Hands down, it was thumbs down. Voters in last week's Feedback Poll gave the industry very low marks in its ability to mentor new talent. Young guns, it would seem are on their own, until they bring in that first big score, at least. It comes as no surprise to Dowling, who is also assistant vice president at development firm Antares Real Estate Partners. Here's what he has to say:

"I'm not surprised at the results. I started the Young Real Estate Professionals here for this very reason, because young employees weren't receiving mentoring or training in any formalized fashion whatsoever.

"Let's look at the debt and the equity side of real estate development. Historically, when young bankers were brought into the industry, they received formalized credit training, and that was standard industry practice for as long as most people can remember. About six or seven years ago the banks just decommissioned all of their credit-training programs, so there are probably less than a handful of banks that still have these programs in place. This is really to the detriment of these young bankers, who have to seek training in an unstructured manner. Hopefully they can find themselves positioned under a more senior banker with the time and energy to give that type of training.

"Anecdotally, with brokerage firms it's very much a sink-or-swim industry, from what I hear. When people start out there's a big rooting-out process. If you can't learn the business quickly, the end-users, the clients, are going to smell out the people who are not capable of giving service. That's a result of not getting any training.

"In the real estate industry, and probably in other industries as well, there is a real neglect of people's intellectual capital. Most companies rely on the superstars simply appearing rather than proactively creating talent through training. No one is going though any internal training programs because they simply don't exist."