30 Aug Property Management Candidate Shortage

Residential Property Management continues to be an area of extreme candidate shortage.

We as recruiters are constantly faced with the task of how to tackle this shortage, find experienced PMs and retain them in businesses. The average life of a property manager at any one agency is only nine months! We need to address and fix this solution. At Real Estate Career Developers we like thinking outside the box to achieve the means to any successful solution.

One idea – employ on attitude rather than experience. You can teach skills but not personality, attitude or ambition. As the saying goes… “Hire for attitude and train for skills.”

1. When you have found a candidate with these three key features, mould and build them into the Property Managers you need and require for the future. This creates new positive habits and doesn’t recycle bad ones.
2. Hire a positive attitude and pro-activeness with a candidate who is eager to learn and succeed.
3. Recruit a skill set already established in another industry that has a strong focus on exceptional customer service. These skills are transferrable. They also bring fresh ideas of how to do things, especially around business operations and additional perspective from successful businesses in other market spaces.
4. Diversity – age group, gender, race and religion. Don’t go with the typical or expected candidate. You risk losing exposure to a large segment of candidates.
5. Improve your current team members skill set by incentivising them to train new employees. This creates a sense of purpose and progression for the current PMs in your team.
6. Save $$$! The average placement of an Assistant Property Manager is in the range of $45K-55K+ Superannuation depending on location and previous experience. In comparison, an experienced senior is achieving in the range of $60K -70K+ Superannuation. This enables the ability to review and reward staff members based on performance. Let’s be honest who doesn’t want to save on overheads?

In the past week we have been working with a successful client in the northern suburbs with a multi-office network who has recently employed three entry level candidates with the view to step them up and support them into a long term Property Management careers at their company. Alongside them will be an experienced Senior Property Manager who will support, train and mould them with the necessary skill set to succeed and encourage long term tenure with their agency for all these employees.

If you are interested in discussing recruiting a candidate in your business, please reach out today on (03) 9949 8290 or [email protected] for further details. Client and candidate referrals will receive a $250 voucher upon placement.