5 Real Estate Resume Rules To Land More Interviews

If you’re trying to break into the commercial real estate industry today, you have to stand out when submitting an application.

And in this post, we’ll walk through five of the biggest things you can do on your resume to get your foot in the door for interviews and ultimately land job offers in CRE.

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Rule #1: Add Measurable Results to Your Resume

Regardless of the industry you’re coming from or how much commercial real estate experience you have, the biggest thing you can do to set yourself apart from other candidates in a job application is to add measurable results to your resume whenever possible.

Including general responsibilities you’ve held on your resume is helpful, but employers also want to see that you’ve produced in the roles you’ve had, rather than just going through the motions and getting your work done.

What Measurable Results Look Like in Real Estate

In a real estate context, this often means adding things like:

• The total transaction volume you’ve worked on
• The number of units or total square footage you’ve managed or acquired
• The portfolio sizes of the companies you worked for
• Real estate-related software you’ve used that could help you hit the ground running

For example, if you had an internship in acquisitions that you wanted to highlight, instead of just writing “Underwrote properties for potential acquisition using company’s financial model,” you’ll want to use language that quantifies that work more, like:

“Underwrote over $500 million of potential multifamily and retail acquisition opportunities throughout the Phoenix, Denver, and Las Vegas markets, resulting in over $70 million of closed transactions.”

Even if your work experience isn’t directly related to real estate, if there’s an impressive financial figure that you can add, a number of team members you trained or managed, or an increase in business you generated when working in a sales-related role, adding details related to these things will go a long way towards helping you land an interview.

Rule #2: Demonstrate Soft Skills Through Your Experience

The next thing to do to make your resume stand out when applying for commercial real estate roles is to replace a list of soft skills that you might have on your resume with bullet points that demonstrate these directly within your work experience.

Listing attributes like “hard working, team player, collaborative, or innovative” doesn’t do anything to show a hiring manager what you’ve actually done, and also doesn’t prove that you have these traits.

For example, instead of just saying that you have negotiation skills, talk through the times where you’ve used those negotiation skills successfully, and then quantify the outcomes that those skills have produced.

And instead of saying you’re a hard worker, talk through how you were able to ramp up quickly in a new job, or exceed your sales targets consistently each year.

No hiring manager reads a list of traits on a resume and automatically believes everything in front of them, and this not only wastes space but can also lead a hiring manager to believe that you don’t actually have the experience to back up what you’re saying.

Rule #3: Use a Standard, Conventional Resume Format

The next thing I’d recommend is to use a standard, conventional resume format rather than something overly creative.

If you go to a site like Canva.com and search through available resume templates, you’ll see a lot of these to choose from that look pretty good.

However, many of these are very difficult to follow and distract from the content of the resume itself, which can make your resume difficult to read for a hiring manager and ultimately reduce your chances of being invited in for an interview.

The ATS Problem

A lot of resumes are also filtered through automated resume screening software (ATS), which can sometimes get tripped up with unconventional formats, meaning that using a non-traditional resume layout can even have the unintended drawback of taking you out of the running for roles that you may have otherwise been qualified for.

Just make sure you’re using a clean and clear format without images or a bunch of bright colors, and focus on the content of your resume first and foremost.

Rule #4: Use Punctuation and Capitalization Consistently

The next recommendation I have is to use punctuation and capitalization consistently throughout your resume, and make sure to double-check this before submitting applications.

Because commercial real estate analyst roles require so much attention to detail, forgetting a period or capitalizing a word that doesn’t need to be capitalized can be a big deal on your resume when applying for these jobs.

If you scroll through an offering memorandum or even a basic brochure put together by firms like CBRE and JLL, you’ll notice that these have a very specific format that’s consistent across the board. And since these are put together by analysts, you need to be able to show that you also put a significant amount of attention to detail into your work product, and your resume is the first place where you can demonstrate that.

Just make sure that capitalization and punctuation are consistent throughout your resume, and if possible, get a friend you trust (or an AI tool) to proofread this first before submitting applications.

Rule #5: Be Strategic About Including Your GPA

The last thing I’d recommend is to remove your GPA from your resume if this is less than 3.7, or if you’ve been out of school for more than two years.

Companies will ask for a transcript if they want to see your performance in school, but if your GPA doesn’t stand out, or if you have work experience that would overshadow a relatively weak GPA, this doesn’t need to be added voluntarily to your resume.

A lot of people take demanding course loads, juggle more than one major, or work throughout school, all of which can make it extremely difficult to excel academically. And if your GPA is on the lower end of the spectrum for any of these reasons, keeping the focus on your work experience, the degree that you earned, and the organizations that you were a part of during school is going to be much more beneficial within your applications.

Even if your GPA was impressive, I would also recommend removing this once you have about two years of full-time work experience under your belt, since this keeps the focus on what you’ve done professionally and the things you’ve accomplished on the job.

Take Your Resume to the Next Level

If you want access to sample resume and cover letter templates, along with courses that will equip you with the technical knowledge you’ll need to land an analyst or associate role at a top commercial real estate firm, make sure to check out our all-in-one membership training platform, Break Into CRE Academy.

A membership to the Academy will give you instant access to over 120 hours of video training on real estate financial modeling and analysis, you’ll get access to hundreds of practice Excel interview exam questions, sample acquisition case studies, and you’ll also get access to the Break Into CRE Analyst Certification Exam, which covers topics like real estate pro forma and development modeling, commercial real estate lease modeling, equity waterfall modeling, and many other real estate financial analysis concepts that will help you prove to employers that you have what it takes to tackle the responsibilities of an analyst or associate at a top real estate firm.