The Montreal recruitment challenge!
Finding staff for a realtor or realty office presents unique needs and challenges. Most often, agents are looking for some very specific skills sets and experience levels as their businesses need to always look well planned and professional. They are also often looking for people who can come to the job and hit the ground running because there is no such thing as a slow season in some markets, like Toronto. Testing my ability to find the right person for the position is always a challenge that I enjoy. Testing that ability in another province was an altogether different proposition but one that I decided to embrace.
Back in August of 2016, while I was still on maternity leave, I received a call from a realtor in Montreal. She told me that someone in Toronto at Royal LePage gave her my name. This Montreal realtor told me that she was in dire need of help in recruiting. Her office manager of five years was leaving in less than six weeks and, despite her best efforts, she hadn’t been able to find a decent replacement.
I was a bit hesitant to take on the requisition to hire someone in a different city. I mean, I’ve built a finely tuned database and network in Toronto, but Montreal… That was a different story. I doubted my ability to find the right candidate, for a moment. But I could hear her desperation and I just couldn’t turn her down.
Now keep in mind, I was still on maternity leave and really didn’t want to start working just yet, but I figured dabbling and keeping my toes in the working water wouldn’t be a bad thing. That’s what I said to my friends and family anyway. In truth, the challenge excited me. Would I really be able to find someone in a different city, based on my tried and true yet so far only locally tested headhunting techniques?
We signed the agreement and the hunt began. Within two weeks, I had found her five experienced, highly talented candidates. She was blown away by her options, and the speed with which I had found them. I was a little less surprised, even if I do say so myself. It’s what I do and I’ve spent years perfecting the techniques that help to connect realtors with their new staff.
Out of the candidates I submitted, she turned one down because it was someone who worked for her best friend in real estate, and she didn’t want to rock that boat, and that was perfectly understandable. In the end, she ended up hiring a buyer agent through me and as well as finalizing an office manager hire.
She was so thrilled with my ability to headhunt from a different city, that she started to share my name with other Montreal realtors. In fact, I recently just placed an administrative assistant with another realtor at Profusion Immobilier. The challenge of recruiting from a distance is, in this day and age of technology, less of a problem than it would have been in the past. Finding a recruiter who knows the business they are recruiting for inside and out is not always as simple.
Ultimately, I was happy with the results of the Montreal challenge and so were my customers. They showed their enthusiasm in the best way any business can: through referrals. Repeat and referral business represents 99% of the clientele I have serviced. Soon after I took on the search for these three positions, plus a few more referrals from Toronto, I decided that mat leave was over, and re-launched AGENTC™’s website and services. It’s thrilling to know that I am helping realtors find the staff that they need so that they can do their jobs effectively. I hope that I can help you too.
