As an approachable leader and champion for both the multifamily industry and my company, I’m asked almost daily how to get to the next level. They’ve taken classes, have a degree, a designation or two and yet their career with their current company is at a standstill. Professionals want to grow, to make more money, to be challenged, to feel like they’re making a contribution, to make their mark… but they’re often unsure about how to find a new position.

You might be thinking this is a no-brainer; you’ll just head to an internet job board, type in the type of position you want, and search through the hundreds or thousands of results. Maybe you’ll apply to all of them, I mean… the more you apply to the better your chances, right?

To quote one of my favorite plays, Death of a Salesman, “It’s who you know, and the smile on your face! It’s contacts, Ben, contacts!”

Sure, applying to any and every position that even slightly resembles what you’re hoping to do, does seem to make sense, statistically. But, you’re going to burn through a lot of energy sending dozens of resumes and cover letters, why not put your time to a little better use and start networking, instead?

NETWORK

The multifamily housing industry affords us so many places to connect with likeminded professionals. From peers to potential supervisors, interacting has never been easier. Have great ideas? Share them… people will take notice.  Super smart firecracker? Let your personality & knowledge shine… and attract people who are looking for someone as dynamic as you are! Are you a great coach? Help others out with their questions about the business, potential employers frequent the message boards and someone who’s always there, lending a hand to other industry professionals might just be who they’d like on their team! As the quote above mentions, It really is, often times, about who you know (or who knows you, or of you).

IMAGE

Christine Schoellhorn, one of my mentors and Managing Director of Real Estate at Greystar, told me a long time ago that “Presentation is EVERYTHING”. I took that advice to heart and think about it when I get up every morning, I think about it when I’m choosing what to share on my various Social Media platforms, I think about it when I craft a blog (like this one), I think about it when I’m preparing a presentation, I think about it when I take photos I intend to share, I think about it when I reply to the message board posts. In a nutshell, I think about it before I do just about everything and with good reason. Everything I put out there, is a reflection of my character, my work ethic, my professionalism… it’s me! I personally want it to be the absolute best representation possible, because that’s who I am and who I continually strive to be… the best! With a smile on my face (it really is always there… I’m a happy person).

When you’re thinking about getting to that next level and you decide to wisely spend your time networking, be sure to represent you in the best light possible. Choose the right photo, check your spelling and grammar, craft a signature that is professional and interesting, stand out by being involved and become a subject matter expert on the topic that you’re the most passionate about, let your hair down (while remaining professional, but by showing your personality a little bit, you’ll attract potential employers who appreciate YOU and your style. Resulting in a better fit, overall, and longer employment).

CONNECT

Connect with people and do it with flair! When asking to connect on LinkedIn, don’t use their pre-written “connect” message. Craft your own, make it personal, if it’s with a company you’d like to work for, say that! Every single connection I request, I customize to that specific person. Sadly, I’ve received MANY connection requests and not a SINGLE one has been customized. This is a huge area of opportunity, if you want to stand out from the crowd. The little things matter, never forget that. Same thing goes for other sites that you connect on, send a personalized message or note. If they’ve accepted, engage them. There’s nothing worse than connecting for the sake of connecting. Be proactive and start a dialogue. They’ve already accepted you, so take the bull by the horns and speak.

KNOW WHAT YOU WANT

When considering making that leap to the next level, do it cautiously. What’s the fire in your belly? Are you an operations person or is training more your speed? Do you want to eventually run the company? Then maybe your next step is a Regional Manager. Are you a mathematical genius? Perhaps accounting is your ideal career path. Do what makes you happy, because coming to work every day, in a position you aren’t passionate about takes its toll on you. Really think through what your career is going to look like and then take the steps to make it happen. You can always revisit your path, if you find it’s not what you hoped it would be… but consider what you like doing now, chances are good that it’s what you’ll like doing later. Craft a plan and then work it.

DO YOUR HOME WORK

Finally, another consideration is the company itself. Before jumping into a new role at a new company, do your homework and make sure it’s also going to be a good cultural fit. Some companies are very formal and require suits every day. If that’s not in-line with you and your personal “culture” you won’t feel comfortable there. Are you someone who is big picture and likes to contribute or have a voice within the organization? Then make sure your company is one that’s receptive, open to ideas and values a colleagues input. Never be shy about asking questions related to the culture and atmosphere of an organization. Remember, you’ll be spending a very good portion of your week, every week, within the confines of the company and if there’s a clash in your style are “theirs”… you won’t be happy long and they probably won’t be happy with you, either.

BE YOU

Trying to be someone else won’t last long. Every company and every role at every company has its own personality. When trying to get to the next level, make sure that your personality and that of both the company and the role is a match. Making it a match, will only result in being dissatisfied and you’ll be back to “looking”, once more.

Is getting to the next level on your list of 2012 resolutions? It’s not too late to start networking and attain your goal!

Let’s connect!

http://www.multifamilyinsiders.com/home/u/tarafuriani

http://community.naahq.org/myprofile/profile/?UserKey=78e7b2d7-0104-411c-9bb0-75a7a9c37fdf

www.linkedin.com/in/tarafuriani

www.facebook.com/tarafuriani

www.twitter.com/tarafuriani

I hadn’t been in Multifamily housing in a few years… instead I left and worked with the Dale Carnegie Training Organization, honing my craft and providing training solutions and direction to businesses across the globe. I was, however, eager to get back to my first love… the Apartment Industry!

Things hadn’t really changed much… on one hand, I was glad, because I could get right back into the swing of the “business” without missing a beat on the other hand, I couldn’t believe that evolution hadn’t really happened. It was “the same old”…

Upon joining the Sterling family, I developed our all new Intro to Leasing course in my first month of joining the organization (and 17 other courses since then). The company had lacked any real training prior to my joining the company and it was so welcomed, that I felt a little overwhelmed at its reception (in a good way, of course).

In our Intro to Leasing class, I set out to start the evolution (at least at my company)… covering some pretty advanced stuff and I’d say it’s safe to say that most people haven’t experienced the kind of training I provide, before. Now, I’m not trying to toot my own horn here; however, I’ve discovered that our industry “trainers” are usually people who’ve climbed up the property management ladder and who’d been successful onsite. That’s great… that’s how I started! But, I left our industry for some time and was trained on how to train. Something I recommend everyone who is involved in training do (not leave the business necessarily… but seek out HOW to be a TRAINER).

The decision I made to leave the business was ultimately me investing in myself and our industry (I knew I’d be back); and it made, in my opinion a world of difference when I came finally did return to multifamily. Not only did it open my eyes to what could be done better in the classroom (or on a webinar) but it also inspired me to really get creative with what I believe we do poorly after training.

Here’s what I’ve discovered that could use some improvement and what we can do, as trainers (and we’re all trainers, to some degree… even if “trainer” isn’t in our title or job description):

In training, the learners are excited… fired up… ready to lease… ready to try new things and then they go back to their sites and the rule (there are exceptions, of course) is that the people who’ve been on the site awhile (Property Managers, I’m talking to you)… have their own way of doing things and that basically discounts everything that training teaches.

So what can we do as trainers?

How about implementing team oriented training mini-classes or webinars? Then, everyone onsite is receiving the same information and subsequently everyone is on the same page. It doesn’t have to be long or intensive, but refreshers that are done with the entire team, can be powerful!

What if we include the Property Manager and/or mentor in the new colleagues training plan? Making their direct supervisor accountable or have responsibilities in their learning, can help bridge the gap between training and actual onsite work.

Colleagues come to a training class and then their involvement with training ends.

So what can we do as trainers?

A blended training approach can drastically increase both knowledge AND employee retention. At Sterling, we offer webinar and self paced e-learning courses that mirror (but expand upon) what we cover in the Intro to Leasing class.

Also, having an excellent Learning Management System is vital to the success of your training program and remaining connected to the onsite teams. Ours includes Forums, which allows our colleagues to interact, ask questions (to each other and to the training team) and share best practices. I’ve found that once we opened this line of communication; we have a lot more questions, requests for help, sharing success stories, increased participation in contests and a willingness to help each other out.

After training, apart from an immediate survey of their impression of the class/trainer, we don’t do any other follow-up, skill assessment or survey’s.

At Sterling, we now do a 30 day follow-up with each learner that includes a leasing workbook (that covers things learned in training… that perhaps they didn’t take notes on) and a leasing self-evaluation; which has them self check their skills and makes them assess if they’re actually doing what’s been taught in the classroom **and they are surprisingly honest, as it turns out.

Finally, have a training plan for each position. Ours consists of an initial 90 day training checklist and an on-going plan for the year, by position. This keeps training in the forefront of each learners mind (don’t forget maintenance and the corporate/regional offices). Our LMS sends out automatic reminders of the colleagues’ specific upcoming deadlines and relevant to the learner, course offerings. It helps make my job so much more manageable.

At the end of the day, here are my summarized thoughts… Just standing up and delivering training material is not enough. If you got into training for the same reasons I did… because you love helping people grow and get a thrill out of seeing that light bulb go off… then it’s time we stop just “talking for a living” and instead see training through, for each learner, individually.

Hold learners accountable, give the learners’ supervisors and/or mentors a role in their learning plan and hold them accountable, follow-up with your learners (even if only virtually), check-in and provide coaching at regularly scheduled intervals, make sure your content is relevant and working, provide a plan for training, invest in an LMS that’s going to help you attain your goals, the goals of your learners and ultimately make YOUR job easier (if you need a recommendation, just email me), and finally…

Invest in yourself to become a BETTER and more effective training professional. Merely having been successful in the roles you’re now training others in, isn’t enough.

Let’s face it… the internet is NOT a fad (sorry Al Gore) and the role both the internet and computers play in our business is vast and ever growing. Let’s take a look at what parts of our business are computer and/or internet based:

• Communication (with Colleagues & Prospects)- Email, usually Outlook is used in our business
• Learning Management Systems- Does your company offer online learning?
• Property Management Software- On our computers and generally on the internet
• Social Media
• Rent Payments- A good portion of us allow residents to pay online
• Advertising- Our biggest source of traffic, in a lot of instances is apartments.com
• Weekly/Monthly Reports- Excel and Word play a big role in how we relay information
• Performance Appraisals- Many are integrated into our HRIS systems, which are internet based
• Payroll Time Tracking- Does anyone use a manual system anymore?
• New Colleague Orientation- Unless your company is 100% local, the internet is often used
• Accounting- Most accounting departments use our property management software in conjunction with computer and/or internet based financial software
• Payroll- The majority of us rely on Direct Deposit, which uses a computer to transmit.

I could go on and on… I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear, to be successful in our business you MUST have some sort of computer know-how. I’m not talking learning HTML here… I’m talking the VERY BASICS of computer understanding!

Frankly, I’m blown away, nearly on a daily basis; at the lack of computer knowledge so many in our industry seem to be plagued with.

One person comes to mind and the story goes like this… she was replying to an email announcement to enroll in one of our course offerings (before we had our current LMS, which allows the user to enroll themselves, which we provide in-house training on). She’d sent me 4 emails. Finally, at the 4th I called her and let her know I had in fact received her emails and she was enrolled, no need to send anymore. She seemed confused and told me that nothing had happened. I had no idea what she was talking about, so I said; what do you mean nothing happened? She then proceeded to tell me that when she clicked the link to reply back and enroll that after she wrote she wanted to enroll and sent it, nothing happened.

I’m still sitting here, not understanding what she’s telling me… so I took a few seconds and processed. Then it hit me. Oh man…

I started, when you clicked the link, it opened up an outlook email message, right? She said yes. I then said and you typed a message that you wanted to enroll and then clicked send, right? She said yes… and added that’s when nothing happened. So I asked, what did you expect to happen? She said, I don’t know like a confirmation or something, I’ve never done one of these before.

Now, I was very concerned. I said, you’ve never sent an email message using Outlook before (which I knew wasn’t true… I’d communicated with this manager plenty of times, via email… and YES, I SAID MANAGER). She paused and said… well yes, I’ve sent an email before, but that’s not what this was.

I was taken aback… could someone be THIS computer illiterate? Again I paused, remaining the consummate professional, and said… yes, that is what this was (and of course, I double checked to make sure the hyperlink wasn’t wrong). That’s why what popped up when you clicked the link, looked just like an Outlook email message… because it is one.

She was silent for a few seconds, realized what I was saying, probably tried it again for herself and then said… Oops. I’m just not too good with computers!

You don’t say…

The moral of my story is this… If you want to succeed in multifamily housing (or any other industry, for that matter), take your career into your own hands and learn how to be at the very least a computer USER and overtime… maybe even computer savvy. Computer and internet knowledge is no longer a PLUS, it’s a MUST!

At Sterling, we offer our colleagues the opportunity to take the courses that Microsoft offers for free and we provide a link on our company Intranet for them. If your company doesn’t offer any in house computer training classes, then click here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/training-FX101782702.aspx?redir=0

Microsoft offers tutorials on all of their products (which most of us use) and best of all… they’re FREE! Aren’t you worth it?