In his GlobeSt.com blog today, Anthony LoPinto suggests that based on the hiring activity he sees, while real estate hiring has improved a bit overall, it is still a very difficult job market for new graduates entering the business.  It appears as though hiring managers are opting to hire the over-qualified for entry-level positions to leverage their talent for a year or two and take their chances on a likely departure.  – I am not so sure that is such a sound strategy.

I think the net results of this approach are the following: First, you have hired someone for an important role who has a foot out the door before they have even started.  Second, if this is a wide-spread occurrence, there is a chance that the future talent pool will be degraded for years to come because many young, talented people will have been turned away and taken different career paths.

The landscape has shifted significantly for real estate and property management firms on a number of fronts, and hiring is certainly one of them. The BOMA Kingsley report of 2008 focused on the “human capital crisis” in the commercial real estate industry.   While it may appear that the recent economic circumstances have created a situation where a firm has their pick of talented and experienced people to fill available positions, consideration must be given to given to where the generation of future leaders will come from and a strategy put in place for re-stocking the talent pool.