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Brendan Wong
Three out of five agencies have recruited new staff this year, according to a recent survey.
The latest Real Estate Business straw poll found that 60.3 per cent of the 214 respondents had hired new staff, while 34.6 per cent had not. The remaining 5.1 per cent said they were still looking.
Director of Resolver Recruitment Virginia Brookes said this year's job market had been an improvement from the last few years, with a steady amount of enquiry.
“People were a little bit more wary of putting in new staff members in the last couple of years and if they haven’t had to, they haven’t,” she said.
“People have stayed tight for a few years. Obviously, if you’re last in the door, you’re first out when things go wrong, so a lot of people stayed put.
“We’ve noticed this year, the low interest rates have brought a little bit lot more confidence into the market. When there’s confidence in the market, obviously people move.”
Ms Brookes said there was a significant amount of jobs being found through referrals, databases and social media, rather than just online job boards.
“If people have used a recruiter and they’ve been happy with a recruiter in the past, they’ve been happy to refer details across to someone who might just be looking,” she said.
According to Ms Brookes, while companies were constantly looking for individuals who were high quality property managers and sales agents, lately the challenge was finding newcomers.
“There seems to be a lot less people coming into the industry,” she said. “I’ve got two or three junior roles that I just can’t fill and literally all you need is a brain and a certificate,” she said.
Ms Brookes said it was difficult to find young people who were straight out of high school and willing to start in a junior position in a real estate office.
“Everyone wants to come in with a licence and be driving a BMW wearing an Armani suit within 12 months, but that doesn’t happen,” she explained.
To deal with this, the agency was targeting training companies and looking for individuals they could refer to them.
However, just last month Jo-Anne Oliveri, managing director of ireviloution intelligence, said the industry's employee turnover rate is costing real estate business owners and consumers time and money, and something had to be done.
“There is a gap in learning between the theoretical legislative training newcomers undertake to get their registration and when they are actually hired – they are not taught ‘property management processes’ until on the job,” Ms Oliveri said.
“When newcomers get their registration, they get a job, a desk, an existing portfolio to manage and are then left to learn (or make up) these processes as they go, which usually means picking up the experienced team members’ bad habits.”
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