A question we hear frequently from people who talk with us about our branding strategy is this: “You TALK about having a better, more professional caliber of Realtor, but can you really have agents that are any better than those found at other companies?”

That is a great question; in fact, it may be the most important question you can ask. After all, the reputation of a company is nothing more than the collective reputations of the real estate professionals working at that company.

And my unequivocal answer to that question is this: “Absolutely, positively, YES.”

So, that leads to the next logical question: “OK, so how do you do that?”

The answer: “We engage people based on CHARACTERISTICS, not SKILLS.”

This runs counter to what I’ve experienced personally, which is that the “norm” in corporate America is that people usually “get the job” because they have some history of past experience that lines up well with the job being filled.

Since we believe that character matters MORE than having any particular skill set, we separate ourselves from traditional human resource philosophy on this point.

So what are characteristics anyway? They are the innate attributes of a person that aren’t teachable.

The key characteristics we look for when hiring our agents are:

• Honesty and integrity
• Empathy
• A good listener
• Ability to imagine themselves in the situations of others
• Desire to “make things better” for people
• Perseverance/tenacity
• A strong work ethic

This list is really describing one characteristic I’ll call “people orientation + integrity.”

And these characteristics are the ones that seem to correlate most consistently with having that optimal orientation for our corporate culture.

And they are fundamental elements of a person’s own motivation: Why do they think they have the “people orientation + integrity” character that we feel is so crucial?

Here’s a short list of good answers to that question:

• Because they want to reduce suffering in the world
• Because they have a burning drive to make life better for people
• Because they are so frustrated at how poorly and unprofessionally real estate services are typically provided

And here’s a short list of the not-so-good answers:

• Use of the word “money”
• Use of the word “easy”
• Use of the phrase “thought I’d give it a try” (thus rendering “I heard real estate was EASY MONEY, so I THOUGHT I’D GIVE IT A TRY” the penultimate “reject this candidate” expression)

We look for evidence of “people orientation” during interviews. Generally, the resume isn’t much help.

And that’s why, unlike every other real estate company that we know, we take this a step further and subject all of our agent candidates to a character and behavior assessment.

This assessment actually provides a quantitative measurement of a candidate’s behavior and character, and is specifically designed to identify the people that fit our Mission Statements and Core Values – and screen out those that don’t!

As I said, we hire agents for their characteristics, not their skills.

We can teach skills. Trying to teach characteristics is a frustrating endeavor with little hope for success.

If we find that the candidate matches the profile of what we’re looking for, we are confident that we can teach the actual skills that are needed.

A great book about this topic in general is: “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

Once people are on staff, we begin the process of filling in the missing skills that are specific to real estate.  But I’ll save that for a future discussion.

As a final comment, allow me to say this: ANY form of pre-screening – whether it’s based on characteristics OR skills – is a step up from what we see as the norm in the real estate industry, which I (and many other critics of the industry) would describe as “any warm body will do.”

That, in my humble opinion, is the primary reason that our industry is perceived so poorly so consistently (see other blog post entitled “The People Have Spoken“).