Quick Bite: The Talent Raid | Jacqui Barnes and Ellis Taylor 06-08-26

A special edition of Before the Weekend, recorded in Sydney.Peter Schravemade is joined by Jacqui Barnes, Head of People and Growth at Laing+Simmons and author of the Women in Real Estate Insights Report, and Ellis Taylor, Director of Real Time Australia - the recruiter that Blackbird and AirTree name as their number one preferred talent supplier.Two months on from the report's launch, Jacqui returns with the person who is using her findings against the industry. Ellis is candid about it: the hardest stretch for a new agent is months six to eighteen, and that is precisely when he calls. "That's when I target them."Jacqui's response is that the industry has handed him the opportunity. Agencies spend seventy to eighty thousand dollars a year bringing someone up to speed, then make a judgement call at month nine on a two-year journey - without doing much to help the person get there.The conversation covers what the report found about the gap between the support leaders believe they provide and what their people actually experience, why tech sales retains people that real estate loses, how AI-driven talent engineering builds a personalised eighteen-month campaign around your best juniors, and what an agency has to do to make itself hard to raid.Both guests finish with something an agency owner can act on before Monday.Links, the full report and contact details for both guests are in the show notes.