As many of you know, our company’s core business is helping
our clients source high-quality candidates for difficult-to-fill positions.  While we assist companies in several
different industries, much of our focus has been on the hiring difficulties
real estate companies experienced over the last five years.

This has not been an easy task.  It is difficult to get talented individuals to consider changing careers during a recession and during the subsequent recovery.

Employment
Stagnation

This may seem counter-intuitive, but pervasive high unemployment and
lousy job prospects in the economy  create
stagnation in sourcing and hiring for real estate companies. 

On the surface, you might surmise that if there is a large
number of people who are unemployed (some of whom are talented individuals), a
fair number of them might be willing to give real estate a try. Our sourcing data doesn’t support this
hypothesis. 

In reality, most people who find themselves unemployed are
not in a strong enough financial position to start a real estate career. Instead, they
pursue the quickest path to a steady paycheck.

But, what about the people who are in low-paying, dead-end
jobs?  Certainly, some of those
individuals would be willing to look at the real estate industry as a way of
“upgrading” their career…right?  Our
sourcing data doesn’t support this hypothesis either. 

Many people who are underemployed are thankful just to have
a job.  They don’t feel comfortable
taking a risk that would put their current financial situation in
jeopardy.  The proverbial “bird in the hand”
is good enough for them.

What’s Changing?

So, what’s changing? 
Why are candidate sourcing metrics starting to improve so dramatically
in the last 3 months?  

I believe there are two reasons for this change.  First, the real estate market has improved in
many areas of the country.  The national
media has picked up on these changes and started to report positive
news.  Candidates perceive this change
and are now more open to considering real estate as a career option.

While positive reports help, most of the momentum is being
created outside the real estate industry.  
It is related to how average employees in non-real estate companies feel about
voluntarily leaving their jobs.

The data for this theory is buried in the metrics that are
tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was recently highlighted in an
article written by Vivian Giang at Business Insider:

“People are voluntarily quitting their jobs at the highest
rate since the pre-recession era, according to the Job Openings and Labor
Turnover Survey — known as JOLTS — published by The Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The report says that 2.16 million people quit their jobs in
the latest data, which represents 53 percent of all job separations — this
includes quits, layoffs and discharges — when accounting for retirees. 

The graph below, published by Gluskin Sheff Research,
illustrates the trend in the quitting rate and the number of people who have
quit as a percentage compared to the total number of people employed in the
past decade:

 

So what does this mean about our labor market? In short,
it's an indication that people are confident that they can find other
opportunities elsewhere and is a sign of sustained improvement in the labor
markets…. This confidence happens when the economy grows fast enough…and people
have [enough] faith in their own skills to make a living some other way rather
than stay in a job they're not satisfied with.

So who are these workers? There's a good possibility that
people are leaving their jobs to pursue freelancing, consulting or the
entrepreneur route. This need to work for yourself is predicted to reach 40
percent of the American workforce by 2020, and is most common in sectors of the
economy that are growing.”

As you can tell, much of what goes on in the labor market is
out of our control.  When a positive
trend happens (and in this case, two positive trends), it is important to take
advantage of the rising tide. 

When engaging “new to real estate” candidates, now is not the time be on the
sidelines.  Develop and deploy strategies
for engaging the millions of individuals who are finally starting to feel less
risk-averse about their careers.

Question: What strategies are you deploying to engage the
40% of the American workforce who lean towards working independently?

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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.