this time he had real data to determine if this hire was the right hire for his team. In the past, he often went with his gut or his heart. While a data driven decision to hire was helpful the data also gave him insights into what to look for during the new hire’s first 100 days. 

Let me ask you. Do you follow the same process with each hire? REALLY follow it? 

• Do you reflect on the data?

• Do you identify patterns in language, decision making and track record?

• Do you have every question answered when you leave a conversation? 

While I could share numerous human resources and legal related reasons why following the same process every time is important, I would prefer you Google that and hear it from HR experts.  

What I want to share is how a recruiting process is similar to the processes that CEO’s of scalable, sustainable business organizations have identified as their key to success — models and systems that if repeated consistently over time lead to the intended result. 

It’s likely that you are reading this because you are in real estate, you are familiar with Chris Suarez and Xperience Real Estate. Chris shares that his key to building scalable, sustainable real estate organizations has been directly tied to what he calls lead generation levers. If you have heard Chris speak on why he created lead generation levers he compares them to his daughters playing on a seesaw. When one daughter surprised her baby sister and jumped on the other end of the seesaw, the baby went flying — fortunately into Chris’ arms. Taking that analogy to heart, what activity do you do that if you jump on it, jump on it, jump on it, you get the same intended result over and over again?

It’s the agents who decide to work FSBO’s for a week then switch to open houses for a few weeks then switch to door knocking who get trapped in cyclical business, burnout and frustration. Those with models and systems have continued growth, energy and sustainability. 

If you are not following the same process each time, you are going to have inconsistent results — in your sales, in your talent, in any part of your business. 

This leads to another parallel of talent and real estate. You must “skill up.” I was recently asked how to master a recruiting process. 

My answer, “How do you master real estate?” 

• Study the model.

• Learn the scripts.

• Practice.

• Do the activities.

• Assess the results. 

• Repeat. 

Equally as important, treat the candidate the way you would treat a buyer or seller.

• Ask questions.

• Ask more questions.

• Listen.

• Find their motivation.

• Create the best possible mutual outcome. 

The power of the process is that it unveils if the talent is the right talent for your organization in this moment in time. We are not in recruiting conversations for the sake of headcount, because we simply need a person, or to “win” a candidate from the team down the hall. We are in that conversation to identify that the opportunity is aligned with the candidate’s motivation, heart and mind. A process is the only way to do that successfully.