We all know that a resume includes work experience and educational experience, but that’s just the format. It’s the actual content that’s crucial, and if you are creating a real estate agent resume, it’s imperative that you highlight the following skills.
1. Customer Service Skills
Real estate is all about building personal relationships with clients. Whether you’ve spent most of your career helping first-time buyers or savvy house flippers, your ability to communicate effectively and make clients feel comfortable is a huge part of your career.
You could demonstrate this by stating that you have a high referral rate or perhaps your clients come to you again and again for future real estate transactions. You might even have won a local award for providing top customer service. If possible, highlight this on your resume.
2. Marketing Abilities
To a certain extent, a successful real estate agent has to hustle and they have to be able to market themselves effectively. How do you showcase your marketing abilities? Well, perhaps you created advertising and marketing materials at your previous place of employment. If so, you might highlight this as one of your duties under the Work Experience section.
Perhaps you developed an ad campaign that increased call volume by 40% and client acquisition by 20% or something similar. When you can put down concrete examples of your skills on a resume, it’s easier for those in charge of hiring to truly understand the scope of your skills.
3. Networking Skills
Realtors who can network are far more effective representatives for their clients. For instance, if a client needs a specific house in a specific neighborhood, a realtor with a large network might know an agent who specializes in that neighborhood and can make some inquires. After all, not everything available is listed on the MLS or on Zillow.
If you belong to several industry-related organizations, be sure to put this on your resume. Not only does this emphasize your commitment to the industry, it also showcases your networking skills.
4. Negotiation Skills
Getting the best possible deal for your clients is always at the center of every real estate transaction. It’s not always about the money, either, as sometimes other concessions have to be considered before the sale proceeds. A real estate agent resume needs to reflect your ability to negotiate the tough sales as well as the easy ones.
5. Computer Skills
This is less fancy, yet still essential. All real estate agents spend a good deal of their time on the computer, and you need to be an expert user of the MLS database as well as programs such as Microsoft Office, but there are many other types of real estate-related software that can help boost your business and provide detailed market analysis for you and your clients. If you have experience with any type of real estate-related software, it can be smart to add this on your resume.
6. Your Specialties
While some real estate agents work with many different types of properties, it’s possible you are an expert in one specific area. Perhaps you are an expert at handing short sales or foreclosures or perhaps you at excel at finding commercial properties.
It can be smart to highlight this on your resume or in your cover letter. While your resume might show that you can move properties, a company also might need someone who fits into a particular niche, so if you have one, don’t be afraid to add it on your resume.
Organizing Your Real Estate Resume
A real estate resume can be organized differently than other types of resumes. In general, a typical resume might feature the following sections: Objective, Work Experience, Education, and Additional Skills. You can certainly keep with the traditional approach, or you can mix it up a bit to highlight your abilities as quickly as possible.
A real estate agent’s resume might start out with a Professional Profile or Professional Snapshot first. In this area, rather than creating an objective, you might list some quick facts about your abilities and experience. For instance, it might look like this:
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
- Licensed Realtor with 5+ years of experience, specializing in commercial sales
- Received Top Agent awards in 2016, 2017 and 2018
- Experienced in contract negotiation, contract drafting and competition analysis
- Specialist in land & property valuation and market analysis
You might list three or four facts in this section that give a hiring manager a quick idea of your qualifications. From there, you’ll move on to the Work Experience section, providing quantifiable examples of your skills.
For instance, if you might list how many transactions you closed each year or how you increased the average selling prices of the homes you sold by 15% or whatever that number might be. Hiring managers want to see real-world examples of how your abilities helped your previous employers.
After the Professional Profile and Work Experience Sections, continue on with your educational background and your certifications and licensing information. From there, you might have a section where you list awards and accolades that you have earned.
If you are having trouble creating your resume and want to ensure that this document does all that it can to sell the idea of you to a potential employer, we can help. At Resume Writing Group, our team of full-time professional resume writers has extensive experience creating real estate resumes.
Whether you need a real estate agent resume, a cover letter or perhaps some LinkedIn profile writing, we can help you maximize your results with flawless writing that attracts the attention of hiring managers and recruiters.