In this video i'm going to give you some insider tips to help you
master the real estate assistant interview. I'm going to give you
answers to the five most common real estate assistant interview questions,
and i'm going to give you some insider knowledge on
what your interviewer is REALLY looking for in your answer,
so stay tuned.
H,i i'm Vanessa, I'm the president of Pro REA Staffing.
We are the nation's largest real estate assistant staffing
firm, and we've placed over a thousand assistants in full-time roles across the
United States. So if you're looking for a new
opportunity in real estate, make sure to go to jobs.proreastaffing.com to
check out our latest jobs and subscribe to this channel.
Now, before we talk about these top five real estate assistant interview
questions, let's take a minute to talk about your
interviewers wants and fears. Now, it's important to
understand that your interviewer, the real estate agent that
you're interviewing with, is likely not a very experienced
interviewer, and they're probably nervous. They're
probably really short on time, and this is a
really important decision for them, and they are terrified of making a
mistake. So if you understand this and you understand what they're really
looking for in their next hire, you can be prepared and you can
help them answer the questions that they may not even think to ask you. So
no matter what role that you're looking to take
on in a real estate office, there's a 99% chance that your interviewer is looking
for somebody who is organized detail-oriented,
tech savvy, fast, flexible, and dependable, so when you prepare for
your interview take the time to sit down and think
about some real world examples of how when you demonstrated these
qualities. So for example, did you help your last boss go paperless?
Did you catch a billing error that saved the company a bunch of money?
Did you always finish your work early and have time to
help your colleagues with their assignments? Remember
to show and not tell. Telling somebody that you're
fast... worst thing you can say is that you're a "fast learner" -
nobody cares. It's much better to show by giving them an example
and that way you really drive the point home. Now let's dive into these
top five questions you'll likely be asked on a real estate assistant
interview. Okay so question number one is what are
your goals? Now the the only right answer to this
question is your 100% honest answer. If your goal
is to get a job as a real estate assistant because you want to learn
everything you can so that in one year you can go out and be a sales agent on
your own, you should say that, but you also
shouldn't be surprised when you don't get called back for a second
interview. You see the thing is, most agents aren't interested in training up
somebody who's going to leave them in a year
and go sell real estate. However, there ARE agents who are perfectly on board
with that. They might hope that you'll grow into a
buyer's agent role on their team, for example.
So it's important that you're honest about what you want so that
your goals are met by the company. Now if you're not looking to go into sales,
there's a good chance that you fall into one of two camps either one,
you are growth-minded - you are looking for a position where you can
learn and grow and take on more responsibilities and climb the ladder
quickly. Or, you might be looking for a stable position -
you might love this type of work and you're looking for a stable long-term
position with modest growth. Both of these are perfectly admirable
and possible, but they're very distinct so if you're
looking for growth it's important that you drive that point home
so that in a year from now you're not looking for another job again, because
you're bored doing the same old same old and vice versa. If you're looking for
stability and modest growth, don't join a company that
is growing quickly, because you're going to be challenged and you're going to
work your tail off every single day and that might not be what you're
looking for at this point in your career. So again, the only right answer to this
question is an honest answer and the only wrong answer is not
knowing what you want. Please take a minute to figure out what
it is you want so you can articulate that clearly when
you're sitting across the desk from an interviewer.
Okay question number two is do you have experience
managing listings? Now if you do have experience
managing listings or being a listing coordinator,
the correct answer to this question is "Yes, in fact my last agent took
x number of listings per month. I was responsible for preparing them for their
listing presentation, entering data into the MLS, coordinating
with vendors, sending out e-blasts, scheduling open
houses... you get the idea. It's important that you
provide details about what you did in the
process, because every agent does things a little
bit differently, and while you might think that you did
everything in the listing process, it's possible
that this agent does things differently, and if you aren't clear about what you
know how to do and what you didn't do, you're setting yourself up for
disappointment and frustration during your first 90 days on the job.
When this agent realizes that they have to train you on things
and then they're frustrated and you're frustrated, it's okay that you don't know
how to do things their way - that's reasonable.
Just make sure that you manage their expectations up front.
Now this same strategy goes for transaction coordination - if you've done
TC work, again - details, details, details. What did you do
within each transaction and how many
transactions did you manage per month? Now if you
haven't been a listing coordinator or a transaction coordinator,
chances are that you have prior experience that
is transferable so make sure to talk about
experience that you have following a detailed, multi-step
process and managing multiple projects at a time. If you've coordinated
with multiple parties and you've had to keep everybody informed and on
track, if you've reviewed legal documents, if you've coordinated with vendors and
managed their work and ensured that deadlines were met, and
if you have marketing experience, this is the time to talk about that as
well. Listing coordination is essentially project management
marketing and customer service rolled into one, so help your interviewer
connect the dots by talking about your transferable
skills and how you can use those skills in this job. Okay, question number three:
What did you do in your last job? Now think about the things that you did in
your last job that are most relevant to your current job.
So if you spent 50 percent of your time answering the phone and filing,
that's probably not the first thing you want to talk about if you're looking to
do something different in this next role, but if you also helped your boss prepare
for meetings and you kept them on track and on time talk about that.
Think about the things that are important to your interviewer that you
have experience doing in your past jobs, and focus in on
those areas of your responsibility. Okay number four: Do you have experience
setting up systems? Now when somebody asks you this question,
what they're really asking is are you able to observe a
process in an office setting that's inefficient?
Are you able to organize it into a series of steps,
document those steps on a checklist and then get
all of the other stakeholders on board and
compliant with your new process? Make sure when you talk about systems
that you talk about the why, and the outcome. So don't just
say i set up google drive
for the office. Ok fine, a much better answer to that question is, "I
noticed that we had documents on different computers and
that sometimes we had multiple copies of documents,
therefore I set up a google drive account, i brought all of the documents
onto the drive account, and I created a naming protocol
so that we had a standardized way that we named things.
I showed everybody how to use it, i downloaded the app onto
my boss's phone so that she always had access to our documents.
By doing this we cut down on unnecessary communication
and my boss was so much more independent when i wasn't available on nights and
weekends." Do you see how much more powerful that
is? it's important to remember that your agent is very good
at some things and creating systems likely isn't one of
them, and that's why they're hiring you. So
think about examples in your past where you
organized a system, created a process, created a checklist, documented how
things are supposed to be done, because that is a huge part of what
you'll be doing in a real estate office. Question number five: Why do you want to
work for me? n=Now this isn't a real estate specific
question, but man do people mess this one up when it
comes to interviewing for real estate assistant jobs.
Look - on the surface a real estate assistant job
seems pretty similar to every other job description,
but each of these jobs is incredibly unique because of the person or the team
that you work for. So do your homework figure out what is
it about this particular agent or team that resonates
with you. Do they throw really great client
parties and you love to throw a good party and so you
want to help them do that? Or maybe they volunteer for a charity
that you're really passionate about and you can connect with them on that
level. Your interviewer is asking you this question because they're trying to
figure out how you're going to fit into their
organization and if you're going to be a good
culture fit, and if you have a real deep reason for wanting to work for them,
or you're just looking for a job. Make them feel special and
let them know that you're really interested in them and this opportunity
and not just getting a job. If you master these five questions you
will be well on your way to wowing your next interviewer, and if
there are any questions that I didn't talk about here that you want help
answering leave them in the comments below and i
will reply, and hopefully I can help you master your
interview. Thanks for watching. If you like this
video, please hit subscribe. Go to proriestaffing.com to check out
our current jobs and I will see you on the
next video.