The Real Estate Recruiting Cycle [What To Expect]

The commercial real estate recruiting process can look a lot different than what you might see in other industries like investment banking or consulting, and this can be pretty confusing if you’re looking for your first job.

This is especially true if you’re finishing up your degree and seeing your friends in other industries landing full-time job offers at the end of their summer internships, or in November or December of your final year in school.

So to help make this process a little less daunting, this post walks through what the commercial real estate job search timeline actually looks like, why this differs so much from other closely related industries, and how to position yourself to land a full-time offer.

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“Just-in-Time” Hiring

The first thing to understand about hiring in commercial real estate is that the vast majority of companies in this industry follow what’s referred to as a “just-in-time” hiring process.

This means that most firms are only posting roles that they’re ideally looking to fill as soon as possible. And in most cases, companies won’t even consider candidates that wouldn’t be able to start in the next 30-60 days.

The main reason for this is that commercial real estate firms typically only have a small number of analysts and associates on their teams, and therefore won’t hire formal analyst classes like you might see in other industries.

This means that instead of a company hiring ~25-50 analysts at a time, commercial real estate firms might only have anywhere from ~1-5 analysts to begin with, so there isn’t a need for a formal recruiting cycle to hire new analysts every year.

This tends to be true even at bigger companies within this industry that will often hire based on the needs of individual teams within specific regional offices, so while a company like CBRE or JLL might have hundreds of thousands of employees in total, the multifamily investment sales team in Houston, for example, might only have one or two analysts.

Exception #1: Real Estate Investment Banking

There are some exceptions to this, with the first being roles in real estate investment banking. In these roles, you’ll typically be working on mergers and acquisitions of entire operating companies that have some sort of involvement with the real estate industry.

Now, if your goal to work on the acquisition and asset management of individual real estate assets or portfolios of properties, these jobs typically aren’t going to be the right fit, since you’ll be focused mostly on analyzing management teams and making company-wide operating projections. However, if real estate investment banking is your goal starting out, recruiting for these jobs will typically start in the late summer or early fall of your senior year.

Exception #2: Big Banks and Private Equity Firms

The second exception to this would be the recruiting cycle at some of the biggest banks and private equity firms that have a real estate arm in their business, but aren’t necessarily exclusively focused on the commercial real estate industry, and recruiting also sometimes starts in the fall for jobs that would start in the following summer.

Just because a company is big doesn’t necessarily mean the recruiting cycle will start this far in advance, but this does mean that if you’re targeting these types of firms, you’ll want to keep your eye out for job postings starting around late August or early September.

Application Timing

For the majority of real estate firms that don’t recruit this far in advance, the sweet spot to start submitting job applications (if you’re graduating in May or June) will typically be about February or March of your graduation year.

Your chances of landing an offer typically go up as you get closer to your graduation date, but if you start the application process around this time, with the resume screening and interview process itself often taking anywhere from about 3-6 weeks in total, this timing usually ends up working well for most firms.

How To Prepare – Step 1

The first thing I’d recommend doing in the fall and winter, as you’re preparing to submit applications, is building relationships with industry professionals that you could ideally leverage during the job search.

Networking only works when you’re not immediately asking for something, and by getting ahead of this process in the fall and winter and building these relationships before you need something, you’ll have time to build trust and credibility with the people you end up connecting with.

This is your time to send out messages to people working in the commercial real estate industry with career paths you admire, and ask to get on the phone or meet for coffee to learn more about how they got to where they are today.

This could also involve joining the local chapters of organizations like NAIOP or ULI and showing up at their networking events or conferences, which will start to make you a familiar name and face in the industry when you do start applying for jobs.

How To Prepare – Step 2

The second thing worth focusing on during the fall and winter is landing a part-time internship during your final year in school, with the goal to build relationships and real-world skills that you could leverage into a full-time opportunity.

Because commercial real estate firms usually operate with a very small number of analysts on their teams, when a need arises for a new hire, it’s usually pretty urgent, and they’ll look to fill that open position as soon as possible.

If you’re currently working for a company as an intern (even on just a part-time basis) and that company’s main analyst or associate leaves the firm, if you’ve been doing good work and fit well within the team, this can often make you a very clear choice to backfill the position. And even if this type of scenario doesn’t play out, having another internship on your resume can be a great way to differentiate yourself during the application process.

When you take on a part-time internship during your final year of school, in my experience, one of the two following things will generally end up happening when you graduate.

The first is that the company really likes you and decides to bring you on full-time, even if there isn’t a clear pressing need to expand the team.

This is often the smoothest transition, because you already know the way things operate, you know whether it’s a fit on both sides, and you’re most likely already doing a lot of the work you would be doing in a full-time analyst or associate role.

The second (and much more common path in my experience) is that the company you’re working for doesn’t have an immediate hiring need, but they know people in the industry that do, and they can put you in touch with key decision makers who can help move you along in the process.

If you do good work in an internship, the company you work for will also often go to bat for you and vouch for your work ethic or skill set, and this can help a lot during the interview process, especially for competitive roles.

If You Don’t Have an Offer Yet, Don’t Panic

The key thing I want you to take away from this post is that if you don’t have a job lined up by December, January, or February of your final year in school, you don’t need to panic.

While you do want to keep your eyes open in the fall for potential full-time job postings at some of the biggest firms in the industry, it’s a lot more likely that the company you’ll end up working for won’t even consider your application until right before you graduate.

How To Build The Skills You’ll Need To Land an Offer

If you want to make sure you’re prepared for the application process at commercial real estate firms, and you want to make sure you have the technical skills you’ll need to pass an Excel modeling exam that might be given to you during the interview process, 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.