One of the purposes of WorkPuzzle is to aggregate recruiting information and best practices from traditional recruiting industry sources.  While many of the topics that corporate recruiters and staffing companies discuss do not apply to the real estate industry, there are occasional parallels that are instructive.

Peter Weddle, an author and popular recruiting columnist, recently addressed such an issue in his bi- weekly newsletter.   The topic was telephone screening, but the application for the real estate industry has broader implications.   

We’ll discuss not only the nature of the candidate (who are you talking to?), but also the message your candidates are hearing as they progress through the recruiting process in your organization.

Nature of the Candidate.  For traditional recruiters, candidates come in two flavors—active candidates (those who need a job) and passive candidates (those who are already employed and would consider changing jobs if a better deal came along).

Depending on the nature of the candidate, the initial phone contact (often called a telephone pre-screen) is handled differently.  Peter makes the following distinction:

“Traditionally, the telephone pre-screen has primarily been used to verify the qualifications of candidates and determine if they should be invited for an on-site interview. The assumption behind this approach is that every applicant has already been sold on working for an employer.

While that may be true for active job seekers, it's not true for most passive prospects.  This difference occurs because passive prospects have a choice, and active job seekers don't.

Active job seekers are almost always unemployed, so their application for a position signals their genuine interest in it and, more often than not, their intent to accept an offer made for it. They have applied because they need the job.

Passive prospects, in contrast, are almost always employed, so they can choose to stay with their current employer or to accept any of the offers they have likely received from other employers. They have applied because they are interested, but not yet sold on the job.”

In the real estate recruiting world, there is no such thing as an active candidate. 

Whether you’re recruiting new or experienced agent candidates, they are all, by default passive candidates. 

Why?  Due to the independent contractor nature of the agent/broker relationship and the fact that your competitors are always hiring, no one “needs” a real estate agent job.  Any candidate can easily find a broker at any time with which to hang his or her license.

While this concept probably seems simple and self-evident, it’s amazing how many real estate recruiters treat prospective agents (especially new-to-real-estate candidates) as active candidates.

In the initial telephone pre-screen, they make the assumption that most candidates are unqualified and need to prove themselves worthy of evaluation by the company. There is also a secondary (more subtle) belief that most candidates don’t have other compelling employment options, so they’re considering real estate.

Peter points out that this attitude greatly hinders the recruiting process if the objective is to hire talented individuals:

“Why worry about the different responses active job seekers and passive prospects have to a telephone pre-screen? As the Golden Rule of Recruiting acknowledges: what you do to recruit passive talent will also recruit active talent, but the converse is not true.

In other words, if you configure your telephone pre-screen for active job seekers, it will work just fine for them, but will turn away many if not most passive prospects. On the other hand, if you design the pre-screen for passive prospects, it will have a positive impact on them and on active job seekers as well.”

From this discussion, there are two questions worth considering:

How does your organization treat candidates during their initial phone contact with the organization? 

If you don't know the answer to this question, find out by asking some questions of those making the calls and listening to some of those calls as a third party observer. 

Does the messaging in the telephone pre-screen (positive, passive-candidate messaging) carry over into the other part of the recruiting process (interview, post-interview, etc.)?

We’ll cover this question in Part 2 of this discussion.  As you probably guessed, starting off on the right foot is an important part of connecting with talented individuals, but communicating consistently also plays an important part in shaping the candidate’s perspective. 

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.