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Define Company Culture

Leave a Comment / Blog, Employers, Job Search, Set Yourself Up For Success

Company culture is a hot topic right now. Since 2020, COVID-19 has made a BIG shift in this area for many organizations. In this blog post, we are going to define company culture, how it works, and why it’s important!

Define Company Culture

Company culture refers to the attitudes and behaviors of a company and its employees. It is evident in the way an organization’s people interact with each other, the values they hold, and the decisions they make.

Company culture encompasses a variety of elements, including work environment, company mission, leadership style, values, ethics, expectations, and goals.

How Does It Work?

A company’s culture may be expressly and deliberately cultivated, or it may simply result from the accumulation of decisions made over time. With a strong company culture, employees understand the expected outcomes and behaviors and act accordingly.

Some companies have a team-based culture that emphasizes employee participation on all levels, while other businesses have a culture where formal, traditional, or hierarchical management is valued.

When you work at a company with a traditional management style, your job responsibilities will be clearly defined, but there may not be opportunities to advance without going through a formal promotion or transfer process.

At a more casual workplace, employees often have the opportunity to take on new projects, and additional roles, as time permits.

One example of company culture can be seen at Netflix, where it is encapsulated in their philosophy of “people over process.” In its company culture document, Netflix spells out its company values: judgment, communication, curiosity, courage, passion, selflessness, innovation, inclusion, integrity, and impact. These values are expected to be upheld by employees in every action and interaction, resulting in a creative, collaborative, and successful organization.

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Making The Right Connections For Your Career

Leave a Comment / Blog, Set Yourself Up For Success

How do quick start a career that you love? Maybe you have a vision, a passion, an idea of where you want to go, but you’re not quite certain how to get there. This is where making the right connections comes in.

There’s a big difference between aimless networking and intentional networking. Needless to say, it’s key you make the right connections for the career path you’re pursuing.

So how do you make a connection, and then maintain it? Here are five steps you can take to meet the right connections, and foster beneficial work relationships to get your career started!

1. Determine Your Sharable Value

It might not always feel like it, but everyone has value to give to everyone else. If you know what value you present to others, you’ll be able to connect more easily and confidently. This could be something as small as finding something in common (for example, maybe you and the person you’re connecting with went to the same college). It could also mean offering a favor such as a link to an article, sharing information, giving them a referral.

2. Build A List

In order to connect, you should make a list of those you want to or should reach out to. And not just any list — an extensive list! Write down everyone who could possibly be a connection, even if they seem out of reach. The more people you have on the list, the less daunting it will actually be. Think about it this way: if you only have five people, you feel pressure to reach out to all of them. The longer your list, the less pressure you’ll feel, and the easier it’ll be to reach out. And maybe you will end up reaching out to those out-of-reach people. You never know! But having a list will at least give you somewhere to start.

3. Attend Networking Events

Did you know 85% of people find jobs through networking? Clearly, you want to take advantage of this. And what better place to network than events? Maybe you have a friend or coworker that needs a plus one to a conference or talk. Maybe you took to Google and found networking events near you. Whatever the case, put yourself out there and connect with as many people as you can. Bring business cards, talking points, and your best smile. This will help put you on the path of making the right connections!

4. Use LinkedIn

When it comes to networking, social media is your friend. LinkedIn is an especially great tool for reaching out to connections you’ve met at networking events or through your peers. Shoot them a quick message, making sure you give detail as to why you’re reaching out and how you know them. After all, keeping in touch is key to cultivating and maintaining relationships.

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Top 3 Steps to Help You Identify Your Dream Career

Leave a Comment / Blog, Job Search, Set Yourself Up For Success

You don’t always have to hit rock bottom to figure out your career path, but there are some things you need to learn about yourself if you want to identify your dream career.

These three steps might come immediately, or they might take years to uncover. Either way, consider them without judgment or blame for not knowing the answers, but with curiosity.

1. Identify Your Strengths

Stop everything you’re doing and take the Strengths Finder assessment today. It’s the most valuable assessment tool I’ve used. Know your strengths to the finest degree to discern what job is best for you.

According to Donald Clifton, founder of Strengths Finder, we’re the happiest when we get to use our strengths on a daily basis.

2. Who Is In Your Support System?

Another step is to identify your dream career is to think about who is in your support system. Sure, you might not have enemies in your job search, but it’s important to know who’s in your inner support circle. Sometimes, it can take a while to identify who is your ally, but pay attention to who gives you strength and who squashes your ambition.

Notice all of your conversations. Who is continually supportive? Who encourages you? Who makes you feel afraid or anxious?

Many people feel scared when you are reaching and leaping towards an edge, and they will project their own fears onto you. Don’t let them. Make a point to cut them off (kindly) or resist from talking to that person about your “big, hairy, audacious goals.”

3. Pinpoint Your Goals

Where do you want to go? It’s a big question and if you don’t have the answer now, ask yourself every day until it starts to unfold. Take out a big huge notebook (the kind you’d buy a kindergartener) and colored sharpies and let your creativity flow.

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Top 10 CRE Career Paths to Choose From

Leave a Comment / Blog, Building Careers, Job Search

So, you’ve decided a career in commercial real estate is just what you need to find fulfillment in your work. Good for you! But there are so many CRE career paths to choose from. Which one is for you?

Commercial Real Estate

When most people hear “commercial real estate,” they immediately conjure up images of a real estate agent posting a “for sale” sign in a yard somewhere. When they finally wrap their minds around the commercial aspect, they still tend to think in terms of either brokers or developers.

But the truth is, if you want to get into commercial real estate, you have virtually endless options to make that happen. So, before you go out and start polishing up your resume and branding yourself for that perfect CRE dream job, let’s take a step back.

Just what direction should you go? What are your options?

10 CRE Career Paths

While there are literally dozens of CRE career paths, most of them fall into a handful of categories or basic fields. Some of these may fall within your goals for your career, whereas others might simply be a bad fit for your personality type.

Before deciding on a specific field to enter, be sure to take personal inventory and weigh the pros and cons of a career in commercial real estate. Then, hone in on that part of CRE that especially inspires and fascinates you. From here, you’re prepared to dive into the varied and rich paths that make up this special industry. While this list is not comprehensive, here are 10 of the top choices for CRE careers.

1. Brokerage This is probably the most well known of the CRE career paths. There are exciting opportunities to be directly involved as intermediary between both sides of transactions. Brokers sometimes also provide other services, like investment banking, research asset management, property management, and more.

2. Property Management

Generally speaking, commercial properties require rather sophisticated management services. In this field, you may carry out services like tenant relations, maintenance, budgeting and other tasks related to managing a high-value commercial asset.

3. Construction and Development

While two separate paths, construction and development professionals tend to work closely together. Entitling parcels and managing the process of building new CRE assets can be invigorating for the creative and visionary types (development) or project and process-oriented types (construction).

4. Acquisitions

Acquisition professionals manage the sourcing, analyzing, and closing tasks for acquiring new properties, whether underperforming or performing. These are properties that produce cash flows for the company acquiring them.

5. Asset Management

Those responsible for asset management focus on strategy and oversee execution of the financial, operational, and marketing aspects of commercial real estate.

6. Leasing

If an investor/developer chooses to have an in-house leasing team, the leasing individuals will have day-to-day negotiation and lease creation/oversight responsibilities for the company and coordinating strategic efforts to develop prospective tenant relationships, which could also be done alongside an external broker.

7. Accounting

Accountants will run day-to-day management of the company’s accounting operations, including financial reports, accounting records, cash flow projections, loan draws, budget analysis, and budget reforecasting.

8. Architecture and Design

While not often in-house, architect and designers will plan and design and facilitate the execution of new buildings, expansions, renovations, or interior build-outs.

9. Valuation/Appraisal

Within the various CRE career paths, there is a distinct need for valuation professionals who appraise properties for reporting purposes, as well as loan applications, strategic estimations, and more.

10. Other

Most of the disciplines above are most commonly seen on the investor/developer or owner/operator sides of the business, but you can take your career in a myriad of other directions as well, including capital markets, investor relations, lending and portfolio management for governmental entities, academia, banks or on the corporate real estate side.

While there are other CRE career paths to follow, this list represents the most common fields. And each of these paths may vary based on geography, asset class, and other factors. By carefully considering all factors, your career in commercial real estate can be profitable and fulfilling.

Sources:

• How to Find Fulfillment at Work | Building Careers (buildingrecareers.com)

• How to Brand Yourself for Your CRE Dream Job | Building Careers (buildingrecareers.com)

• The Pros and Cons of a Commercial Real Estate Career | Building Careers (buildingrecareers.com)

• Anatomy of Commercial Real Estate Appraisal: TOP 10 Q&A Guide (rweiler.com)

• Careers in Commercial Real Estate | Adventures in CRE

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GlobeSt 50 Under 40 Award

Leave a Comment / Awards and Recognition, Blog, Building Careers

Here is our selection of 50 achievers in the CRE space that are under age 40. Read their stories to see why we picked them.

When Carly Glova decided to establish a recruiting firm serving the commercial real estate industry, she knew there would be obstacles. Glova had not previously worked in a recruiting position or owned a business, and she faced the adversity of creating a niche in the historically male-dominated CRE industry. Seeing the benefits of her idea, however, Glova pressed on and in 2015, after an almost 10-year career in CRE finance, she founded executive search and recruiting firm Building Careers LLC, which aims to serve as a responsive, industry-focused and personalized hiring solution. Since its inception, Building Careers has experienced a nearly 600% increase in revenue and has doubled its headcount. As president of the company, Glova oversees business development, client and candidate management, manages recruiting and sourcing resources, and executes general business operations. Glova has made a mark on the Southern California market and has become a go-to source for hiring in the space, which has become an even more important function since the Great Resignation left the candidate pool extremely small. Glova speaks on panels and in forums regarding the hiring landscape and she has consulted on the disconnect between employer and employee motivations and how the gap can be closed. She first became interested in CRE during college, where she majored in finance and wrote her honors college thesis on CRE analysis and trends. She began her career on the East Coast with Duff & Phelps in its real estate valuation and consulting practice before moving into the private equity side of the real estate business with Lubert-Adler Real Estate Funds. Attracted by the robust commercial real estate industry in Southern California, she moved to San Diego where she worked for BioMed Realty Trust before founding Building Careers.

To view the full lineup for the 50 Under 40 award, visit the link below.

https://www.globest.com/2022/06/03/50-under-40-2/

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Leadership Mistakes To Steer Clear Of

Leave a Comment / Blog, Employers, Set Yourself Up For Success

Being a good leader is way easier said than done. Sometimes it seems like everyone and their next-door neighbor wants to be a leader, but not everyone has leadership qualities. Fortunately, leading is a skill that can be learned. And the most common way to gain experience is by making leadership mistakes.

But a less painful way to learn is from other people’s mistakes. So, with that spirit in mind, here are a few of the most common leadership mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. Being Halted by Fear

A small amount of fear is a healthy thing, making you stop and think before making any decisions. There are plenty of things in life we should be afraid of, like great white sharks and middle schoolers with Instagram accounts. But when fear paralyzes you, it’s a huge problem.

The Solution: First, recognize that you’re fearful and your concerns may be well-founded. A decision could cause you to lose money, customers or team members, but you can’t let that possibility drive you.

The best way to kick the fear right where it hurts most is to come up with a system to deal with it. Setting a deadline, gathering facts and options, and working out the worst-case scenario are just a few examples of the steps you can take to get over that fear. And remember, you’ve been promoted to a leadership position for a reason—you have what it takes, and your team needs you, so don’t back down now!

2. Mis-Hires

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is hiring too quickly just because they really need someone. It does nothing but create more problems down the road, and you’ll probably be going through the same hiring process a few months later when you have to fire that crazy person.

The Solution: Take whatever time is needed to find the perfect person for the job. They should be a hard worker who has integrity and is on board with your company’s mission (not to mention whatever skills are needed for the position), and sometimes it can take a while to find someone like that.

3. Being an Oppressor

I know, I know. This company is your baby, and no one can treat it as well as you—but in order for it to grow, you have to let go. Remember those people you put through that rigorous interview process? You have to trust that they know what they’re doing and have the skills to do a great job. (Otherwise, why did you hire them?)

An example we have heard of is where someone who worked for a leader a long time ago who was such a controlling dictator that he made the whole environment fearful, stressful and miserable. The person loved the work itself, but didn’t want to go into the office, and couldn’t even lead their own team well because of their boss. Don’t be that guy!

The Solution: If you trust your team members, step back and let them succeed, no matter how nervous it makes you. Of course, when someone first joins the team, they should be trained and observed until they prove their competency and integrity. But once they’ve proven it, stop micromanaging them, or they will never perform to their full potential—and they may even quit out of frustration.

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Top Networking Skills for 2022

Leave a Comment / Ask An Expert, Blog, Job Search, Set Yourself Up For Success

You know that networking is in your best interest and that it can open up many doors, be them professional, social, or personal. However, networking is much easier said than done.

Unless you possess the right networking skills, you’ll have difficulty making personal or professional connections, as well as using them to advance your career. Wondering what those top networking skills might be and how you can learn them? That’s just what we’ll cover in this article!

Active Listening

Active listening is more than just hearing. The act involves paying uttermost attention to what the speaker is saying, following up with clarifying questions where relevant and necessary, and making sure you got the essence of the conversation.

Communication Skills

Communication is, if you ask us, the most important networking skill. You can be funny, insightful, skillful, and intelligent, and it would all be in vain if you can’t effectively communicate with people.

For this reason, when you’re networking, be mindful of the ways you convey, interact with others, and even tackle issues and discussions that may come up during the conversation. This includes your tone of voice, the language you use, and even your urgency to speak over others. Those are all elements that can make or break your networking.

Confidence

If you’re going to go to a place full of strangers or acquaintances with the goal of creating professional and social ties, then you definitely need confidence!

As a skill, confidence defines how sure you are about what you say, what you do (or plan on doing), and your decisions. Ways you can practice your confidence are by maintain eye contact with the speaker, speak in a friendly tone, or prepare something to discuss in advance so that you don’t stumble on your words.

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Lower Turnover Rate For Your Company

Leave a Comment / Blog, Employers, Set Yourself Up For Success

Turnover rate. It isn’t fun or sexy. That said, if you know anything about balancing the science of running a business and the art of having employees, you know it’s a vital measure of your company’s overall health and culture.

Before we get too much further, let’s be clear that there’s something in this for everyone. For the rookies, we’re going to cover the basics, including how to calculate turnover rate for your company. We’ll talk about how turnover rate pertains to the health of your business and nail down an answer to the question: What is a high turnover rate? And for the seasoned veterans in the audience, we’ll talk through how to reduce turnover rate with employee retention strategies.

Still there? Great—glad we didn’t lose you to a pie recipe. Let’s get to it.

Define Turnover Rate

Employee turnover rate pertains to the percentage of your employees who leave your company over a specific amount of time. Think about all the people who quit voluntarily, get fired, or choose to retire—that’s what you should factor in when calculating your company’s turnover rate. Why is it so important to keep that pulse? Because you need to keep track of when and why employees “turn over,” not just wave goodbye and hope you can replace them as quick as possible.

Is Your Company Experiencing This?

Ugh. As if employees leaving wasn’t painful enough, now we have to do math. Most companies want to know their employee turnover rate on a quarterly or annual basis, by the way. Why? It just takes that long for anything meaningful to show out of it.

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Personal Connections Land Jobs

Leave a Comment / Blog, Job Search, Set Yourself Up For Success

Personal connections land jobs; everybody knows that. Hence, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Indeed, in surveys, it’s typical for roughly half of employees to say that they found their job through a friend, family member, or other type of social network contact. But not all connections are likely to be equal. In a job search, talking to people and networking is clearly important, but who are the best people to talk to?

How social networks matter for getting jobs—and all other sorts of life outcomes—has long pre-occupied sociologists and networks researchers. The classic answer to the question of which contacts matter for finding a job starts with the work of Mark Granovetter, who in the late 1960s and early 1970s interviewed a few hundred Boston-area job seekers. To his surprise, Granovetter found that people were much more likely to land jobs from information passed on by people they weren’t particularly close to. In interviews, Granovetter asked people whether a friend had told them about their current job, and time and again people said things along the lines of, “Not a friend, an acquaintance.”

Granovetter began systematically tracking the “strength” of the social tie between job seekers and the people giving them employment leads, and found that of those who found jobs through contacts, only 17% saw their contact “often,” while 56% saw the contact “occasionally,” and 28% saw him “rarely.” The punch line: the people in your life who you don’t know too well are the ones who often matter the most when it comes time to find a job.

Plenty of other studies since have backed up the importance of what Granovetter dubbed “weak ties.” The general interpretation is that people you don’t know too well tend to belong to social groups that aren’t your own. They therefore have access to information—including about jobs—that you wouldn’t otherwise come across. The people who you’re closest to, your “strong ties,” typically move in the same social circles as you do. Most jobs they can tell you about, you could have found out about from someone else anyway. As painful as it can be to talk to people you don’t know too well about the fact that you’re looking for work, those could very easily prove to be the most fruitful conversations.

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How to Find Fulfillment at Work

Leave a Comment / Blog, Set Yourself Up For Success

A lifetime of satisfaction on the job isn’t just a preference – it’s a necessity. Without fulfillment at work, you simply won’t push yourself to excel. And even if your compensation is more than adequate, losing out on the personal satisfaction of excelling in your role isn’t worth it. You spend so much of your life at work. Why stick with a career that doesn’t engage you, grow you, and fulfill you?

Identifying Your Passion

Finding your passion has become cliché these days. But for good reason. In order to find fulfilment at work, you must first identify your passion. If you want to rise above the frenetic monotony of just going through the motions, find a career in what you love, what interests you, what makes you curious and engaged.

First, slow down and reflect. Your ideal career path is out there. But most people don’t find it until they take time to think it through and really connect with their passion.
Next, study yourself. Where do you usually wind up in the bookstore? What activities light up your brain with excitement? What activities positively bore you? Take notes.
Then, go deeper. As you begin to identify what you enjoy and what drains you, explore these interests deeper. Do more of those activities that feed into your passion and less of those you hate. This will narrow down these categories.
Next, reach out to others. As you begin to focus in on what may be your dream job, talk to others already in those roles. In finalizing what career path will contribute to your fulfillment at work, get a feel for how to excel in those specific roles.
Finally, keep your options open. As you pursue a career in your passion and grow within that fulfilling role, you may find another role is similar but even more fulfilling. Stay flexible. The journey isn’t over until it’s over.

Finding The Fulfilling Job

Knowing your passion is a critical foundation. But also important is knowing what to look for in a position. Not every opening in your target industry or function is necessarily a good one. Here’s what to look for when considering jobs that will provide fulfillment at work.

Good Pay Let’s not pretend compensation isn’t a critical factor in fulfillment. Of course, it’s not the only factor, but it is very important. Fulfilling roles will more than cover your basic living expenses. They’ll also afford you opportunities to chase other passions and interests in life.

Interesting Responsibilities

What sort of curiosities will this role satisfy? Will your work be interesting to you? A fulfilling job is one that involves responsibilities you find inherently fascinating and enjoyable. Conversely, boredom will sap your growth and engagement.

Enriching Environment

The right workplace culture is critical. Are your co-workers respectful? Do you have mutual interests and compatible personalities? Finding fulfillment at work often hinges on how well you fit into a team. When you are able to contribute and be respected and rewarded for your unique contributions, you will find fulfillment much easier to attain.

Growth Opportunities

We need challenges. We are hardwired to look for the next mountain to conquer. Find a job that has clear advancement opportunities to remain engaged and fulfilled at work.

How to Be Fulfilled in Any Job

Maybe you’re not looking for a new career. Maybe you’re already at a great job and just want to find a better work-life balance or to infuse passion into what you already do. No matter what your current situation, here are the essential components necessary for fulfillment at work.

Define your personal mission to live by each day.
Work towards achieving goals to consistently achieve fulfillment in any position.
Invest in your professional development long term.
Maintain an attitude of gratitude to make each day a bit brighter.
Enjoy your job more by investing emotional energy and initiative into everything you do.
Never stop learning.
Create positive relationships by genuinely listening to and helping others around you.

Whatever your career choice or current job, you can find fulfillment at work. Don’t settle for the mundane 9-5. You know you weren’t meant to just collect a paycheck. Take the time to identify just what it is you were born to do, find the right career path to do it, and then proactively create a fulfilling set of conditions around you. You’re investing, not only in a career, but in yourself.

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