Attracting and Retaining Talent
Recruiting and retaining talent is one of the cornerstones of any successful commercial real estate brokerage firm, but as the SIORs interviewed for this article tell us, every firm has its own blueprint for building its brokerage dream team.
Some firms focus solely on recruiting candidates right out of college, some favor individuals with life experience with little or no CRE background, while others prefer seasoned veterans to grow their business. One common thread running through the conversations – whether firms are taking on raw recruits or experienced professionals – is a trend towards bringing in individuals who can be trained to fit most effectively into their systems.
Introduction to CRE
While many of the firms have internship programs for college students, the Cushman Wakefield/Commercial Advisors office in Memphis, Tennessee, has an “open door” policy that helps to educate college students about potential careers in commercial real estate. “We offer shadowing opportunities for college students who proactively reach out to us, typically three to five students per year, on top of those who have already applied to be interns with us in the summertime,” explains Vice President Ryan Thomas, SIOR.
During the one-day exercise, students are introduced to the various departments and are paired with a project manager or broker to shadow them for a typical workday. This may include sitting in on phone calls, assisting with a lease extraction, or delving into CoStar. The day generally includes a lunch, where students can “pick the brains” of the industry professionals to help them decide if CRE is the right path for them, and they are given direction on how they can make that happen. “I also try to be overly transparent with anyone who comes in and shadows because I've been in their shoes,” says Thomas. “I tell them they probably won’t make a lot of money in their first couple of years, but if they can acquire a good tool set, there's really no ceiling on their earning potential.”
Recruiting For Entry Level
Simons Johnson, SIOR, senior vice president with Bridge Commercial, Charleston, South Carolina, says his firm rarely takes on brokers from other shops, choosing instead to recruit recent college graduates and to “make and mold” recruits. The process begins with a 90-day internship program, and if there is mutual interest, recruits are offered a one-year contract. New hires are then assigned to a four or five-person team in one of four asset classes under the tutelage of a senior-level team leader, with team meetings every Monday and Friday.
The learning process begins with research and data, progresses to data management and CRM maintenance, and after a year, they can graduate to brokerage and begin doing proposals. “It’s very structured, and there are a lot of guardrails in place, so we're not just hiring people for the sake of hiring and putting them in positions where they can't grow effectively,” says Johnson, who was the first intern hired for the program – twenty years ago. He credits the development program for the firm’s strong retention rate, where “we’ve retained the majority of the people we’ve taken on,” in the 30-person shop (22 brokers).
Voit Real Estate Services, one of the largest regional CRE brokerages in California, bolsters its ranks by adding a combination of experienced industry veterans and training new brokers, ones that are either fresh out of college or transferring from other occupations. Eric Northbrook, SIOR, executive managing director for Voit, operates out of the San Diego office, but mentors and coaches young brokers throughout the firm.
“You need to be intentional. You have to lean into these young people to give them the right mentoring and coaching. You can’t leave them out on an island,” says Northbrook, who holds a Monday “Coffee Club” meeting with junior brokers in the San Diego office, as well as monthly “Lunch Club” meetings at the Anaheim and Irvine offices. “If you're not a VP, you should be getting some mentoring and coaching.” Voit also has a robust internship program, and a handful of their current brokers started as interns in the firm’s half-dozen offices. Recruits begin their careers as runners and are paired with senior brokers, who work closely with them throughout their developing years.
Voit has a high employee retention rate, not only for brokers but for support staff as well. The firm is a huge proponent of recognition and rewards, celebrating employee birthdays and career milestones, and holding award ceremonies to honor top producers and admins. “We work hard, but we also understand the importance of work-life balance,” says Northbrook.
What we were looking for was people with a ‘client first, broker last’ attitude. But we've now got a team of people that learned the right way to do things, and can answer any question – legal, financing, design, development, or business, you name it.
Chris Caulum, SIOR, VP at Oakbrook Corporation in Madison, Wisconsin, also believes in bringing in younger talent and letting them develop slowly, rather than the old school method of just handing them a phone to start cold-calling. “I just think that's a recipe for failure,” says Caulum. “My approach is that when somebody new comes in, they don't need to worry about developing business right away. I want them to execute on the business that I'm bringing in. The more stuff they can take off my plate, the more I can be freed up to generate business.”
Instead, he has his recruits focus on the “low-hanging fruit” that a young or newly established broker can handle, like working on renewals of existing tenants, showings, and other time-consuming administrative work related to ongoing deals. Updating the sales database is one task he assigns to help new brokers gain an encyclopedic knowledge of the market. By doing so, says Caulum, they learn what buildings have transacted, who the landlord is, buyer and seller names, etc. “They probably think it's drudgery, but when they meet with clients and can recall and spout off exceptional deal terms or comps in a client meeting, that goes a long way toward gaining credibility with clients,” he says. “Over time, they’ll become very competent in executing tasks, so that they can do larger and larger assignments, and eventually generate new business.”
Recruiting Outside the Industry
Following a restructuring in 2020, Andy Westby, SIOR, president and managing broker of GOLDMARK Commercial Real Estate in Fargo, North Dakota, decided to take a new approach to finding talent for his company. “We rebuilt the company from the ground up, and we specifically did not target other agents in the market,” says Westby. Instead, they looked for individuals from CRE-adjacent professions, landing an architect, a real estate attorney, a commercial lender, an entrepreneur, and a builder with commercial construction experience who had recently obtained his commercial real estate license.
“Only one person on our team had any type of brokerage experience before joining our team,” says Westby. “What we were looking for was people with a ‘client first, broker last’ attitude. But we've now got a team of people that learned the right way to do things, and can answer any question – legal, financing, design, development, or business, you name it.”
He has also retained that team, leveraging the “best market intelligence and proprietary data in the market,” to give his brokers a competitive edge. GOLDMARK offers the “best splits in town,” paying agents a greater percentage of the total deal, with even higher percentages for top performers. “You give up some profit on the brokerage side if you've got a team of high performers, but you can absolutely make it up in the long run,” says Westby.
Young Talent, New Market
After four decades as a New York investment sales specialist in New York City, first with his own shop, then with Cushman Wakefield and JLL, Bob Knakal, SIOR, again opened his own sales practice in February of 2024. He serves as chairman and CEO of New York City-based BK Real Estate Advisors (BKREA), which currently employs a half-dozen brokers.
“I have kind of a unique approach,” says Knakal. “Similar to what we did at MK (Massey Knakal Realty Services, which he owned and ran for 26 years), we don't really want experienced people because they're set in their habits.” He brought over one broker from his time at JLL but has staffed up with brokers from out-of-market, two from D.C., one from Miami, and one from New Orleans. “They didn’t know anything about the city, and now they’re kicking everybody’s ***, which proves that it’s all about the system and not about anybody’s experience.”
It’s very structured, and there are a lot of guardrails in place, so we're not just hiring people for the sake of hiring and putting them in positions where they can't grow effectively.
He describes that system as “product specialization with a geographic focus layered on top of it,” where brokers work with one asset class for the whole city. This differs from his previous philosophy, where brokers worked specific territories, selling all property types. “It's much more targeted and focused,” asserts Knakal. “The old approach was to go a mile wide and an inch deep with as many people as you could; today we're going an inch wide and a mile deep with people, and it's much more effective.”
While there may be no one-size-fits-all approach to recruiting and retaining talent to run a successful brokerage, one thing seems clear: Finding the right people who can adapt to a system that works in a specific market appears to be the pathway to success for these SIORs.
This article was sponsored by the SIOR Foundation - Promoting and sponsoring initiatives that educate, enhance, and expand the commercial real estate community. The SIOR Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-forprofit organization. All contributions are tax deductible to the extent of the law.
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