April 15 2015
If there is one thing real estate agents dislike, it's parting with money. Thus, low or no cost approaches are highly treasured, such as the use of social media as a marketing tool, the popularity of Craigslist and the heavy reliance on do-it-yourself photography.
There's nothing wrong with being frugal. Many wealthy people are actually quite thrifty, pinching pennies and living beneath their means, says Thomas J. Stanley, author of "The Millionaire Next Door."
So, in the spirit of helping you hang on to every possible commission dollar, here's the skinny on hiring an intern.
An intern is a person who works primarily to gain experience in a field. Some work for free. It may sound crazy, but they have their reasons for offering services sans remuneration.
Most interns are young and usually in college. In fact, almost 30 percent of college students work as unpaid interns, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
If you hope to hire an intern to assist you with various duties for your real estate practice, however, you will most likely need to pay him or her. (More on that in a minute.)
The University of Connecticut School of Business offers a well-structured real estate intern program. While they acknowledge that intern responsibilities will vary from firm to firm, some general duties they suggest include:
You can even create internships for specific sets of duties, like an online marketing internship. Here are some real estate internship ideas from the Trulia Pro blog.
Of course, the tasks you assign the intern will be based in large part on the intern's talents, knowledge, experience and what he or she hopes to learn while working with you.
Hiring an intern may not be the ideal situation for a time-pinched agent with no staff. Providing a valuable hands-on experience for the intern will require direct training from you or a staff member. Remember, an unpaid intern is trading labor for real-life training and experience.
If you're a busy solo agent, you should probably hire an experienced assistant instead, either in-house or virtual.
Unpaid labor is the dream of many small business owners. Who wouldn't want someone that comes to work, contributes to the business, and expects nothing in return except the ability to gain knowledge and experience?
It doesn't quite work that way, however. There are legal requirements for unpaid internships that you must follow if you want to hire someone who will work for free. And, similarly, there are federal laws you must follow if you hire a paid intern.
Federal guidelines clearly define what you must do if you hope to hire unpaid interns. In fact, there are six criteria, and you must abide by all of them, otherwise the intern will be considered an employee.
To hire an unpaid intern, all of the following must apply:
Number four will be the clincher for most real estate agents. After all, the whole idea of hiring an intern for a real estate practice is to get some help with routine business tasks.
That brings us to a more likely scenario: hiring a paid intern. This creates an employment relationship, with the attendantresponsibilities for worker's compensation, employee benefits, discrimination laws, state labor laws and unemployment insurance coverage. Agents that require assistance with the day-to-day tasks of running their business rarely have time to deal with the intricacies of hiring and paying employees.
Assuming that you still want to hire an intern: Think it's OK to pay minimum wage? Think again, oh frugal real estate agent. The average hourly wage for interns at the bachelor's degree level is $16.35, according to the results of the 2014 Internship & Co-op Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. For an intern at the master's level, plan on shelling out an average of $22.58 an hour.
You can find interns looking for work at local colleges and universities. An ad on Craigslist will most likely pique some interest as well, especially if it's a paid internship.
Finally, online sites such as Internships.com accept recruitment posts.
Internships may seem like an easy way to get free or cheap labor. However, the federal government, and the interns themselves, feel otherwise. If you truly require help, but lack the funds to hire an assistant, consider a piecemeal approach. Outsource your marketing, writing or database tasks. Even one duty taken off your plate frees up time for you to spend on more important aspects of your business.
To view the original article, visit the Market Leader blog.