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Hockingstuart has announced the launch of its newly established recruitment arm, following an overwhelming need from its franchisees to take away the “pain and cost” of recruiting externally.
Speaking to Real Estate Business, Hockingstuart head of recruitment Mark Ellinghaus said there are definite shortcomings in the recruitment market, with candidates often not being properly screened or tested.
“From our research, real estate recruiter placement fees are up to 19 per cent of a newly placed staff member’s remuneration package, and that is pretty much for non-exclusive arrangements that real estate agencies might have with real estate recruiters,” he said.
“We get feedback from our franchisees that the candidates aren’t being properly screened and that is in terms of not being properly phone interviewed or having a face-to-face interview.
“Very rarely are they tested or assessed for incompetencies or personal attributes,” he added.
Mr Ellinghaus said these shortcomings generally cause problems down the track because recruitment agencies are relying on a “gut feeling”, which is very hit or miss.
“It generally leads to not getting the right candidates for the right job and you don’t get good staff retention because you potentially have an unhappy staff member and an unhappy employer, so you get high staff turnover,” he said.
“One of things we will be doing with candidates is obviously doing the phone screening, we do the face-to-face interviews, we do the reference checks, but more importantly we do psychometric testing, cognitive testing and that is a far more scientific approach to candidate screening then ‘gut feel’,” he added.
Gough Recruitment NSW state manager Darren Gorrel said real estate agencies starting-up their own in-house recruitment could be a potential concern down the track.
“I think it would be a concern if it became a little bit more prevalent but it is not at the moment,” he told Real Estate Business.
However he said some companies that are doing their own in-house recruitment still liaise with recruitment agencies.
“I’m finding that anyway, I’m not sure about the other guys out there, but we are still doing business with companies that do have their own in-house recruitment,” he said.
“We do recruitment 24/7 so we have got a lot of existing relationships with people over the years that we have been in business with,” he added.
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