How to hire a negotiator who stays

A bad hire in a small agency costs more than the salary. It costs the landlords they upset, the time you spend fixing it, and the good person you could have had instead. This is the process I settled on after getting it wrong more times than I would like to admit.

Write the advert for the person, not the job

Most agency adverts list duties. Nobody reads them. Write about who will do well here, what they will learn, and what the next step looks like. Say what the pay actually is. People who are serious skip adverts that hide it.

Phone first, for ten minutes

Before any interview, ring them. Can they hold a conversation with a stranger? Do they ask questions? Do they sound like somebody a nervous first-time landlord would trust? Half of the applicants fall away at this stage and it costs you ten minutes each.

One interview, with a task

Give them a real situation. A tenant has rung to say the boiler has gone and the landlord is not answering. What do they do, in what order? You are not looking for the perfect answer. You are looking for whether they think, whether they stay calm, and whether they would pick up the phone or send an email.

Check the last two jobs properly

Not a letter. A phone call to a previous manager, with three questions. Would you have them back? What were they best at? What did you have to manage? Most people will tell you a great deal in the gaps between answers.

The first ninety days

Most leavers decide to leave in the first three months, usually because nobody showed them how things are done and they felt stupid. Give them a written list of what good looks like at thirty, sixty and ninety days. Sit with them for fifteen minutes every Friday. It is the cheapest retention scheme there is.

The contract

Have a proper one, with a notice period that matches their seniority and restrictive covenants that protect your landlords and your staff. A handshake is not a contract, and a buyer will ask to see every one.