In the past couple of years, I’ve written several blogs on
the advantages of seeking out and hiring young people.  In theory, replacing an aging sales force
with a new generation of young agents makes sense.

 But, as many of your have told me, theory and practice can
be miles apart.  There is often
frustration (perhaps on both sides of the hiring equation) around turning young
talented individuals into productive agents.

What may surprise you is that you’re not the only one
struggling with the issue—other industries are experiencing this frustration as
well.   The case study we’ll discuss
today comes from the mattress industry.

Mark Quinn, a Segment
VP of Marketing with Leggett & Platt, writes a popular blog called Q’s
Views, on the mattress sales profession. 
In a recent article, Mark does a great job of putting his finger on the
Millennial Generation issue:

“Technology
has simultaneously been the Millennial generation’s best friend and worst
enemy. While they have grown up with social media and iPhones, they’ve also
lived under the specter of Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Systrom, and Mike Krieger.

…Seeing
Facebook and Instagram make these twentysomethings into billionaires has upped
the ante for what young people expect out of life—and their careers.

It’s
easy for inexperienced professionals to get caught up in the Zuckerberg
example—he didn’t finish college and didn’t spend 80 hours a week working his
way up in a traditional corporation.

With a
lack of context, it’s tempting to believe we’re all destined to be exceptions
on the level of Facebook.  That’s just
it—these guys are exceptions and not the rule.”

Because many individuals from the
Millennial generation approach work from this perspective, many real
estate hiring managers have given up on this group of candidates. 

Mark takes a
different approach.  He believes that
some simple career coaching early in the hiring process can help some young
people focus on the realities of building a true career.  In turn, he reaps the benefit of bringing
young employees into his ageing industry

Here is what
he tells his young candidates:

“Your best
bet—if you plan to have a career that spans more than 10 years—is to find your
niche and strategize your vertical move from there. While you can make wildly
zigzagging moves across industries, remember one thing: What you skip over is
often what you need in order to be successful later.”

He goes on to
outline five steps that tend to make people successful in the mattress
industry: 

1.  Learn the basics.   I
learned the basics. I took people I emulated to lunch, and I replicated the
basics of what they did. The basics are overlooked by many starting out, but
they’re called basics for a reason. If you aren’t good at them, don’t plan on
being talented at much else.

2.  Develop your own strategy. I tried to swim
upstream whenever possible. While other trainers focused on the products they
were selling, I took speaking classes because I wanted to be the most dynamic
person in the room. My strategy was to give the salespeople a skill and help
them make more money. They were teaching spec; I was educating them on sales,
which is a skill that would benefit them no matter what industry they worked
in.

3. Have
pure intentions. I genuinely wanted to help people – hence, my focus on
developing people’s skills. If you’re trying to provide information, you’ll be
somewhat successful. If your intention is to help people find a new approach to
doing things, you’ll create ripples that last a lot longer.

4.  Put in the effort. Many people fail to follow
through and end up disappointing those around them. If you say you’re going to
call, pick up the phone. If you can learn from someone who works on Saturdays,
use your day off to enhance your days on.

5.  Be memorable. You can be memorable for being
the guy who never met a 3-hour lunch he didn’t want to take – or you can be
memorable for doing things no one else does. Call a customer on his birthday, remember
the names of his children, and send him a fishing article when it reminds you
of him. He’ll remember you, simply for remembering him.

Of course, all of this advice does not track directly to the
real estate industry—that’s not the point.   This case study illustrates the
importance of setting expectations early in the hiring process and painting a
picture of the future. 

If you become effective at cutting through the initial layer
of self-centered nonsense, you will find that some of these young people have
the capacity to be your next top performer.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday
weekend and you’re back at work with a new sense of energy, ready to make the
push towards the year end.

In the short week before Thanksgiving, I pointed you to an
article that I found insightful and promised to follow-up with some thoughts
this week.  The article was written by
Peter Weddle, and you may want to re-read it before reading today’s post.

The question I left on the table before heading off for the
holiday was, “How does Peter’s insights on social recruiting apply to the real
estate industry?”   Here are some
thoughts:

1.  Social recruiting via public social
recruiting via public social networks has peaked and is now in decline.  

Peter makes this point several times during his discussion:

“The current incarnation of social
recruiting has been stimulated and structured by social media sites. The way we
socialize with candidates is governed by the format, functionality and focus of
LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. These sites enable us to promote our brands,
advertise to and connect with large pools of professionals in a wide range of
industries.  These interactions have
effectively defined social recruiting as a fleeting and thoroughly functional
relationship. Basically, we’re saying to prospects: “Hey, we’re a buyer of
talent, you’re a seller of talent, let’s do a deal.”

I would further argue that the real estate industry has not
largely benefited from this stage of social recruiting anyway.  The concept works well when a uniquely
talented individual is needed to fill a distinctive job position,  but few people wander around wondering what a
real estate agent does—especially if they are already a real estate agent for a
competitive company.  Also, since real
estate companies are always hiring, the need to get the word out concerning a
“fleeting”  or difficult-to-fill job opening is inconsequential.

2.  Social recruiting is becoming the creation
and ongoing development of individual allegiances between the employer and a
group of candidates.

Peter calls the shift, “Post-social recruiting,” and he
makes the following observations concerning its potential:

“Post-social recruiting means
interactions with prospects, candidates and applicants that make them feel at
home with and thus committed to an organization. It gives employers a way to forge an enduring bond – a psychological rather than
simply an electronic connection – with select talented populations.”

As we’ve mentioned in the past WorkPuzzle discussions,
private social networking technologies are empowering both companies and
candidates to make this shift.  New tools
and best practices are starting to emerge that will make this a reality.

For real estate hiring managers, this change should be
welcomed.  Once a few minor technology
hurdles are overcome, the skills needed for proficiency in this arena come
naturally to most managers.  Why?  Because they are the same skills that once
made them good agents.  Think about it–building
allegiances among a large group of prospects with the expectation of
transactions developing over time is very similar to post-social recruiting.

3.  Discount real estate brokers have created a
huge “career support hole” among experienced real estate agents.   This hole can be filled by online career
communities inside the framework of private social networks.

If you’ve been inside the real estate industry for a while,
you may have not noticed what has happened to corporate America in the last two
decades.   Peter describes it this way:

“In the early 1990s, economic
conditions and competition forced employers to change the way they dealt with
employees. They could no longer afford the expensive overhead of managing
workers’ careers, so they jettisoned both the career ladder and the gold watch.
They still employed those workers, of course, but each person was on their own
when it came to managing their career.

In the two decades since then,
individual workers have had no place to hang their career hat. No homestead
where they can get the practical and psychological support they need and
deserve. Professional societies and associations have long served that purpose
for a person’s field of work, but nothing has existed for a person’s career.

 And now, the potential exists to
correct that situation and, in the process, create a formidable, new talent
acquisition strategy. Post-social recruiting involves using social technology
to create true career communities – not today’s posers that are actually databases
of candidates – without the expensive overhead of traditional corporate career
support. These virtual “careersteads” nurture allegiance among
talented workers and that bond, in turn, transforms them into genuine
employment prospects.”

If you think about it, something similar has happened to the
real estate industry in the last five to seven years (and perhaps during previous downturns as well).  There has been an exodus of experienced
agents from full-service real estate firms to discount brokers who offer better
commission splits, but very little support for those agents who joined these firms. 

Here is a chance at your own epiphany:  The opportunity exists to engage these
“support-starved” agents who are now working for discount brokers in a cost-efficient manner through the framework of
private social networks. 

If these agents
can get the career support they’re missing from a single local source, they will
eventually build trust and allegiance to the person providing that support.  At the end of the recruiting process, attraction will always work better than promotion.  This is the essence of attraction.

Join the WorkPuzzle Discussion at the Tidemark Online Community (TMOC)

Engage in the WorkPuzzle discussion by joining the TMOC private social network.  Commenting on a public blog like WorkPuzzle can be a little intimidating, so why not join the discussion inside the privacy of the TMOC discussion group?  

By joining TMOC, you’ll get to see who else is in the group and your comments will only be seen by those whom you trust.   Joining TMOC is quick, easy, and free (no kidding…this takes less than 2 minutes).   To get started, click here.

Already of a member of TMOC?  If so, join the WorkPuzzle Dialog Group by clicking on the WorkPuzzle Group icon on the left side of your TMOC homepage.  Questions?   Email the WorkPuzzle editor (workpuzzle@hiringcenter.net) and we’ll walk through the process.

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.