Lessons for the Job Search
A recession and employment loss can humble anyone. Here are some lessons apartment industry job seekers have learned over the past couple of years.
Be flexible: Wary that he could be encountering ageism in the hiring process, Roblyer was quick to point out in the interview process that despite being 55, he was flexible enough to fit into a new culture. “Part of my interview was that I have a lot of good tricks I could teach the employer, but I’m also willing to learn their tricks,” he says.
Listen to advice: Wiley says that during the real estate run-up in the mid-2000s, old-timers would whisper in his ear that a bubble was approaching. Though he listened, he didn’t adjust his personal habits accordingly. “When I start to sense a bubble or hear my peers talking about a bubble, I’ll start to pay attention to it and cut back spending sooner,” he says.
Cultivate your network: Roblyer gave a list of references in applying to his current job. But it was the name he didn’t provide that made all the difference. “A woman who worked for me used to work here,” he says. “They called her and asked if she heard of me. She spoke very highly of me. You never know who knows somebody.”
Be ready to take other jobs: As he was working through grad school, Wiley picked up consulting gigs in Phoenix for companies trying to value distressed assets. Though his heart was in development, he knows his experience doing things like valuing notes may be more in demand right now. “I would love to do development again, but I don’t see opportunities to do that right now,” he says. “So, I’m looking at other opportunities, as well.”
Make consulting full-time work: When potential clients know your heart is in getting a full-time job, it’s harder to make consulting work. “It has been hard to look for consulting opportunities and employment opportunities,” Cretal says. “People who are looking to hire somebody in consulting want somebody to be in that business long term.”
As performance in the multifamily sector has improved over the past year, construction starts have started to perk back up. Though Dallas-based consultant Witten Advisors says 189,700 units are expected to be delivered by 2013, there are still a lot of people like Cretal out there looking for jobs.
“We haven’t backfilled all of those lost [development and construction] positions,” says Jorgen Punda, regional vice president of investments for Gables. “If there’s a compelling reason, they [companies] will bring back a person or two. But they’re not ramping up to be the machines they were five or six years ago.”
In the meantime, guys like Cretal still continue to keep their ear to the ground, send out résumés, and wait.
Temporary Solutions
Brad Wiley was a Phoenix-based development director at Fore Property Co., a full-service, national real estate company with five corporate offices around the country, for about 22 months. At the end of 2008, he lost his job.
“After I was let go, the time was right to go back to school and get my MBA,” Wiley says. “The opportunity cost [of giving up a salary and paying for school] was too high before the end of 2008. [The layoff] was the catalyst that forced me to go back to school.”
He isn’t alone. Justin McKellar had served two different stints at the San Diego office of Arlington, Va.–based Clark Construction. In 2010, as superintendent, he thought he started to see the handwriting on the wall—layoffs were coming. He applied to the graduate program in real estate development at Arizona State University. After he got in, he decided to leave Clark.
“Clark was chasing stuff and wasn’t getting it,” McKellar says. “I had wanted to go to grad school a while.”
In hindsight, after looking at the job market for a couple of years, McKellar wonders if he made the correct decision. He says Clark didn’t experience the amount of layoffs that he expected. And, as he’s been in school, he’s piled on the debt. “We’ll see in a couple of years if it pays off,” he says.
