Bringing a new real estate agent into your brokerage requires time, resources, and energy. It’s important to know that the agent you choose is up for the challenges ahead and ready to hit the ground running without a lot of handholding and babysitting.
These ten interview questions should give you a good sense of where agents are in their professional journeys and whether or not they’re a good fit for your organization.
10 Real Estate Job Interview Questions
Will the person you’re interviewing bring value to your organization? Here are some questions to help you determine whether they are a good hire.
1. What markets are you currently serving?
Part of your strategy as a broker should be to cover various geographic areas, real estate market niches, and price points through the real estate agents on your roster. It doesn’t make much sense to bring in someone already working in the areas your other agents are covering. After all, you don’t want to encourage unhealthy competition among your agents or concentrate all your resources on the same micro-market.
2. Are there markets or niches where you’d like to expand?
However successful an agent is currently, they should always be thinking about growth. Growth is good for their individual real estate business and for your brokerage as well. Find out what the agent plans to do next and ensure that it aligns with your needs and those of your most productive current agents.
3. Tell me about your successes and challenges over the past 12 months.
Anyone can have a bad month or two, and seasonal fluctuations are a real factor in some markets. By looking at the past year, you’ll get an idea of the overall state of the agent’s business and the flow of their client work. When discussing challenges, listen for the following red flags:
No challenges: This is unrealistic and may indicate dishonesty or a lack of self-reflection.
Blaming others for challenges: While everyone has demanding clients or colleagues, the agent should be able to speak about their performance without throwing others under the bus.
Frustration with the previous broker or brokerage: Be careful when dealing with an agent who complains excessively about a previous brokerage, team leader, or managing broker. This may indicate a negative attitude toward leadership in general.
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4. What are your current marketing strategies? How successful have they been?
Job One for a real estate agent is bringing in new clients. In order to build a robust and resilient business, agents should have a variety of ways to obtain and nurture leads. In addition, they should track each of their marketing efforts to find out what’s working, what’s not, and what adjustments are necessary.
5. What research, training, or continuing education have you completed in the last 12 months?
You’ll probably have a good idea of the certifications and designations the agent has earned throughout their career, but it’s important to know what they have done lately. Find out what new skills they have developed within the previous year. Don’t limit yourself to real estate topics only. Ask about marketing, content creation, financial planning, business development, management, and other relevant issues.
6. What is your biggest challenge as a real estate professional?
It is important to know what struggles the agent grapples with and, more importantly, what they do to address them. Beware of agents who can’t name a challenge or produce an easy answer like, “I’m too much of a perfectionist” or “I’m too dedicated to my work.”
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7. What is your greatest strength as a real estate professional?
Similarly, agents should have a good grasp of what they do well and how that impacts their success. Beware of a disconnect between the agent’s self-identified strength and your own impressions based on the interview. For example, if an agent claims to be an outgoing people-person, but you don’t see any sign of this, they may have a distorted sense of their own performance.
8. Tell me about a challenging transaction and what you did to overcome the challenges.
As the saying goes, it’s not the falling down but the getting up that is important. While everyone has difficult transactions occasionally, you can learn a lot from how the agent responds to challenges as they arise. How proactive is the agent? How detail-oriented? How calm or stressed do they appear? Do they have a good perspective on problem-solving? Do they have a great professional network to draw on? All of these provide a sense of what it will be like to work with this agent, in good times and bad.
9. What do clients say about working with you?
The agent may be able to quote specific testimonials from past clients in answer to this question or may be able to give you personal insights based on experience and client interactions. Either way, this is an excellent opportunity to learn more about how others see the agent and how the agent views their performance.
10. What is your plan for growing your business in the next 12 months?
Agents should be goal-oriented and operate with a growth mindset. This question allows you to determine their plans based on past performance, market research, and client feedback. No plans for change or growth? That is information that you need to know as well and may indicate a complacency you’d rather avoid.
Once you have chosen the right agents for your brokerage, ensure they receive quality continuing education. Turn to Colibri Real Estate for top-tier continuing education courses for you and your agents.
