You might be wondering what recruitment has in common with the real estate business, and I would say a lot. It's a transactional business (where I'd argue recruitment has a slight advantage, because you change jobs several times in a lifetime, whereas you buy property once or twice), where high-value items are sold, and commissions are in the hundreds of thousands, yet real estate agents have managed to extract more from a similar business.

The real estate business is tough, and the competition is ruthless, just like in recruitment.

The problem with the real estate business is that, in fact, "anyone can do it," and if you're not suited for anything else, you go into real estate. People start by distributing flyers "solvent engineer from Prostějov (small Czechia town) is looking for a 3+kk apartment in Prague, paying in cash" (real estate agent), to cold calling the actual property owners ("you know, I read your ad on a classifieds website, I could sell your property better"), to several other shady tricks.

I won't bore you, but such real estate agents don't last long in the field, and they are weeded out by those who do it well. Social media, appearances on television, property videos with drones, professional photographers, tough negotiations, after all, today a broker is not just a guy who opens the property door, at least if he wants to make a living.

Recruitment agencies are stuck in the ice age

I'm not saying all of them, but today's recruitment reminds me of the real estate crisis of 2008. Five recruitment agencies present you with one offer, and nobody adds any value, the only one working is internal HR (and as much as I dislike you, I can say you deliver results 😊)

For me, it's surprising that these agencies don't help companies more. I'd expect office drone tours, interviews with key people, social media maintenance, and exclusive contracts with companies, basically real sales, marketing at a twenty-first-century level, not five agencies blindly forwarding job descriptions (JDs) to random contacts on LinkedIn.

From what I see with employers and clients (from my contracting work), the real work is done by internal HR; they maintain social networks, take photos, make videos, promote, simply somehow increase awareness.

Kudos to the exceptions. Ladies and gentlemen from recruitment agencies, will you move forward, or will you stay in the nineties and celebrate hiring a candidate at Sylvie's disco? (famous disco club in late nineties in Czechia)