Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday weekend and you’re back at work with a new sense of energy, ready to make the push towards the year end.
In the short week before Thanksgiving, I pointed you to an article that I found insightful and promised to follow-up with some thoughts this week. The article was written by Peter Weddle, and you may want to re-read it before reading today’s post.
The question I left on the table before heading off for the holiday was, “How does Peter’s insights on social recruiting apply to the real estate industry?” Here are some thoughts:
1. Social recruiting via public social recruiting via public social networks has peaked and is now in decline.
Peter makes this point several times during his discussion:
“The current incarnation of social recruiting has been stimulated and structured by social media sites. The way we socialize with candidates is governed by the format, functionality and focus of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. These sites enable us to promote our brands, advertise to and connect with large pools of professionals in a wide range of industries. These interactions have effectively defined social recruiting as a fleeting and thoroughly functional relationship. Basically, we're saying to prospects: "Hey, we're a buyer of talent, you're a seller of talent, let's do a deal."
I would further argue that the real estate industry has not largely benefited from this stage of social recruiting anyway. The concept works well when a uniquely talented individual is needed to fill a distinctive job position, but few people wander around wondering what a real estate agent does—especially if they are already a real estate agent for a competitive company. Also, since real estate companies are always hiring, the need to get the word out concerning a “fleeting” or difficult-to-fill job opening is inconsequential.
2. Social recruiting is becoming the creation and ongoing development of individual allegiances between the employer and a group of candidates.
Peter calls the shift, “Post-social recruiting,” and he makes the following observations concerning its potential:
“Post-social recruiting means interactions with prospects, candidates and applicants that make them feel at home with and thus committed to an organization. It gives employers a way to forge an enduring bond - a psychological rather than simply an electronic connection - with select talented populations.”
As we’ve mentioned in the past WorkPuzzle discussions, private social networking technologies are empowering both companies and candidates to make this shift. New tools and best practices are starting to emerge that will make this a reality.
For real estate hiring managers, this change should be welcomed. Once a few minor technology hurdles are overcome, the skills needed for proficiency in this arena come naturally to most managers. Why? Because they are the same skills that once made them good agents. Think about it--building allegiances among a large group of prospects with the expectation of transactions developing over time is very similar to post-social recruiting.
3. Discount real estate brokers have created a huge “career support hole” among experienced real estate agents. This hole can be filled by online career communities inside the framework of private social networks.
If you’ve been inside the real estate industry for a while, you may have not noticed what has happened to corporate America in the last two decades. Peter describes it this way:
“In the early 1990s, economic conditions and competition forced employers to change the way they dealt with employees. They could no longer afford the expensive overhead of managing workers' careers, so they jettisoned both the career ladder and the gold watch. They still employed those workers, of course, but each person was on their own when it came to managing their career.
In the two decades since then, individual workers have had no place to hang their career hat. No homestead where they can get the practical and psychological support they need and deserve. Professional societies and associations have long served that purpose for a person's field of work, but nothing has existed for a person's career.
And now, the potential exists to correct that situation and, in the process, create a formidable, new talent acquisition strategy. Post-social recruiting involves using social technology to create true career communities - not today's posers that are actually databases of candidates - without the expensive overhead of traditional corporate career support. These virtual "careersteads" nurture allegiance among talented workers and that bond, in turn, transforms them into genuine employment prospects.”
If you think about it, something similar has happened to the real estate industry in the last five to seven years (and perhaps during previous downturns as well). There has been an exodus of experienced agents from full-service real estate firms to discount brokers who offer better commission splits, but very little support for those agents who joined these firms.
Here is a chance at your own epiphany: The opportunity exists to engage these “support-starved” agents who are now working for discount brokers in a cost-efficient manner through the framework of private social networks.
If these agents can get the career support they're missing from a single local source, they will eventually build trust and allegiance to the person providing that support. At the end of the recruiting process, attraction will always work better than promotion. This is the essence of attraction.
Join the WorkPuzzle Discussion at the Tidemark Online Community (TMOC)
Engage in the WorkPuzzle discussion by joining the TMOC private social network. Commenting on a public blog like WorkPuzzle can be a little intimidating, so why not join the discussion inside the privacy of the TMOC discussion group?
By joining TMOC, you'll get to see who else is in the group and your comments will only be seen by those whom you trust. Joining TMOC is quick, easy, and free (no kidding…this takes less than 2 minutes). To get started, click here.
Already of a member of TMOC? If so, join the WorkPuzzle Dialog Group by clicking on the WorkPuzzle Group icon on the left side of your TMOC homepage. Questions? Email the WorkPuzzle editor (workpuzzle@hiringcenter.net) and we'll walk through the process.
Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.
Comments