Did You Hear? As Recruiting Heats Up, Veteran Talent Scout Launches New Shop

Allison Weiss, who has managed recruitment for two top-tier national brokerages, has started her own talent placement agency.

Weiss just started CRE Recruiting, a boutique firm in Los Angeles looking to help both those hiring and those looking to get hired. She, like others, thinks the coming years will see a frantic pace of job-switching among commercial real estate professionals.

“Part of this is all the consolidation we’ve seen: JLL merging with HFF; the Cushman & Wakefield-DTZ-Cassidy Turley merger,” she said. “Anytime that happens, you are going to have people who are happy and other people who start to wonder what they’re worth out there.”

Most recently a recruiter at Colliers International and at Marcus & Millichap before that, Weiss said she is not limiting her scope to brokerages. She sees an increasing demand for talent among the buy-side players like real estate investment trusts, private equity shops and mortgage banking firms.

Still, there has been a dizzying game of musical chairs in commercial real estate in recent months, especially among the national brokerages, as big firms have picked off competitors’ talent and in some cases absorbed whole teams. Firms like JLL, Newmark, Colliers, Avison Young and others have been both collectors of new talent and losers to various competitors.

Some industry experts, including Weiss, think that this has much to do with the current point in the economic cycle. Things are slowing down in many markets as far as commercial sales and leasing goes. That makes real estate professional more idle, and more receptive to wooing efforts from rival firms.

“A lot has to do with what people have in their pipeline of business,” said Weiss. “You’re not going to walk away when you have a lot of deals pending. You’re leaving money on the table. And there are not as many firms cutting the checks to cover that loss.”

Weiss said her firm will help navigate those difficult transitions from one firm to the next. She also expects she'll be doing some hiring of her own in the coming year, looking for experienced recruiters across the country.

Featured on Costar.com; written by John Doherty, posted 10/1/2019