Real estate firm solves big problem...
The managing broker for the Northern California leading real estate firm had a serious problem. Over 85 percent of their new hire real estate agents were failing or quitting within 18 months. Costs for recruiting, onboarding, training, and support were soaring into the hundreds of thousands. Opportunity losses, where competitors got listings due to agent misfires, could easily be in the millions. The broker could no longer afford to “guess” which realtors might succeed or fail, they needed an accurate and affordable way to predict performance in advance.
This problem extends well beyond the real estate industry. A Jobvite survey reveals that 30 percent of new hires quit within 90 days. According to a Leadership IQ Global Talent Management study, 46 percent of new hires fail within 18 months. Given expenses and opportunity losses, the average cost of a new hire failure is now $240,000. The costs for real estate and other firms with independent contractors may not be as substantial, but the cost of potential brand damage must also be considered.
Faced with an ongoing dilemma, the franchise broker explored several popular options, such as personality and candidate assessment tests. Most were decades old, complex, and too expensive. Only 30 percent of candidates complete text or word-based assessments as they’re inaccurate and take too long. Several were invented over 40 to 80 years ago, long before mobile phones, the internet, or LinkedIn. The broker finally found an intriguing and affordable solution and hoped this might offer an alternative.
RemotelyMe is a veteran-owned firm that uses scientific methods based on research and concepts I wrote about in my books, The 7 Secrets of Neuron Leadership and Start With Who, which Ken Blanchard—of The One Minute Manager fame—says is “thought provoking.” As a co-founder of a consulting firm that became an Inc. 5000 company, with clients that included Cisco, HP, Oracle, SAP, Visa, and many others, I stumbled across the science of neuroscience years ago when trying to find the right prospects for the right solutions. The light bulbs went off years later and I realized this could also help firms place the right people in the right seats in the right way.
RemotelyMe offers a groundbreaking approach, which is why they were a Finalist for the Better Workplaces Challenge Cup sponsored by the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM), with over 300,000 members. They were also selected as a Top 25 Work Tech vendor by a leading analyst. RemotelyMe’s Triune Brain Profiling System™ leverages research by several neuroscientists, including Dr. Paul D. McClean from Harvard. Their Chief Science Officer is a PhD neuroscientist, and they are the first to discover the link between neurotransmitter levels and personalities, attributes, strengths, soft skills, and professional performance. For example, individuals with high norepinephrine setpoints are more logical, and those with high serotonin setpoints are more emotional. Also, traditional text-based tests only activate two brain areas, whereas visual tests activate the areas responsible for 90 percent of decision making.
RemotelyMe had the top performers for the real estate franchise—called I Team Realtors—take a 9-minute visual storytelling assessment. The results were astounding. Over 90 percent fell into three of eighteen categories based on brain neurotransmitter balances. Also, all top performers had high oxytocin levels. This is important as studies now validate that high trust environments drive 76 percent more engagement, 50 percent more productivity, and 20 percent more revenue. Individuals with low oxytocin have difficulty in high trust environments and vice versa.
The bottom line? Nearly all personality and job assessment tests are obsolete. They rely on observations and text-based tests that are prone to inaccuracies, rather than the latest brain science. It’s like observing Mars through a telescope and guessing at its features as compared to sending a rover to collect rock samples for analysis. So, the bottom line is your bottom line. When almost half of all new hires fail, at a high average cost for each, who can afford to risk placing the wrong people in the wrong seats in the wrong way?
To experience the difference between traditional assessments and visual neuroscience storytelling, visit RemotelyMe.com
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William Craig Reed is the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Who: How to Place the Right Prospects and People into the Right Seats in the Right Way . Also, The 7 Secrets of Neuron Leadership.
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