Leading Real Estate Job Site Sees Job Market Recovery In 2004.

Business Editors/Real Estate Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 14, 2004

"The tide is finally turning within the real estate industry job market," reports Anthony J. LoPinto, President & CEO of Equinox Partners, an executive search firm specializing in real

"A recruiting environment that has been stagnant for over two years showed renewed interest in the 4th quarter of 2003," he said. "This year, job postings on SelectLeaders.com more than doubled during the 4th quarter compared to the previous year, and that includes jobs from all sectors." LoPinto added that he is seeing this same trend in the firm's executive search practice, "From all indications -- the boardroom down to our online listings -- we are seeing the business gaining confidence and momentum, and looking to fill new positions." According to SelectLeaders executive, Susan Kane, the recovery and increased hiring is "coming at a time when real estate human resources departments are lean but", she says, "new technologies are helping them meet the demand. In fact there is an accelerated maturing of the job board technology itself," says Kane. "Although the major broad-based job listing sites continue to dominate in the numbers of resumes submitted, HR managers are getting more sophisticated, turning to industry specific job boards to access qualified professionals and eliminate the time-consuming stacks of irrelevant resumes."

"I have become a believer in specialized job sites. They tend to know the nuances of the industry," said Dave Alagno, Senior Employment Manager for AvalonBay Communities. "In September, we posted 3 jobs on SelectLeaders.com, and had great responses, hiring top-flight professionals for all three."

SelectLeaders job postings also appear everyday on GlobeSt.com, the leading real estate online news resource. Jonathan Schein, President and CEO of Real Estate Media, the publisher of GlobeSt.com said, "We've seen an enormous amount of growth in traffic in the job postings section of GlobeSt.com for the last year and it's now one of our highest visited areas."

Kane said that another example of how the industry online reciprocities are maturing is in the increased sophistication of client servicing. Posting Plus, the newest feature on SelectLeaders.com, adds an online questionnaire to the job posting to better qualify candidates. "HR managers are supplementing their SelectLeaders.com activities by going outside the box to screen resumes using our Posting Plus technology from anywhere a company might advertise online, including university alumni sites, classified ads, other job boards, or their own website." She said that another new service is designed to take the process even further. Selection is a service where professional real estate recruiters evaluate and screen resumes, and if a client prefers, the recruiters go on to conduct phone interviews to develop a slate of qualified applicants.

"SelectLeaders is on to something with their industry specialty and premium products," said Ann Oliveri, Senior Vice President of the Urban Land Institute, whose members control or direct 80% of the nation's real estate development. "We wanted to offer our members a quality job site that would give them the best results and quality service." She went on to say, "We also chose SelectLeaders to support our university graduate program and had exceptional results. With the coming recovery, I expect that SelectLeaders will be the site of choice for recruiting university graduates."

SelectLeaders is the real estate industry's leading job site with over 2 million page views accessed by more than 100,000 real estate professionals each month. SelectLeaders job postings also appear everyday on GlobeSt.com, the leading real estate news site. SelectLeaders.com is the exclusive job site for the ULI (Urban Land Institute), NAREIT (National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts), RELA (Real Estate Lending Association), CMSA (Commercial Mortgage Securities Association), and GlobeSt.com (the leading real estate news site). SelectLeaders is an Equinox Partners Company, specialists in real estate executive search.