Tips for Finding, Interviewing, and Hiring A Great Property Manager

Property management has always been a field with high employee turnover rates. Historically, they’ve been at a whopping 37 percent. But since the pandemic, those numbers have climbed even higher, and staffing has become a crisis situation among property management companies.

If your property management company needs to hire property managers, you’re competing with other companies for a small pool of all-star candidates. It’s more important than ever to know how to find, interview, and hire property managers — and to retain them.

Let’s take a look at some best practices.

1. Know Where to Look

Don’t limit your recruiting efforts to job sites like Indeed. Those services can be great sources for finding candidates, but they aren’t your only channels for hiring property managers. Here are some options you might not have considered.

Diverse job sites

Looking to increase your diversity? Check out job sites designed specifically for underrepresented groups.

For example:

Employee referrals

Your best employees can be your best recruiters, because they know your culture and what your company needs most in a property manager. Offer incentives and bonuses, but don’t limit rewards to money — often, your most valuable employees are motivated by non-monetary incentives.

Company website

Your company website can be a powerful recruiting tool. Design your website to attract top talent as well as new tenants.

Your best new employees are the ones who do their research on your company before the first interview. That’ll include your website. They’ll want to know what your core values are, what your culture is like, and what makes you different from other companies. They’ll also want to learn a bit about the team they’ll be working with.

Social media

Social media can also be an effective recruiting tool, because it gives your followers a glimpse into the life of your company. Many companies discover that their best candidates have been following them on social media and couldn’t turn down the opportunity to apply for a job.

2. Prepare Before the Interview

Interviewing for a property manager is more than just asking a set of questions from a list. It’s important to be prepared for the interview, and to set the stage for the candidate.

Select meaningful questions. Be thoughtful about the kinds of questions that will help you to make the most informed hiring decision.
Familiarize yourself with the resume. Spend time before the interview getting to know the applicant’s work history. What insights can you gain from the resume? What questions does it raise?
Clear your mind. Interviews can be mentally taxing for the hiring manager as well as the candidate. Don’t rush immediately into the interview from something else. Instead, give yourself a few minutes to clear your head and focus.
Arrive early. Your interviewees are anxious and tense, and they’re taking personal time out of their current job to speak with you. Respect their time and their situation by being ready when they are.
Relax. Interviews are stressful for you as well as the candidates. Take a moment before you begin the interview to relax. The whole tone of the interview will be positively impacted by it.

3. Know How to Conduct an Interview

Begin by introducing yourself and your role at the company. Take a couple minutes to establish rapport with the candidate and engage in some small talk. This helps relieve tension and lets you get a feel for their personality.

Before you start asking questions, give the candidate a high-level overview of the hiring process, so they know how this interview fits into the rest of the picture.

Leave time for them to ask questions. Remember, they’re interviewing you, too. And this gives you the chance to see what their priorities are. If they don’t have any questions, that should be a red flag.

Follow up as quickly as possible after the interview. If you want to proceed further with them, you’ll need to invite them to the next stage before they accept someone else’s offer. And if you decide to reject them, it’s only fair to let them know right away so they aren’t in limbo.

4. Ask Good Questions

There are good interview questions, and there are bad interview questions. Make sure the questions you ask will give you the information you need to make an informed hiring decision for your property manager position.

Include these types of questions:

The basics. These are general get-to-know-you questions that give you a sense of who they are as a professional and how much they know about your property management company.
General management skills. What kind of management experience and skill do they have? Are they well suited for that kind of responsibility?
Property management experience. Do they have actual experience as a property manager, and do they have the knowledge and skill set your company is looking for?
Tenant relationships. Can they handle difficult tenant situations with grace and firmness?
Business skills. Will you be able to trust the candidate with relevant business decisions?

Also be aware of the kinds of questions that you can’t legally ask a job candidate.

Download a sample list of interview questions for Property Manager job interviews.

5. Hire for Culture Fit

One of the biggest hiring mistakes you can make is to bring on a property manager with all the right skills but none of the right culture fit. These employees quickly become a burden to manage, because they create problems among the team. Morale plummets, and your best employees leave. Turnover becomes a greater problem, and you’re constantly hiring.

You may even see increased tenant turnover as well, leaving you with more property vacancies as well as jobs to fill.

Hire the Right People – Download our Interview Guide

6. Retain Your Property Managers

The best hiring situation is the one you don’t have to deal with. Invest in retaining your property managers and reducing your turnover rate.

Provide professional development opportunities.
Offer competitive salaries and benefits.
Build a strong and healthy work culture.
Invest personally into your property managers.
Find out from them what improvements they would like to see at work.
Invest in technologies and systems that make their work easier.

7. Hire with Confidence

Hiring a property manager isn’t something you can figure out as you go along. Have a plan in place and know what tools and resources you’ll need in order to find the best candidate for your company.

How to Hire and Retain All-star Property Managers