For decades, the real estate industry has struggled with failed hires.

Hiring managers engage prospects with high hopes, but those hopes are often dashed soon after an agent begins their new career.

I’ve occasionally addressed this topic in previous posts, and some of our clients have been successful in reducing their failed-hire rate by more than 50%.

How did they do it?

Over time, they made small changes in their selection and onboarding process to improve their success rates.

Here is another small change to add to the list:

Start assessing for cognitive flexibility during your interviews.

Researchers define cognitive flexibility this way:

Cognitive flexibility is a skill that enables a person to switch between different concepts, or to adapt behavior to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment.

It is essentially about learning to learn and being able to be flexible about the way an individual learns.

Cognitive flexibility is a person’s ability to see that what they’re doing is not leading to success and then to make the appropriate changes to achieve success.

It’s easy to see why this skill would be helpful to new agents trying to learn real estate.

But it’s also a key ingredient experienced agents must possess in order to survive in a market where the old playbook is not working.

In our next Insight, we’ll learn how to assess for it in an interview and grow it in yourself and others.