The Best Real Estate Jobs For New College Grads

While there’s no such thing as a perfect company, there are some things that, if you can find in your first real estate job out of college, can set you on a great trajectory to have a very successful career.

And in this post, we’ll walk through four of the most important things to focus on when considering different job opportunities in commercial real estate, and how each of these things can impact your growth long-term.

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#1: Maximize Your Exposure to Transactions

The first thing on this list is one of the most important things you can do to set yourself up for success in this industry, and this is looking for jobs where you’ll maximize your exposure to transaction volume.

This is why I’m such a big proponent of investment sales analyst roles, debt and equity placement roles, and acquisitions roles for people just starting their careers. These jobs will put you on the front lines of transaction activity, which will expose you to the different hurdles that companies have to work through to get deals closed.

This will also directly involve you with the underwriting and valuation process of commercial properties, along with the creation of investment materials to present to clients, equity partners, or lenders, which can help you learn what capital sources are looking for when funding a real estate deal.

The more transactions you work on, the more you’ll be trusted to start running these deals yourself early on in your career, and these are also the kinds of measurable achievements you can add to a resume that can help you stand out when applying for senior-level roles.

When This Doesn’t Apply

The caveat here is when your main goal is to build a career in asset management or portfolio management, since exposure to real estate operations is a lot more valuable within these career paths.

However, if you’re someone who’s targeting titles like Chief Investment Officer or Director of Acquisitions, you want to be a top-producing broker working with institutional clients, or you’re looking to start your own real estate investment firm, working on as much transaction volume as possible will be extremely beneficial for your long-term career growth.

#2: Institutional Leadership

The next thing to focus on when choosing where to work is finding an opportunity where senior leadership within the company, your direct manager, and/or your peers that you’d be working with have institutional experience.

Learning Best Practices

The companies in this industry that are the biggest allocators of capital or broker the biggest deals are trusted by investors and clients because of the way they do things. And if you can learn these best practices from people who cut their teeth directly in those environments (even if you’re not working at one of these firms), this will give you exposure to a way of doing things that can maximize your chances of success long term.

The way you’re expected to analyze deals, the way investment materials are put together, and even the way someone you work with interacts with a potential client or partner will all rub off on you. And if you put yourself in a situation where you’re working alongside a team that uses these best practices on a day-to-day basis, this is going to make you a much more attractive employee, capital partner, or investment advisor overall.

#3: Look for a Steep Learning Curve

The next thing I would focus on is something that a lot of people shy away from, and this is to look for a job where the learning curve will be steep.

If you care enough about your career to take the time out of your day to read a post like this, I’m willing to bet that you plan to work hard in any job you have.

The Problem with Easy Jobs

Where I see a lot of people run into trouble is that they take a job that’s ultimately too easy, and their learning curve flattens out in just three to six months. Once that happens, these people spend the next few years feeling bored when they go into work every day, ultimately just waiting until it feels more acceptable to start applying for other jobs.

Especially if you’re in your early 20s, if you can use this time to do things that are a little bit more challenging than what your peers are doing, this will get your years of “paying your dues” out of the way before you have other commitments that can make it harder to put in long hours at the office.

Hard Work vs. Hard People

I want to make it clear that while you want the work you’d be doing to be hard, this doesn’t mean that you’ll want to work alongside people who are hard to work with. If a company culture itself feels hard (meaning there’s a lot of tension in the office, it’s clear that people don’t get along, or senior management is extremely demanding and unforgiving), this is probably not a place you want to be.

However, if you can put yourself in an environment where you’re working alongside good people, the expectations for work quality are high, and the deal structures you’ll be working on are complex, this type of experience is really hard to beat.

#4: Look for Companies Where Alumni Have Been Successful

The last thing I’d recommend looking for in a job is something that’s very similar to looking for companies run by people with institutional backgrounds, and this is to look for companies where former employees have gone on to be successful.

If you spend some time on LinkedIn, you’ll start to find that there are certain companies that tend to create a lot of entrepreneurs or leaders within other organizations. And when you see this as a pattern, this is generally an indicator that the environment you’d be working in and the things you would learn while working for that company would very likely increase your chances of following a similar path.

The Alumni Effect

This can also create a sort of alumni effect, especially at bigger companies, which can be helpful to make connections later on. So if you end up working at Blackstone, for example, and then you start your own company in the future, it’s very likely that other ex-Blackstone employees that are also entrepreneurs would be very willing to talk to you.

Ideally, you want to put yourself in a position where just by showing up and doing the work that’s expected of you, you’re putting yourself on a path where others have seen success. And while this isn’t an absolute necessity to find a great career opportunity, this is something I’ve found to be a really valuable strategy when narrowing down a job search.

How To Build The Skills You’ll Need To Land a Real Estate Job

If you’re trying to land a job in commercial real estate right now and you want to make sure you have the technical skills you’ll need to land an analyst or associate role, 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.