The real estate industry has fundamentally transformed its approach to talent development, with major implications for both employers and emerging professionals, according to a leading industry educator.
“There’s not a lot of managers where I can say to my students, you’re going to go there and you’re going to spend 20 years,” says Reagan Pratt, Director of the Real Estate Center at DePaul University. “That was the way it used to work at Jones Lang LaSalle, that’s the way it used to work at Heitman.”
According to Pratt, major real estate firms have largely abandoned their comprehensive training programs, creating new challenges for both employers and entry-level talent. “The reality is, companies are leaner, they’re focused more, and this idea of developing talent, they’ve outsourced that, and that’s where DePaul comes in,” Pratt explains.
This shift has created a paradox: firms want specialized talent but aren’t investing in developing those specializations internally.
The industry now expects graduates to arrive with clearly defined expertise, Pratt says. “They want people to land ready, ready to hit the ground running. They want them to understand what their specialty is.”
This expectation creates particular challenges for young professionals who might benefit from exposure to different aspects of the business before choosing a specialization.
DePaul’s Real Estate Center is working to bridge this gap through several initiatives, including developing standardized internship models that smaller firms can adopt.
“A lot of the firms that I think are the most successful and really interesting, maybe 20 or 25 person firms, and they’re busy,” Pratt notes. “These firms don’t have time to think through intelligent internship programs, let alone Co-Op programs.”
The center is collaborating with industry partners to develop scalable solutions for this training gap. “How do we develop an internship model that can almost be off the shelf for these mid-sized firms?” Pratt asks, describing current efforts to create standardized programs that firms can easily implement.
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