Construction & Real Estate Practice launch (Daily Journal of Commerce)
Recruiting firm targets construction and real estate executives in the Northwest (From 6/30/16 Daily Journal of Commerce article by Lynn Porter)
Seattle-based Herd Freed Hartz recently launched a practice group to recruit people for executive-level jobs in the real estate and construction industry.
“It’s really a reflection of the moment and the growth that’s happening in Seattle,” said managing director Scott Rabinowitz, who noted that 65 buildings are under construction downtown.
Rabinowitz was quoting a recent Downtown Seattle Association report, which also said construction expenditures for projects downtown now being built are at $3.5 billion.
Herd Freed Hartz has represented firms in real estate and construction before, but the new practice group will focus entirely on them. “Our real estate work has tripled in the last three years and it just seems like the right time to share the story and be dedicated as part of that industry,” Rabinowitz said.
Herd Freed Hartz was founded in Seattle 15 years ago and opened a Portland office in 2010, where the new practice group will also work.
The firm has clients in a range of industries, including technology, health care, finance, manufacturing, and not-for-profit. It has done searches for BECU, F5 Networks, T-Mobile, Starbucks, Getty Images, Alaska Airlines and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.
Herd Freed Hartz is a private firm with nine senior recruiters who Rabinowitz said deal directly with clients. He declined to release revenues.
Herd Freed Hartz has done senior-level searches for Seattle design firms, including NBBJ and NK Architects, for subcontractors such as Cochran Electric, for homebuilders that include Isola Homes, and for real estate firms, such as Windermere Real Estate and Zillow. And it recently found a Seattle-based market leader for self-storage properties for Rosewood Property Co., a Dallas real estate firm.
It recruited residential and commercial broker Nick Ridgeway for a Seattle job as vice president of land acquisition for Isola Homes, which primarily builds houses, including single-family and townhouses.
Ridgeway said he was finding development sites for builders as a broker for Real Property Associates when the recruiter contacted him in April.
At first, he turned them down. “I kind of branded myself, and I was just fine dealing with my clients,” he said.
But Herd Freed Hartz contacted the busy Ridgeway again, offering more detail on Isola Homes. He said the recruiting firm was excellent at conveying the vision and values of the Isola people — and he liked what those people stand for. “I am a big believer that people go to work for people not for companies,” he said.
Ridgeway said Herd Freed Hartz coached Isola on the best way to vet candidates and himself on the firm’s high expectations, so he could decide if it was a good fit.
It was an exhaustive hiring process, with meetings and a test, he said, but the recruiter made sure he was on board with the process. “This was a very professional executive-level experience,” he said.
Rabinowitz said construction and real estate companies need someone to tell their story to candidates, including those not in their network.
Those leaders want people with local connections and industry knowledge who can get projects done. “They like straight talkers who have the expertise, are detail-oriented, and do what they say they will do,” Rabinowitz said.
People in this small community know each other, which can make it more difficult to approach someone about a job.
Rick Hermanson, president of Hermanson Co., a Kent-based mechanical contractor, said Herd Freed Hartz was excellent at helping the company fill a director of human resources position.
It presented him the candidates and their qualifications every week, ranked them and kept him in the loop.
“Obviously they started out with job description,” he said. “They did a nice job of just racking it up, extracting what I was looking for, putting it in writing, and finding the right candidates that met our requirements.”
Rabinowitz said top candidates in any industry are reluctant to make a move, so you must be quick and effective in telling your client’s story. “You think it’s hard to make a bid on a house, try making a bid on somebody’s life,” he said.
Submitting a resume to an online job site can be like tossing it into a black hole, he said. “It’s an activity but not real action.”
Rabinowitz said his firm screens candidates to make the hiring process more effective.
It recruits for “C-level” jobs, such as a chief financial officer or chief marketing officer, down to the director positions.
Rabinowitz said project managers are needed for larger, complex, and more costly construction projects.
Seattle has gone at least two years beyond the typical real estate cycle, he said, and “there is a bit of hesitation that something should change soon.”
However, he said, there are dozens of projects set to start in the next year and a half, so “it looks like this market and this sector is very well positioned for a least another couple of years.”
Rabinowitz said Herd Freed Hartz is best at helping companies manage change in leadership, scale and direction, and this new real estate and construction practice group “is a sign for our firm of the importance of that sector to us.”
Last update of the article: 06/05/2020.