As we start the New Year, many of our clients are putting together their recruiting plans for 2011.  It’s an exciting season for our company because we have the opportunity to hear about many new ideas, assist in implementation, and start to envision how 2011 will shape up.

As this process unfolds, I’ve noticed a trend.  Many companies tend to quickly focus their efforts on the tactics of recruiting and don’t take time to consider the bigger picture.  The tendency is to use last year’s methodologies as a baseline and then try to tweak things to get results.  Planning in this manner will result in missed opportunities.  Instead, take some time to step back and look at the horizon. 

In recruiting, the term “horizon” includes understanding the “population dynamics” of your area.  Once you’ve figured out who you want to recruit, you’ll need to know if there are enough potential candidates available in your recruiting area for optimal goal achievement.

Experienced agent recruiting, convincing experienced agents to leave their company and join your team, is a great example of one way to identify a group of potential agents.  You have a vision of your ideal agent.  This includes a list of characteristics such as revenue history, experience level, current company, reputation in the marketplace, etc.  The more complete and valid you make your ideal agent profile, the better your chances will be of finding an agent who will produce the needed revenue in your organization and help you realize a return on your recruiting efforts. 

But, do the population dynamics of your recruiting horizon support your vision?  If your requirements are too specific, you’ll be unable to meet your goal AND you’ll likely need to lower your standards and hire agents who do not meet your long-term objectives.  To get an answer to this question, consider some of these factors: 

1. Geography.   Get a map and draw a circle around your office.  As the radius, use whatever distance you believe people will reasonably travel to be part of your office.  Now, mark each competitive real estate office inside your circle on the map.  Next to the office, write the number of agents who work in that office.
2. Age / Gender.   While it is frowned upon by EEOC regulators to exclude anyone from your office based on age and gender, there is nothing wrong with focusing your proactive recruiting efforts on the specific individuals who will best meet the needs of your team in the years to come.  Many real estate offices have a substantial number of agents who will retire in the next few years.  You can increase the diversity in your office by hiring younger agents who can grow into their positions.  Also, some groups of clients are better served by hiring one gender rather than the other.  Again, the point is not to exclude anyone, rather to build your team with the optimal players who will maximize revenue.
3. Client Focus and Success.   Effective real estate sales execution is a neighborhood-by-neighborhood exercise.  If your office is getting shut out of certain neighborhoods by your competitors, then how can that problem be solved by recruiting?  It only makes sense to target the individual neighborhoods where you’re missing opportunities.  Can the agents who are successful in those neighborhoods be lured away from their companies?  If so, it’s a big win for your office.

There are probably several more population dynamics categories that can be targeted.  The point is that defining what kind of population is available is an important first step in building a recruiting plan.  If you don’t have this starting point, then deploying recruiting tactics may quickly and effectively lead you to an undesirable destination.

Going through an exercise like this will produce one of two results:  The hopeful result is that you’ll have identified exactly who you’re looking for, know whether the potential candidates exist in your recruiting horizon, and be ready to attack the challenge of hiring them with energy and excitement.  The more common result is that this exercise will help you realize that your objectives may not be realistic.  If this is your result, work to identify new sources for locating candidates and review well-thought-out compromises you are willing to make in order to meet your long-term objectives.  With either result, you’ll have a clearer view of your recruiting horizon and will have further defined your goals for the year. 

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. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.