- It's the classic chicken-and-the-egg scenario.
You need experience to get the job,
but you need the job to get experience.
If you're trying to break into the real estate industry,
this video is for you.
I'm going to share some specific strategies
that you can use to land your first job in real estate.
Stay tuned.
(upbeat music)
Hi, I'm Vanessa Rosenblum.
I'm the president of Pro REA Staffing.
We're a nationwide search and placement firm,
and we specialize in placing administrative staff
with real estate teams across the United States and Canada.
So when you're finished watching this video,
make sure to go to PROREASTAFFING.COM
and check out our current job openings.
On this channel, we focus on fostering careers
in real estate and growing real estate teams.
So if you're not already a subscriber, and you're looking
to get your foot in the door in real estate,
this is the channel you'll want to keep coming back to.
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when we post new content.
Okay, so the first step in landing your first job
in real estate, is figuring out what your end game is.
What do I mean by that?
What I mean is, ultimately,
once you've been in the industry for a few years,
do you want to be a top-performing sales agent,
or do you want to be a top administrator for a large team?
Your options in real estate are generally
either to go into sales or administration
or marketing, but that's a different video.
If your goal is ultimately
to be a top-performing sales person,
or a salesperson on a team, my best advice for you
is to start out in a sales role.
Spending two or three years working as an administrator
will not teach you the sales skills you need
in order to be successful.
And truly, it will be a waste of your time.
There are opportunities that have base salaries
like an inside sales agent or a showing assistant.
You could also land a job as a buyers' agent on a team.
These roles will teach you how to sell.
And the most important thing you need to know
as you're learning the industry
and getting your foot in the door
is how to get clients and how to close deals.
Now if your goal is to grow into a management level position
and stay in administration and management,
then this next section is for you.
Now for some of you, you might be wondering
why would anybody get into real estate
if their goal isn't to sell?
And truly, being an operations manager
for a real estate team is a valid career.
It can be a very well-paying career,
and it offers stability that you just don't get
if you're in sales.
You get to be in the industry
and help people buy and sell properties,
but you don't have the risk and the exposure
and the ebbs and flows in your income
that you'll face if you're a commissioned salesperson.
So it's a great career for someone
who has strong administrative skills
and wants to be part of the industry.
So some of the essential skills
that you just have to have
if you're going to be successful in this role,
and these are skills that you can hone
in any other industry that you might currently be in.
The most important thing you need
is solid administrative skills.
I mean, that goes without saying, right?
But here I'm talking about your ability
to manage somebody else and support them
with their calendaring, their correspondence,
making sure they're where they need to be
with what they need to have on time
and free of distractions.
You also need to be a pro at creating order out of chaos
and creating systems and procedures that work.
Next, you must have good tech skills.
You might have prior experience editing video
or using the Adobe Creative Suite.
Maybe you're just techy in general
and things like learning new software programs
or databases comes naturally to you.
Those are really important skills,
because, truly, most sales agents
aren't that great with technology,
and they'll be looking to you as their admin
to solve tech issues and figure things out
and adopt to the best new resource.
So your tech skills
are essential to your success in this job.
Next, customer service is key.
In whatever industry you're in,
if you can hone your ability to create an outstanding,
special, and unique customer experience,
those are skills that will take you far in this job.
Next are your leadership skills.
What's unique about a job as a real estate assistant
is that your role isn't, you're not an order taker.
Somebody who is going to be successful
in this role long term is a leader in their role.
They take responsibility for their tasks,
and they push other people and processes forward.
They're not looking for direction or feedback.
They're pushing things forward.
So this is something, again, that you can hone
no matter what job you currently have.
And then finally, you must be a strong communicator.
Your ability to write, edit, and proofread is essential.
So if it's been a little while
since you've taken a writing course,
or you feel like your writing isn't completely up to par,
there are so many resources online
to help you become a better writer.
This you must master
before getting your foot in the door in real estate.
Also, just a little extra tip,
if you're not already using Grammarly, download Grammarly.
I'll add the link below.
This isn't an affiliate promo.
It's just a really great tool for making sure
that everything you write is grammatically correct
and makes you look like a professional.
Those skills that I just mentioned are the things
that if you don't have real estate experience,
those are the things that you want to highlight
on your resume.
Those are the things that you want to talk about
when you're interviewing with a client,
because, look, somebody can have 10 years
of real estate experience and not really be talented.
At the end of the day, someone who's talented
and has that strong core skill base
is going to be successful in their role.
And so most agents, at the end of the day,
are likely to be willing to train someone
who demonstrates strong essential core skills
even if they don't know how to manage a transaction.
If you want to take it one step forward,
there are some essential real estate-specific skills
that you can start to work on and master
before you land your first job in real estate.
The first is learning real estate software
like the MLS, zipForms,
and transaction management programs like TransactionPoint.
Also, databases, if you have experience with a CRM system
like, oh, gosh, there's so many, Top Producer,
Wise Agent, Goldmine, those concepts transfer
over lots of different databases.
But the idea of categorizing people properly,
tagging them, sorting them, and creating drip campaigns
or processes related to those contacts,
that's a really core part of your job
as a real estate assistant.
And if you've done that in another industry,
and you can demonstrate that you have that experience
and you're good at managing a database,
that is experience that will take you farther
in the interview process.
Next is contract knowledge.
Now you don't have to be a contract expert,
but it really is helpful if you can get your hands
on a purchase agreement and a listing agreement
and just read them and understand what they're saying
and what the different dates mean.
And look up vocabulary that you're not familiar with
just so that you understand the basics of a transaction.
And that brings me to my last point.
And that's real estate vocabulary.
You can buy real estate vocabulary dictionaries.
And there are plenty of resources on line.
But the more you understand about the terminology
and some of the acronyms
that are used in real estate, the better.
And finally, I think it's important to understand
why it's so hard to land a job in real estate
when you don't have experience.
And there are really three main reasons here.
The first is that real estate agents, just as a rule,
aren't good trainers.
And the idea of having to slow down and sit with somebody
and explain the basics of real estate
just feels incredibly overwhelming to a majority of agents.
Next, they're moving fast, and they don't want to slow down.
And going back to the training component,
they just want someone who's going to come in
and hit the ground running.
So the more you can do to demonstrate
that you're going to be able to pick up
what you don't know quickly
and you're going to take the extra time and effort
to master skills you don't already have,
so that they don't have to slow down, the better.
And then, finally, you need to understand
that a real estate agent doesn't want
to train their competition.
If you come in and your goal is to sell real estate
in a few years, most agents aren't going to hire you.
Because why would they invest
all of that time and money and energy
in teaching you how they work and how they want things,
only to have you leave and then become their competition?
So keep that in mind.
And that's why I encourage if your goal
is to sell real estate, get a job that's going
to teach you how to sell real estate.
If your goal is to be an administrator,
then getting a job as a real estate assistant
is a really great option for you.
So I hope that you found this information helpful.
The more that you can do to improve your core skills
and learn real estate terminology and technology,
the easier it will be for you to land your first job
in real estate and the more money you'll make
out of the gate.
If you come in completely green with a lower skillset,
you might get hired, but it's probably
not going to be the best job out there.
And you're definitely not going to make top dollar.
And finally, one last thing I want to touch on,
and that is getting your real estate license.
If you're going to go into sales,
obviously, you need to get your license right away
and hang it with a brokerage.
If your goal is to be an administrator,
you don't always need to be licensed.
And if you decide to get a role
as a front office admin or an agent services coordinator
in a real estate brokerage,
you most likely don't need to be licensed.
However, at some point it does make sense
for you to get your license
so that you can answer the phone, go on showings,
and be of greater support to your team.
And it's also a great way for you to learn
some of the fundamentals of real estate,
some of the vocabulary and the contracts.
So I encourage you to look into getting licensed,
even if your goal is to stay on the administrative side
of the business.
And I'll link to a real estate school
in the description below that we recommend.
And that's one place for you to check out
to get your license.
I hope that this information was helpful for you.
Don't forget to go to PROREASTAFFING.COM
to check out our current jobs.
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if you liked this video and subscribe.
We will see you on the next video.