Once upon a time, the real estate agency industry was criticized for its wild growth and rampant chaos. The continuous complaints and controversies that followed have also raised many doubts about the working environment and career development of real estate agents.
How to improve the broker ecosystem from different dimensions and enhance the quality of people and services is a challenge and opportunity experiment that Lianjia has been persisting in for a long time. And school enterprise cooperation is an important breakthrough in this experiment.
The school recruitment that began in 2004 not only continuously replenished fresh blood for Lianjia, but also silently changed Lianjia and the industry it operates in. Against the backdrop of helping college graduates find employment in recent years, Lianjia has continuously increased its efforts in campus recruitment. Data shows that Beijing Lianjia's recruitment positions for fresh college students have increased from 1500 in 2022 to 4000 in 2024.
In addition to responding to policy calls, Lianjia also has longer-term plans. Following the path of campus recruitment, it is not difficult to find that campus recruitment is actually a crucial and indispensable part of building a broker ecosystem for Lianjia.
Collaboration between schools and enterprises to achieve a long-term virtuous cycle
Not long ago, as college graduates were about to enter the workforce, Beijing Lianjia held a school enterprise open day event with the theme of "promoting growth through school enterprise cooperation" to deepen school enterprise cooperation and jointly explore the integration of industry and education.
This move is in line with the current hot topic of promoting and stabilizing employment, and has attracted attention from multiple parties. Indeed, school enterprise cooperation is not a new thing, but it is not easy to truly deepen, refine, and sustain school enterprise cooperation. The practice of Beijing Lianjia in the past 20 years provides a sample for interpretation. It shows people that the virtuous cycle of school enterprise cooperation requires not only pre work, but also post work, not only multi-party accumulation before employment, but also careful cultivation after entering the door.
Through years of practice, Beijing Lianjia has accumulated various forms of cooperation between universities and colleges, such as credit exchange, internship bases, course implantation, simulated job search competitions, alumni lectures, etc. By enhancing the vocational skills of graduates, it helps them complete the transition from school to society.
Nowadays, Beijing Lianjia has established school enterprise cooperation relationships with more than 60 universities. With the deepening of school enterprise cooperation, we have also collaborated with multiple universities to develop real estate marketing courses, selected frontline agent lecturers to teach at schools, and brought a new homework mode to students.
The above practices have effectively shortened the distance from college students to real estate agents, achieved more accurate matching between supply and demand, and played a positive role in promoting high-quality employment for college students. This is also an important factor for the continuous expansion of the Beijing Lianjia school enterprise cooperation circle.
However, for universities, a deeper consideration is whether graduates can achieve good growth and development at Lianjia, and based on this, judge and adjust the cooperation mode between the two parties.
Beijing Lianjia has delivered a good answer: at the beginning of their employment, graduates will receive 5 days and 4 nights of pre job training, covering basic knowledge of real estate, industry trends, business etiquette, professional ethics, and other content. At the 1st, 3rd, and 6th month of employment, corresponding practical training will be conducted, accumulating 238 hours. Not only that, Beijing Lianjia also provides support for the growth of newcomers through "mentorship", which means equipping them with mentors within 3 days of joining to help them improve their professional skills.
In this kind of accompanying training and mentoring, many graduates quickly grow from novices to mature real estate agents, and even team leaders. This undoubtedly brings more confidence to universities, as they are more confident in delivering graduates to Lianjia, jointly exploring the path of cultivating applied talents, and continuously deepening school enterprise cooperation.
In this process, a generation of graduates have transformed from newcomers to "seniors", becoming seniors, mentors, or store managers, leading newly joined graduates to move forward. The broker ecosystem of Lianjia has also undergone a quiet change over time. Currently, 37% of Beijing Lianjia's employees born after 1995 are employed, while 18.6% are born after 2000.
Systematic training, diversified development, and expanding the growth space of brokers
The real estate transaction cycle is long, the process is complex, and coupled with policy factors, the professional requirements for brokers are becoming increasingly high. To this end, Beijing Lianjia not only provides a systematic learning map for graduates and other newcomers, but also has a refined, full cycle, and continuously iterative training system that covers all stages of broker growth.
Zeng Jing, General Manager of Beijing Lianjia Family Power Administration Center, shared a set of data. In 2023 alone, Beijing Lianjia launched 30 talent training programs and more than 380 training courses, selecting 1647 lecturers to teach, with an average of 214 hours per person.
It can be said that this is a more long-term layout of Lianjia, in addition to controlling the entry of talents, by continuously improving the professionalism of brokers to promote their professionalization and create a new broker ecosystem. Real estate transactions are ultimately the business of 'people'.
In addition to strengthening training, Beijing Lianjia also promotes the professionalization of brokers through clear and diverse development and promotion channels.
Generally speaking, newcomers who join as A0 brokers can choose a professional development path, continue to deepen their expertise, and grow up to become A15 level brokers; You can also choose a management development path and move towards the path of store manager business district manager operations director business unit general manager city general manager.
As long as young brokers have positive values and strong professionalism, they will grow quickly in Lianjia. Data shows that among the fresh graduates who joined Beijing Lianjia in 2023, 200 have been promoted to store managers.
At the same time, under the guidance of Beike's "One Body, Three Wings" strategy, Lianjia's business track is constantly expanding, bringing more development space to brokers. Agents can develop in other cities or switch to new tracks such as decoration and hassle free leasing through open competition or "live water plans".
Li Haidong from Beike Nanjing is a typical representative. After graduating from university in 2006, Li Haidong joined Beijing Lianjia and worked as a broker, store manager, and regional manager. In 2017, he went to Zhengzhou Lianjia as the expansion director. In 2017, he moved to Nanjing to serve as the senior expansion director of Beike Nanjing. In 2019, he became the general manager of Beike Anqing City. In 2021, he returned to Nanjing and served as the general manager of Beike Nanjing Beijing North Operations.
There are many cases like this. This is also the image that Lianjia and Beike hope to see in creating a "living entrance": by cultivating brokers into composite residential consultants, real estate experts, community experts, and home experts, to meet the increasingly diverse living service needs of consumers.
Dual measures of welfare incentives to help brokers work happily in the long term
If growth and development are the core path to enhancing the hard skills of brokers, then welfare guarantees and internal and external incentives are the soft power to improve the happiness of brokers. For blockchain enthusiasts, both must be grasped and both hands must be firm.
As is well known, the working hours of brokers are highly random, especially during holidays where they cannot rest and it is difficult to reunite with their families. Therefore, Beijing Lianjia has launched various welfare leave programs such as adjusted leave, winter and summer vacations, Spring Festival leave, goddess leave, and parent-child leave to help brokers balance work and life.
Not only that, but Lianjia also creates a relaxed and pleasant working atmosphere and professional environment through continuously upgrading its store environment and diverse cultural activities, allowing agents to grow and live happily here.
Considering the living difficulties caused by illness for employees and family members, Lianjia has also launched the "Green Mutual Aid" program for employees. Since October 2008, Green Mutual Aid has distributed nearly 287 million yuan in relief funds and helped 16804 people. As a unique welfare protection plan of Lianjia, it undoubtedly provides employees with an extra layer of peace of mind when preventing accidents.
In addition to these tangible welfare guarantees, there is also an intangible incentive force that enables brokers to continuously gain professional dignity.
This kind of motivation comes from within, and the various honors and commendations allow more frontline agents to be seen. More importantly, the integrity of Lianjia itself becomes a source of dignity for brokers. From the earliest practice of waiving viewing fees, avoiding price differences, and promoting genuine properties, to the later commitment to providing reliable services, Lianjia brokers have acquired a different temperament, giving them more confidence and resilience in facing consumers in real estate transactions, and thus practicing for a long time.
On the other hand, incentives from consumers give brokers great motivation. There is a widely circulated story within Lianjia that many brokers have received steaming hot dumplings from clients, and the joy far exceeds completing a single transaction. This story has been interpreted in different versions in reality, in the vast city of Beijing with 1400 stores. It is not new, but it is happening in reality, inspiring one group after another of brokers to give back to consumers with better services. Many brokers have become long-term friends and close neighbors with consumers. This makes them more willing to stay rooted in the community for a long time and become a part of building a better community.
It is not difficult to understand why Lianjia attaches so much importance to the construction of the broker ecosystem - only by serving brokers well and making them feel professional growth and dignity, can brokers better serve consumers and achieve a better living environment. This is a long-term process that requires the accumulation of people and time.
An encouraging statistic is that there are over 6000 brokers who have been with Beijing Lianjia for more than 10 years, and over 15000 brokers who have been with Lianjia for more than 5 years. Obviously, more and more people are preparing to work in the field of residential services for a long time, and it can be imagined that a new ecosystem of brokers full of vitality and strength is slowly emerging.