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Finding the right candidate for the job is not an easy process. And for the best results, you ultimately want to ensure an all-around candidate fit. And by all-around fit, I mean a candidate’s fit with the role and pace of work, the company culture, the team and the hiring manager’s leadership style. Here are some things to think about to help make your hiring strategy more effective.

360 Company Review Believe it or not, not every company does this. Before you post the job and start the interviews, round up your own team and ask them what their expectations are for the new hire, in conjunction with their business goals and team needs. And at the same time, it never hurts to revisit your company’s overall business plan to think strategically about what employee additions are needed to align with and support company objectives to lead to success. New hires should not just be hired to complete tasks, but to further the growth of the entire organization and live the organization’s culture.

Define Success Goals You only want qualified candidates to apply for the job, so take your time when writing the job description. Instead of writing a standard job description focused on job responsibilities, consider writing a job description focused on goals and metrics that this person will hit if they are successful. Get your team’s input. And during the interview process, explain the job description clearly to every candidate so they know what they can expect and what will be expected of them. The number one reason I get from candidates as to why they are looking to leave their current job is because of lack of career growth. They have not been given any defined goals and ways to track their success.

Assessments

Using personality assessments as part of the hiring process has become common practice. Some of the more popular ones are Personality Index and DISC. Personality Index works well when compared to historical data or data about the team’s make up whereas something like DISC can be used as more of a standalone tool.

While more companies are hiring for personality and then training for skills, I always suggest using a skill set assessment (such as an excel or a writing assessment) along with the personality assessment to help get a more holistic understanding of the job candidate and their all-around fit. Also, I typically recommend conducting the assessments within a particular time frame (timed) and administering them later in the hiring process unless it is being used as part of an initial application screening.

Hiring Department Research has shown that hiring managers aren’t successful the majority of the time. I believe this has more to do with teams not having the proper tools and resources to search, find and hire the right people or the interest and drive to allocate the proper amount of time to this task. If this is the case in your company, think about providing your hiring team with training, reorganizing responsibilities, or looking to external resources. And when it comes time to interview a candidate, have multiple interviewers and decision-makers and give each one different areas to focus on during the interview.

Outreach Efforts Don’t wait for qualified candidates to come to you. With the job description and goals in hand, get the word out everywhere you can. This could be through targeted searching and outreach through your network or through proven hiring resources.

Missed Part I? Catch up here: Who is out there to hire?

It looks good for companies wanting to hire new employees and fill open positions in commercial real estate this Fall. There appears to be a variety of qualified, ambitious and optimistic job candidates looking for jobs in and around the SoCal market, particularly in five key industry areas.

Of course our goal at Building Careers is always to match the right professional with the right company, but we thought we would share a little of what we have been seeing lately as you finalize budgets, gear up for the end of the year push, and possibly look to effectively add to or strengthen your team.

Property Management

Property managers coming our way lately tend to possess more senior-level expertise in asset strategy and operations management. They have solid financial experience overseeing a range of portfolio sizes as well as hands-on management of third party and service provider relationships to ensure compliance with property management policies and procedures, codes, regulations and government agency directives. Yardi and MRI are on the resumes, too!

Analysts

Many college graduates with bachelor’s degrees in accounting and finance are in search of analyst positions. They are looking to gain experience supporting acquisitions and development teams while bringing their education (and enthusiasm) to the table to develop and maintain financial models and perform industry data research. Not to be overlooked are the analysts coming from the lending side. They have proven their underwriting and analytical abilities and many are looking to apply those skills to the principal side.

Acquisitions

We are working with acquisition candidates at all levels, and especially those with Director level knowledge. They understand that it’s currently a tight market and can offer their connections to off-market opportunities and aptitude for creative value-add plays. If you have capital to deploy and are actively investing, I’d encourage you to keep an open mind for opportunistic hires on the acquisitions side.

Business Development

If you are looking to add to your business development and sales team, we are seeing a number of senior-level business development professionals who are entrepreneurial in nature (of course) and interested in making a job move. They have the expertise to contribute in the areas of business growth, capital sourcing, marketing and industry relations. Many have backgrounds in real estate, operations and finance and have solid experience identifying beneficial business and investment opportunities.

Career Transition

Let’s face it, our industry is an exciting and prosperous one! So who wouldn’t want to join us? We have been assisting many newcomers to the industry who have transferable backgrounds and are looking to move into commercial real estate. This is a terrific opportunity for organizations to consider hiring an out-of-industry professional with many relevant skills and the potential to offer fresh, new strategic thinking and perspective.