How can real estate investors recruit the best freelancers and remote workers to help their businesses?
Freelancers, remote workers, and independent contractors make up the overwhelming bulk of the real estate workforce today. We all know those with the best talent on their side have a serious advantage in the market. So how can independent professionals and real estate companies score the best of these workers to play on their team?
1. Go where they are looking for work: It’s hard to score the best talent if you are looking or advertising in the wrong places. It’s like advertising for homebuyers in the middle of a corn field. The merger between Elance and oDesk into Upwork.com has made it easier than ever to find talent. It’s more like putting your listing on the MLS where there are hundreds of thousands of prospects actively looking.
2. Be specific in your job posting title and description: If you want to attract true experts in your area of real estate and for the role you are looking to fill, be precise in your listings. They are looking for gigs and positions where they can be of the most value. If you just put “blog writer wanted,” or “real estate assistant needed,” how do they know you actually want an expert real estate blogger?
3. Leave room for bidding and negotiation: When posting a job opening, it is important to be able to attract assistance on the optimal rates. There are some functions like basic data entry or posting to social media which can be very low cost. Most people can figure out how to copy and paste an email address into an Excel sheet, or paste a Facebook update. Then there are roles like crafting the copy for your real estate website, or negotiating sales which may require a better level of talent. How much your competitors pay for staff can be a pretty closely guarded secret. However, there are tools for researching pay rates like Salary.com. Just make sure to check the full details including bonuses and benefits. You can then divide that annual salary by hour to get a better estimate of what you might pay for a part-time role or fixed priced project. Most outsourcing platforms have a bidding system, but capping your target budget too low may discourage the very top level talent from applying. Note that it is often worth testing out different contractors at different price points to see what type of value you get from each one.
4. Show how great your firm is: Money and jobs are plentiful. Real estate companies and team leaders are competing heavily for talent. That means it is about what working with you can do for them, not if they can jump throw a bunch of hoops and entertain you in the process. Can you include a link to your real estate website in your job posting so that they can see if there is a good match in quality level? Have you won awards to shout about? Have you achieved significant revenue or deal flow that would attract the best to align themselves with your brand? How is working for you going to look good on their resume and help them get more of what they want in life?
5. Build and give positive feedback: Most outsourcing platforms enable employers to accumulate feedback and reviews, and give them. Offline employers have review websites like Glassdoor on which they are ranked and ex-employees leave reviews. This is a critical part of your real estate brand, and will make all the difference in who you can draw to work with you in the future. Try never to leave things on bad terms, even if you decide to terminate an engagement. If others see you leaving bad reviews for previous contractors, they’ll often assume you are hard to please, and that working for you may be too risky.
6. Be easy to work with: If the hiring process is a pain, they’ll only expect it to get worse. Vet candidates, but recognize when you could have just hired them, versus taking a couple weeks to go through an inefficient process.
Ask for referrals from your peers and existing team. Make sure you let prospective hires know you were referred, so that they give you attention, versus assuming you are another spam gig.
