Today on Unstoppable REI Wealth we are joined by a gentleman that we are a client of to help us find our amazing new talent, Mr. Darrin Carr. Darrin grew up professionally in the corporate world starting off as a sales rep leading to a district manager position, into a regional manager position, and then into director of sales before moving into director of recruiting for some billion dollar plus corporations such as McMillan and Pearson Prentice Hall. His job at this level was to not only to determine hiring strategy and process for these companies, but to hire and train hiring managers. Darrin started his recruiting and HR services agency Carr Talent Acquisition eight years ago as general recruiters. Gradually they have specialized in real estate investment, and now they below to several communities where they serve as full cycle top to bottom recruitment partners to fill all the different REI positions. Carr Talent has a staff of 26 people with 20 recruiters. He hires them not only for their technical prowess in sourcing, finding, and assessing top talent, but also for spark, the ability to compel the very best talent to take another look at what the future may hold for them. They pride themselves in understanding deeply what makes like a tick, their core value, their vision for the future, so that they can search out and persuade those who are very close functional hand cultural fits for their clients. Darrin has personally hired and managed hundreds of employees, and now his agency helps hire many hundreds more specifically in the Real Estate market. Ready to get in touch with Darrin? You can email him at darrin@carrtalent.com You can call him at 641-691-2990 Or you can find his website at https://www.carrtalent.com/ And after that head on over to... https://easysell411.com https://billyalvaro.com https://billyssecrets.com Who knows maybe you will be our next partner? To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
Today on Unstoppable REI Wealth we are joined by a gentleman that we are a client of to help us find our amazing new talent, Mr. Darrin Carr.
Darrin grew up professionally in the corporate world starting off as a sales rep leading to a district manager position, into a regional manager position, and then into director of sales before moving into director of recruiting for some billion dollar plus corporations such as McMillan and Pearson Prentice Hall. His job at this level was to not only to determine hiring strategy and process for these companies, but to hire and train hiring managers.
Darrin started his recruiting and HR services agency Carr Talent Acquisition eight years ago as general recruiters. Gradually they have specialized in real estate investment, and now they below to several communities where they serve as full cycle top to bottom recruitment partners to fill all the different REI positions.
Carr Talent has a staff of 26 people with 20 recruiters. He hires them not only for their technical prowess in sourcing, finding, and assessing top talent, but also for spark, the ability to compel the very best talent to take another look at what the future may hold for them. They pride themselves in understanding deeply what makes like a tick, their core value, their vision for the future, so that they can search out and persuade those who are very close functional hand cultural fits for their clients.
Darrin has personally hired and managed hundreds of employees, and now his agency helps hire many hundreds more specifically in the Real Estate market.
Ready to get in touch with Darrin?
You can email him at darrin@carrtalent.com
You can call him at 641-691-2990
Or you can find his website at https://www.carrtalent.com/
And after that head on over to...
Who knows maybe you will be our next partner?
To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, candidates, darrin, client, recruiting, company, important, process, questions, dialed, hire, interview, talent, job descriptions, rei, position, number, billy, agency, business
SPEAKERS
Billy, Darrin Carr
Billy 00:00
Welcome to unstoppable real estate investing. Well, my name is Billy Alvaro, aka the unstoppable BA, former billion dollar mortgage banker, gone bankrupt, turn professional real estate investor, where each week you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems and secrets myself and other highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs use to start, grow and scale their businesses creating massive profits and how you can too, and we'll teach you how to put those profits to work. So you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth. Now let's get started. What's up? What's up? What's up? Welcome back to another episode of unstoppable UREI wealth. I'm your host, unstoppable BA. Today very excited about today's show, because today we're going to be speaking about growing and scaling. I'm gonna introduce my guest in a second. A lot of people in the industry, they think that marketing is the most important systems is the most important processes that are most important. They're all extremely important. But the number one most important asset that you're going to need in your business as you're growing. And scaling is the people part of the process. If you can dial in your people, your talent, and bring in your talent pool and have a process for acquiring them, onboarding them, training them getting indoctrinated into your system and having them grow with you. You're not going to have a business too long today, Mr. Darrin Carr, bringing him in from over a middle of nowhere, Iowa. Darrin is a talent expert. And we're gonna get into what he does terrible. Darrin, welcome to the show.
Darrin Carr01:58
Billy, always a fiercely positive tour de force experience to talk with you. So very happy to be doing it again.
Billy 02:05
Appreciate it. Brother. We just talked yesterday, we had some really good conversations about what you're doing for us. So Darrin, quick background, like, you know, people here Headhunters, like what is it that your company does? Right, that can help real estate investors in our world?
Darrin Carr02:20
That's right. That's right. Well, before I started my own agency, I had the you know, the experience that gave me a little bit of a backdrop as a director of recruiting for some pretty big billion dollar corporation. So they gave me a lot of structure. And then I was able to kind of like, spin out on my own. And, you know, what our agency does is, you know, we specialize in Rei real estate investment, recruiting, and hiring and onboarding. And so you know, we start from A to Z, we're a white glove service, we, you know, we just ask a few things of our clients, give us a little bit of info, give us a little bit of communication, give us some feedback. And we search, pursue find, tap on the shoulder, hunt down the best talent, flush him out of the mountains, harpoon him out of the sea, and get them interested? Well, number one rule of talent is you can't be passive, you got to go out and find them. That's how we start the process is going out understanding what's called being crystal clear on what makes a company sparkle culturally, what makes it a special place to be. And then we find those people who match up and we hopefully are super compelling and getting their attention and stealing them away where they think they're happy, but don't know they can be even happier with our client.
Billy 03:43
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And, I'm, you know, a little plug for you, we we brought you in, I don't know how long ago, I think it was maybe three months ago, we had some specific things we wanted to hire for. And I can attest, we got involved. We had an indoctrination process, you did an interview process myself, my team, you know about us about the company about our values and what we were looking for. And you guys kind of like documented it out, created the whole process and the ads. And you know, listen, the market is a little it was a little tight. It's getting a little bit looser, took us a little bit of time, but we got two major players out of the recruitment process that you did for us. So I want to now reverse in guys, who is this for guys that are just starting out in business that could utilize you or is this more for people that are growing and scaling? Utilizing your services?
Darrin Carr04:32
Yeah, that's a great question. And the answer is I think everybody, because, you know, I'm not an expert in, you know, buying and selling properties. I'm not most of the clients we have, whether it's five people or 500 people. Generally, you know, need a little bit of our advice on on the process and that's a lot of what we do too is a we will find it compelling. SAS and evaluating the interview the best people, but a lot of what we do and I do is help structure the process after, after we hand off the candidates, because that's it's not a lot of people specialties and why would it be they're not a recruiting agency, they're not an HR firm. And so, you know, I'd say across the board, we're able to kind of help, you know, build that structure out and in what's in, let them know how to proceed with the client, the steps that we that we think should be taken, the kind of the kind of people that they you know, are going to be talking to you the kind of questions they should be asking how they locked down the candidate, and the process commonly missed. And, I would say, A to Z, a lot of a lot of the companies have benefited from, you know, our structural, you know, context, sort of advice,
Billy 05:49
it really I mean, it's a process that you have, when you bring people in companies like myself to get them indoctri into your business, like, it was a process, it was a flow, it was very structured and how you brought us in, brought us in as a client, and then your way in which you went out to bring the recruits in. Again, I think every week, you know, we were having a handful or so of candidates that were coming in, and look, we're very selective who we want to bring it, we had a certain criteria, they have to pass certain tests, and also the crap, but you did it. Let's talk about the types of positions that your group could hire for that you can go out and bring in talent for what positions in a real estate investment group like ours, should we should we tap you for?
Darrin Carr06:33
Well I'll answer that. But I'll just like tell you what part of the reason, a lot of a large part of the reason why we were successful with you is because we had when we have a good recruiter, which we think we do, and plus it engaged client, which you were plus great communication, that almost all cold always equals a great hire. So you and your team did a great job of that. And that's that's what that's our asks of that. As far as the positions, it's everything we have hired for everything. And right across the board right now, I'd say we're helping 25 You know, at any given moment, we're helping 25-30 rei companies hire and it's everything from admin, to you know, acquisitions, manager or home buying specialist dispositions, age managers, senior operations, people, integrators of all all levels, marketing, I don't think there's a position we haven't we haven't yet recruited for.
Billy 07:26
So full gamut across the board, just position inside the REI business. I didn't know you guys do like the top top level, because, I mean, we went in for certain people, so you do CEOs, COOs, integrators, all that?
Darrin Carr07:40
Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's really much primitive, same process, you know, it's the same process. So that's why it doesn't take as long to adapt in but you know, we we've been doing it so long now that we've got all the job descriptions already templatized for all the all the positions, we got, you know, interview questions for all the different positions that we share with our clients, a lot of different tools that you know, that help them. So yeah, that's right, A to Z. In fact, operations is all you know, a large chunk of what we do home buying specialist acquisitions is a lot but operations is a quick second.
Billy 08:16
Now, when you're doing this recruiting, are you doing it for businesses, companies that they're going to be bringing the talent in house, or is this virtual, a combination of both
Darrin Carr08:25
combination of both, it's getting to be more virtual, I'd say, you know, still about 70 80%, you know, in house, but the virtual is growing, and it shouldn't be because it we've had a pandemic pivot, and that means a lot of people haven't really, companies haven't really recognized that needs have changed. And so flexibility is, is become a lot more important. And I can talk about some other things that have changed as well, as far as people's sensibilities and what's important to them. But yeah, now, virtual can mean you know, anywhere in the United States, or it can mean they work from their home near and metropolitan area, so they could go walk in walk the homes, right,
Billy 09:09
like, let's get into Darrin, you said something about being important what is important to the recruits not to the companies right now, I want to put the spotlight on the recruits people who are going after what's important to them. And
Darrin Carr09:23
that's right so COVID did change a lot of things. So I mean, number one, flexibility has risen, you know, quite a bit toward the top. And so you know, when we approach candidates, and we have the ability to say, hey, there's some flexibility here work from home a couple days a week or, you know, once you've proven yourself perhaps, that's the you know, that's super important. You know, ability um, you know, other other things have risen to the top ability to make a meaningful contribution to their community has or the company Knee has has risen in in value to folks. Other than that it's, you know, some of some of the same things, but they've risen in, you know, in importance of, you know, a clear growth development plan do you is the company dialed in enough that they know that they're going to be taken care of, and they and they're, and they've got mentorship, they've got, you know, they've got, they've got a path forward in their professional development.
Billy 10:27
That's a big one. That's a big one right there. We get that a lot of those questions come in, what about? What about personal development and business development? Is that important to them when they come in, like having an onboarding program where they're actually gonna get indoctrinated in and learn the position? Oh, don't do that, man. They just they bring them in, and they just kind of wing it.
Darrin Carr10:46
Yeah, that's right. That's why we really, we also help a lot of clients on board, because you can lose people. I mean, if you bring them in, and you're not prepared, you're not set with a good onboarding and a training program, you're going to lose the best people, because the best people got options. And those, you know, and you're gonna lose them quick if you don't have a good professional development plan. And that's exactly right. you know, especially pairing with somebody who's done the job, you no longer it's more experience, job shadowing, you know, both as an interviewer function and as a training function is, I think, the gold standard, you know, super important to, you know, to candidates these days.
Billy 11:29
I love this. I love this. What do you what are you seeing in the landscape right now, with people coming in? Are you finding it more difficult to attract people from other companies? Because they're comfortable? Or do you feel because there was this kind of change in the landscape with COVID, that people have more open minded? I have no idea what's going on in the job force out there and yours. So I want to get like your point of view, what's happening with landscape of candidates right now?
Darrin Carr11:54
Yeah, well, unemployment just dropped. Again, it's down to 3.5%. Again, I mean, that's a 40-45 year low. So it's not a rush. It's not a rush of grit of great people to your job. And if you're just posting an ad on Indeed, and hoping to get the best of the best, I think you're gonna be if you get lucky, you get lucky, but that's not always likely. So and as I mentioned, before, you know, you were hunting down the best people, the people who are already killing it, and don't know they could be killing it even more with with with our clients. So in those best people, you know, are getting hit up hard. You know, they get up to three times a week salespeople especially. So any anybody in a sales position, like home buying specialist or dispo, or anything like that, yeah, they've got options. And so, no, it's the market has not suddenly opened up with a ton of clients. And in fact, you know, the sketch factor, the ghost factor has is really high right now, people not showing up to interviews, because they got it, they took another offer. Again, you didn't get back to home in a week or two. You know, those those good people are gone, because they're, they're getting hit up 234 times a week, sometimes.
Billy 13:09
There are besides, besides giving them you know, planning and wanting to come into a company that has growth and where there's a plan for them to personally grow. What else do you need to do to make it rich for them to say, this is an opportunity to get a jump ship for a mat to come over here? Like what entices these people to make the leap?
Darrin Carr13:31
Yeah, well, first of all, you've got to make sure that you've got your company appeal dialed in. I mean, you've got to make sure that, you know, you're, you know, what is your I mean, people are savvy these days, especially the smart ones, what's your online presence look like? Look at your ratings on Glassdoor, or indeed because there may be stuff there that you don't know about. So, you've got to be you've got to be appealing, you know, is your is your website appealing is you know, is it, you know, desert? Is there a careers page is there about us, you know, hey, consider working for us. And here's all the here's all the reasons why when we make a job description, and this applies to job descriptions, as well, the the, you know, the third thing we don't eat before duties and responsibilities and qualifications comes what we you know, what we offer so it's sell, sell, sell good recruiting is good sales at certain points for certain people. During the recruiting process, a lot of people miss that they just assume everybody's gonna want their job. And know when you're locking down the best. I can talk about this a little bit more, but I mean, there's an art to locking down the candidates when you're in the process with them and you need to be because you'll start to realize those top folks in the process, and if you're not, you know, checking in with them, Hey, how are things go on? How do you find our culture? What you know, what your what how are you comparing us to other companies, you know, if you're not doing that on a consistent basis, do you have any hesitations? You have any concerns? You know, You could be missing the boat for someone you know, for another company that's slipping in on you. So, you know, you want to make sure that you have your your company culture dialed in, we're the company that does x, because of y, which results in Z, you want to make sure your whole staff knows that and as onboard can support that, that's, you know, that that becomes evident to a candidate when they're going in the process. You know, compensation package that I mean, obviously, you need to make sure you're competitive. We do a lot of compensation reviews for our clients like, hey, in your area, man, here's the average, here's where we here's what we'd recommend where you would be. Yeah, and as I mentioned, you know, all the materials like job job descriptions, and things like that are super important to make sure that they're tight and polished.
Billy 15:45
Yeah, it's so friggin important. I want to do a rewind on the business side, guys like me coming to you, we want to engage car to start doing some some headhunting some recruiting for us. What is the process look like? For an investment company to start working with you?
Darrin Carr16:01
Yeah, good question. So first thing we want before, before we start is any materials you have, why your company is great, what you know, job descriptions, any notes you have. So from there, we have a discovery meeting. And we really, really dig in we need about 45 minutes, we need an hour and we're digging into obviously, what you need functionally and culturally, but also what you offer, you know what, in terms of everything I've just spoken about, but also to give me some anecdotes about what you did last month. Why did people say Damn, that was a great, you know, it's really great to work here, because they did this for me. So we need to be armed with all those, you know, all those anecdotes and stories if we're going to attract that top talent away. So the more we get, the better. So it's a discovery meeting that we have, and we get all dialed in on that. From there, you know, we write the job descriptions. We don't We were pretty expert in that by now. And we we think we know what compels the best. We provide calibration candidates before we really start reaching out to anybody that means we find people that we think look like they are good matches but before we reach out to 200 people which you need to do right now to get a good response and to get a good candidate pool free spend all that money and time you know, we run calibration Canada's best hey, these people look like they're in your area in your in your ballpark. What do you think? Yes, Darrin? No, Darrin, here's why. So we get dialed into that process. From there, we're off to the races reaching off reaching out to a lot of people. And you know, our first conversation with them is a sales conversation. It's not interviewing I'm it's Hey, man, before I tell you about this company, I want to know what's important to you? Can you tell me it's always the first question we ask what's important to you? That does three things. First of all, they care about what you know why, you know, they, they're surprised you care about what's important to them. First thing number two, it tells us do their core values, it can tell us do their core values match yours. Number three, tells us how to sell them if we like these persons good damn, hey, well, Billy is off a you said XYZ is important to you. Billy offers XYZ and ABC, what do you think about that? So those are the kinds of conversations we start with, we convert to a behavioral interview situation, we grill them up with behavioral interviewing, which I'd recommend everybody do. And I can talk about that a little bit if you like. And then we're, then we're getting candidates, you know, to our clients and advising how they proceed with the process.
Billy 18:30
Go into a little bit deeper on the behavioral side. What do you do with that?
Darrin Carr18:34
so I mean, I think a lot of the I think interviewing is not a lot of people specialty. And so we have a lot of list of questions for different sorts of situations. But behavioral is this and these are super hard to prepare for. And let's give you one example for sales. And we you want to make you whenever least a couple of these in there because that you can't prepare for these questions. And they, and what what it is, it's like five tiers, it's like for a home buying specialist, tell me about a time when you had a challenge in sales regarding X, whatever is most important to the client, right? Number one, what Tell me about a challenge? Number two, what's the plan you had? How'd you come up with plan? Who'd you talk to about that? Number three, you know, 100, that whole plan unfold harder to execute. Number four, you know, how, what was the benefits of the company? What were the metrics that sales go up? 28.6% in the fourth quarter, and number five, what did you learn from that experience? Or what would you do do do differently next time? So those are meaty questions. That's a lot and they may need to ask, you know, hey, what was number two? It was number three, but what we need to hear something that's cogent, coherent, compelling, they need to you know, they need to tell something that was smart or and creative or or that they went above and beyond and it becomes pretty evident. You ask a few of those questions if if they've really accomplished
Billy 19:56
that is, you know, the book top grading that's right from top grading on how they go about the whole behavioral piece on asking these questions that people they just can't prepare for. There's no candidate.
Darrin Carr20:06
No, yeah, you sort out the wheat from the chaff pretty quickly.
Billy 20:10
No doubt, how many levels of reach out in interviews do you do with a candidate? Before they actually come to the company to interview? What is?
Darrin Carr 20:21
Typically, we? Well, we're doing the finding, right. So that's the first level is, you know, we're finding him and worth it worth it. And we're seeing what and what we need to see on somebody's profile or resume, we need to see metrics, you know, we need to see, you know, not only what they did, but what what the result was. So that's our first level. And then we'll either have one or two interviews, depending on what the client likes. And then typically, we provide the assessment, you know, before, you know, before we pass them along, and that can be, you know, predictive index, cultural index, Omnia, you know, whatever, whatever. It's important to the client. But so there's, you know, between the findings from the interview, or two and the assessment, it's three or four touches of us before we pass along. And then we recommend three to five more with the client, because some things we mean, we'll screen hard for all the things that are important to you. But there are a few things that you can't screen for in one or two interviews. And that's things like integrity and character. And those things only start to show the cracks in their foundation, if there are any over time. So you need to allow time for for that to show even then it may not, but it gives you a hell of a hell of a lot better chance.
Billy 21:37
I love this man. I love it. Alright, so now, what questions did it because I'm not an expert in this field, talk to me about investing what not? What questions should I have asked you that I did not ask you that somebody in my position as an owner of a real estate investment company would benefit from that I skip any?
Darrin Carr21:54
I'm number one is you have a solid hiring blueprint. And what does that mean? That means who does what, when, right, and we've got a big document on it. And I help advise our clients on it too, in a one on one on how they can do that. But, you know, just briefly, it can include, you know, the virtual interview, and in person interview, a panel interview, you know, with behavioral questions, job shadowing, that's the gold standard of somebody gets that top level. And if you can commit to that time, it takes time, and you're coming in, and you got to Pam to if you're to be careful. But Job shadowing, you know, as is key, but and then just determining who and you're having several points of contact several people's opinion. And everybody knows who's asking about what you're taking notes, you're ranking them on a few different things, then you're getting together as a group and you're discussing, Hey, how'd you rank this, this candidate on this? How do you rank this candidate on that? Etc. That's, that's probably, you know, what we, you know, one of the areas in which we help the most,
Billy 23:03
I love it, I love it. Darrin, if people want to let me ask you this, what what is the general cost? Because I know you're a different model than most of the models out there. So let's just we don't have to go into details if you don't want what's the general difference between how you recruit and how you get paid? Versus other companies that do what you do in this? Yeah,
Darrin Carr23:24
right on, we are different. And so we are considerably more cost efficient, you know, we got this dialed in, you'll have 20 recruiters, they all know what they're doing, we hire the best of the best ourselves. So we're, you know, we don't need to charge a million dollars, you know, so we're running on volume here. And so what we do most different contacts, most agencies are charging you 25 30% Sometimes they'll dip a little lower of first year compensation, right. So what we do is we do a hybrid of pricing, we do an hourly model basically just covers our costs, you know, a certain amount of dollars per hour. And then we have a much smaller just flat fee success stipend on the end.
Billy 24:11
So one of the one of the questions I had and I know other investors that might want to hire will have as well, all of a sudden they hear Wait, you're gonna charge me by the hour. Just explain that to them. Because a lot of people will get like, you know, I'm not going into this retainer thing. What do you mean charge me by now how am I going to get results? Let's talk about
Darrin Carr24:28
that. Yeah, yeah, good question. Because not not everybody does it but it does a couple of things. Number one very importantly invest the client in us if you're just straight up contingency, you know, companies have a tendency to Oh, yeah, it doesn't really matter. He sent me a few candidates I'll get to them right and all this work went into finding them and nothing happens you the client doesn't win we don't win no one wins this invest them. And it basically it just comes covers cost covers the recruiters hourly covers, you know the cost of sending out all these messages. And so it doesn't it's a pretty nominal. It doesn't add up to be a ton. We're just we're just covering costs there.
Billy 25:16
It is. This was good, bro. How do people get in touch if they're interested in leveraging cart your services? What do they do? How do they get in touch with you?
Darrin Carr25:24
Yeah, a couple of ways. My email Darren D A, R R I N at carr talent carr talent.com. Six, or my phone number is 641-691-2990. or our website, you can book an appointment with me as a lot of people do. And that's car talent.com.
Billy 25:43
Perfect brother. And one last question. Do you recruit for project managers on the construction side
Darrin Carr25:51
all the time.
Billy 25:53
We're going to talk right after this. This was great bro. Honestly, appreciate you coming on. You gave a ton of value and a half an hour. It was fantastic. Guys, look, I don't endorse too many people. I only do it if I'm actually getting results. I've utilized card utilize Darren his company. And successfully we have two recruits that came in we're going to be placing another two we have one that he's looking for already. Obviously, this spoke to you about the pm we'll be talking about that right after this. And if you if you want to leverage it, by all means it's worth it takes time I want you guys to realize it's not an overnight thing. It's a process just like your marketing is a process when you start putting out ads to get the phone to ring to convert these leads over. It's the same thing with recruiting. If you're going to hire an agency or do it yourself, you're going to be spending a lot of time, money, effort and energy going out there to try to bring these people in as in Darren is company, he's going to be doing it for you. But it's a process and it takes time. Don't freak out in two weeks. You don't have the candidates, it doesn't work like that. They have to create the relationship with these people. They have to hook them in, convince them that you're the right company to go through and then they have to go through this whole background process behavioral checks, so just be patient. And in time, you will get the greatest candidates delivered to your front door.
Darrin Carr27:07
exactly correct. And Billy Darren, thank
Billy 27:09
you very much, brother for coming on the show. Appreciate you very much and I will talk to you next time.
Darrin Carr27:14
My pleasure.