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A recruitment agency is encouraging the industry to embrace social media as a means to employ qualified agents who have been out of the market temporarily.
Buckmaster Hawkey recently ran a pilot Facebook campaign to fill property management positions in Melbourne.
The positions, which were promoted via a post on the agency’s Facebook page, subsequently received over 30 enquiries within three weeks.
According to director Jeanette Hockney, the agency found that there was a high concentration of women who were looking to return to work after having their first child and staying at home.
“Most social media strategies are aimed at Gen Y and the under 35s, but what the numbers from Facebook is showing - and this experiment proves - is that women at home with their first child use Facebook as a way to keep socially connected both with the people they work with and friends," Ms Hockney told Residential Property Manager.
Buckmaster Hawkey is now increasing their efforts in social media, particularly Facebook.
“There seems to be a little bit of a shift in the real estate sector where both agencies and recruitment companies are starting to reach out by Facebook. Whereas two years ago those efforts came to nought, now they’re starting to come to something,” she said.
Ms Hockney said the implications of the campaign were not only in recruitment but for agencies to communicate with different groups.
In light of the group’s recent findings that more than 3,200 real estate jobs remained unfilled across the nation, Ms Hockney said agencies looking to hire new staff needed to be more creative in their approach to recruitment.
“This is an environment in which people looking to recruit in the real estate sector are going to have to be broad minded because the amount of people entering the industry versus the amount of people who are leaving or being promoted upwards means there is a significant shortage of candidates in the capital city markets centred in Melbourne, Sydney and to a lesser degree, Queensland,” she said.
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