Young Talent Returns to CRE Brokerage

Young professionals and college graduates are returning to the commercial real estate brokerage industry, thanks to a healthy run in the last several years. Following the financial crisis, many young people entering the job market did not consider real estate as a potential industry. Now, with strong deal volume and economic fundamentals, young people are returning to the industry. However, in the last few years, commercial real estate has changed dramatically, in almost every asset class. We sat down with Jeff Rinkov, president and CEO of Lee & Associates, to talk about how they are attracting and training the next generation of brokers.

GlobeSt.com: How are you attracting young brokers to the firm?

Jeff Rinkov: We are really enthusiastic and hopeful about the number of young people that are exiting college and have an interest in participating in commercial real estate brokerage. We went for several years after 2009, where we were not able to attract people because the market was in such a transition. The transaction volume and velocity was so different than what it has been for the last five or six years. In the last four to six years, we have been able to do a good job as an industry of attracting people because there has been opportunity created based on market forces. We think that we have a good platform, but historically that platform has spoken to more senior or established brokers. What we realize is that culturally, we wanted to change and be more welcoming to younger brokers. We wanted to have the ability to instill our platform and our culture in them from day one, rather than focus on senior advisors and revenue producers. We need to now retrain our culture and our platform.

GlobeSt.com: How are you approaching training for the next generation?

Rinkov: In the last two to three years, our board of directors has really prioritized the training of younger brokers. We would categorize that group as being zero to five years in the business, and we have a two-pronged approach. The first is a training approach. That means that we are hiring qualified trainers in specific areas, and we are executing training. Then, we have a full day of very programed, specific training at our annual meeting, where all of our new brokers join. We have really tried to encourage a baseline fluency in all of the day-to-day aspects of brokerage. That is the first prong of our approach. The second part of our approach, which is equally as important, is our mentoring concept. We go from training to mentoring, and we try to pair a new broker with a senior broker. That experience is transformational because it goes from checking off a list of skill sets that we need to encourage and now we are transitioning into how things happen on a day-to-day basis. That is the 30,000-foot view of how we see our ability to bring people in and how we encourage them to have a career and a path to partnership.

GlobeSt.com: The industry has changed in the last few years. How has your recruiting and training strategy changed as a result of the changes in the industry?

Rinkov: Our approach is very different than it used to be. Before the advent of technology, we had a really different business. Our ability to encourage technology, which is really easy to do with younger brokers, gives the company a completely different way to prospect, communicate and to enhance value to clients. Much of the training that we have done has been about how to utilize technology, from content management resources, market data or distributing data to use market intelligence. Technology has been a big thrust for us in general and I think it has been really helpful in differentiating ourselves as well.

GlobeSt.com: Have you made an effort to increase diversity as well?

Rinkov: We are looking for certain types of people. We are looking for entrepreneurial people; we are looking for hardworking people; we are looking for people that are focused and have an interest in our business. We really like the idea of creating diversity, and we have an effort in place to hire more female brokers and minorities. It has been challenging, though, to compete with other avenues, where we have seen other avenues where we have seen women and minorities have felt more comfortable. I think that is because those groups have a lack presence in commercial real estate. We have done quite a bit to feature women in the company, and we have tried to promote the idea that the company is a place where women and minorities can achieve the maximum level of success.

GlobeSt.com: Are you beginning to promote millennial brokers into leadership positions?

Rinkov: The goal of our firm is to create leadership opportunities for all of our brokers, and the market has given us the opportunity to accelerate leadership opportunities for younger brokers. Deal flow, deal volume and deal velocity has done those things for us. We are able to graduate younger brokers on an accelerated basis into becoming partners and principals throughout the organization. On the technology side, we have been very successful in taking feedback from younger brokers about where they are seeing success and utilizing technology to serve clients and to identify opportunities in the market as well.