This is, quite possibly, the greatest thing you will read this week.

And if you know me, you know that by “greatest,” I am likely being cynical, and this will actually be one of the most pathetic things you’ve read in a long time.

I received what you might call a “recruitment” email from a Toronto real estate brokerage, and it took a very, very interesting tone.

I suppose different people are motivated in different ways, but this email, which was actually sent to most of the 40,000 GTA Realtors, was laughable, and probably the least motivating thing I’ve ever read.

This should put a smile on your face first thing on a Monday morning…

When was the last job interview you went on?

Think back to it, and recall who was sitting on which side of the desk.

The person interviewing you was sitting behind the desk, likely in a much nicer chair, and you sat in a small chair, overlooking the desk, maybe staring at plaques on the wall behind the interviewer, or out a window.

HE was interviewing YOU.

In real estate, the broker might be sitting behind the desk, and you might be sitting in the smaller chair in front of it, but make no mistake – YOU are interviewing THEM.

This fact was lost on me when I first started going on interviews in 2003.

I went into a firm, which is now out of business, and they wanted to hire me on the spot.

“When can you start?” the lady said, about thirty seconds after I sat down.

I didn’t realize that in real estate, where the jobs are free, the agents are a dime a dozen, and brokerages need warm bodies at desks, the agent is interviewing the brokerage.

It sure doesn’t work like this in the rest of the business world, but when I was 23-years-old and starting out, I had no clue.  It wasn’t until the third brokerage asked, “When can you start?” that I began to realize something was different here.

Nobody ever asked me for a resume either.

Anyways…

A colleague of mine who just started at our brokerage interviewed a whopping sixteen brokerages, and we have been making fun of her ever since she told us.

“Why not seventeen?” we asked.  “What made you think that sixteen was enough?”

I’m happy to say that she says it was “no contest,” and that Bosley was the right choice no matter what.

She said she went into 7-8 brokerages where she felt like at any minute, Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out and say, “You got punked!”  There’s no way these can actually be places of business, can they?

You would be shocked at what exists out there, believe me.

And last week, when I was at a company event, my iPhone buzzed with a “recruitment” email from a brokerage who shall remain nameless, and after skimming through it, my eyes popped out – I read it again, twice, and then said, “Everybody quiet down…..you MUST hear this!”

Folks, I don’t know what motivates you.  I don’t know what motivates the person next to you, or the guy down the street.  But I’d like to think that this email that I’m about to share with you is not what you would call “motivational.”

This is, honestly, the best laugh I’ve gotten in a long time.

Ready?

SUBJECT LINE: 

Are You Ripping Your Hair Out & Throwing In The Towel?

BODY:

Every morning you wake up and you have no direction.

Every movement and action is routine.

Walking into the office, you go to your desk and place your head in your hands.

Lost and stressed from the incapacity to meet your own expectations and obligations.

Your sales goals are diminishing day by day.

You are embarrassed to ask for help and have no idea of what to even ask or say.

DON’T SIT THERE AND SULK. TAKE CONTROL. CALL (NAME OF BROKERAGE) TO SKY ROCKET YOUR CAREER.

–

Yes, really.

That happened.  That’s an actual email that a licensed real estate brokerage sent out to a majority of Toronto agents to recruit them.  And the body of the email actually featured a photo of a man and a woman pulling out their hair!

I kid you not – my colleagues and I read this over and over, one line at a time.

We joked about it all day.  “Are your actions routine?”  “What direction are you going in?”  “I’d ask you for help, but I’m embarrassed.”

Is THIS really how a brokerage is trying to recruit people?

Shame them?

It’s like a weight loss company publishing this ad:

“Are a fat piece of human garbage?  Are you so overweight that you barely deserve to be alive?  Does your dog laugh at you?  Do you have ANY friends at all, or are you just friends with raw hot dogs dipped in Nuttella?  Why do you bother getting up in the morning, unless it’s to drown yourself in the toilet?  Before you kill yourself on account of being so goddam fat, give us a call….”

Wow.  Way to motivate!

And the best part about the email from the real estate brokerage is that it’s exceptionally ironic.

Unless this brokerage is ONLY looking to hire people who are failing miserably in the business, what did they expect to come of this?

Clearly, no decent agent is going to identify with this “having no control” and “no direction” stuff, so is the brokerage simply looking to attract the worst agents in the city?

I can’t possibly think this email was intended to do anything but that.

If this brokerage did think they’d attract top agents with this, then recruitment isn’t their biggest problem…

I’m sure there are agents out there that have no direction, are afraid to ask for help, but their hands on their head in the office, who are lost and stressed, etc.  But why would a brokerage seek these folks out?

And truth be told – this isn’t a very good brokerage.  It’s not like they’re going to magically turn around the faltering careers of the industry’s bottom-dwellers.  They’re not equipped with the right management, leadership, experience, and training to turn the “embarrassed with no direction” into top sellers.  Although perhaps if they did have leadership, they wouldn’t have sent out that email…

And perhaps even better than the original email was the one that followed on Saturday, with “WE APOLOGIZE!” in the subject line, followed by a giant yellow smiley-face, with a frown, holding a sign that says “OOPS.”

Classic.

Well, hey, at least they tried something different, right?

And if any agent was motivated enough by that email to make a career change, then good on them.

I just found it terribly funny, and I saved the email to favourites.

Hopefully it gave you a chuckle too, as we all delve back into the workweek after a really, awesome, sunny weekend.  The kind of weekend that was so great, it leaves you with no direction, makes you want to go to your desk, put your head in your hands…..