Insider Q & A: The Bozzuto Group’s Kristen Reese on the Best Way to Get a Recruiter’s Attention

Kristen Reese is the Director of Talent Acquisition for The Bozzuto Group. A graduate of Penn State University, she started her career as an Operations Manager in the hospitality space, transitioning into the talent acquisition field in 1999 and joining The Bozzuto Group in January of 2011.

Since their founding in 1988, The Bozzuto Group has built an award-winning portfolio of real estate communities. The Washington Business Journal has named Bozzuto one of the “Best Places to Work” in the greater Washington, D.C. area four times in the past six years (2005, 2009, 2010 and 2011). The Bozzuto Group was recently also honored as a best place for candidates to apply through the Candidate Experience Awards.

Your website describes The Bozzuto Group as a “privately held integrated real estate services organization that is ‘six companies in one’? What are the six different companies that make up Bozzuto, and how can job seekers learn more about them?

The Bozzuto Group is comprised of six companies: Bozzuto Management Company, specializing in residential property management, Bozzuto Construction, Bozzuto Development, Bozzuto Homes, Bozzuto Acquisitions, and Bozzuto Land Company. We are regionally based and nationally recognized for our expertise in the real estate space. You can learn more about us by visiting www.bozzuto.com.

The Bozzuto Group employs more than 1,100 people and has a strong financial position. We are large enough to offer stable, highly successful career paths, yet flexible enough for new hires to make a remarkable difference, right from the start. We have one of the lowest turnover rates in the industry and this year, just as we did last year, we will promote more than 100 of our colleagues into higher paying, career enhancing positions.

You’ve created over 35,000 homes and residential communities to date, what types of positions do you look for – and what jobs are you hiring for right now?

We hire between 300 and 400 employees each year; you can see our current openings here. While approximately 80% of our opportunities fall within our property management company, we also fill a variety of positions in our construction, development and home building companies. We also often have needs in our corporate departments such as Marketing, Accounting and Finance, IT and Human Resources.  Our opportunities range from entry level, to skilled trades people, to experienced hires and executive management.

In our management company, we regularly hire Sales and Service (Leasing) Associates and Concierges for our luxury communities. These are more entry-level opportunities.
We also hire Property Managers, Maintenance Technicians and Maintenance Managers to ensure our facilities and systems run at peak performance. In our construction company we are always looking for tenured Project Managers and Superintendents with multifamily or mixed-use building experience.

The Bozzuto Group was honored at the recent Candidate Experience Awards. What makes Bozzuto a great place to work at as well as to apply for jobs?

Bozzuto is a great place to work because our assets are our people and reputation. We treat our people well, and guard our reputation dearly. We offer our employees the opportunity to move ahead more rapidly than is possible at most other companies. Advancement depends on merit and we have yet to find the limits of the responsibility our best people are able to assume. Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business. We expect our people to maintain high ethical standards in everything they do, both in their work for the company and in their personal lives.

We make a disciplined effort to identify and recruit the best person for each job. Although our activities are measured in millions of dollars, we select our employees one by one. In our business, we know that without the best people, we cannot be the best company. We also realize that many of our candidates are homeowners or apartment renters and have the potential to also be our customers. The candidate experience is very important.

Tell me about a recent hire you made. How did they get your attention and why did you hire them?

I’ll share with you the story of a candidate I had the opportunity to get to know. I received my undergraduate degree from Penn State and the day before I started working at The Bozzuto Group, a soon to be Penn State graduate reached out to me via LinkedIn.

He was a marketing major with a strong desire to break into the real estate industry.  He had completed an internship in the real estate field and had previously worked for his father’s construction business. He was willing to consider any opportunity that would enable him to learn.

I told him that I was transitioning jobs and encouraged him to follow up with me at Bozzuto once I got settled. He kept in touch, sent a resume and cover letter that was well constructed and thought out, as was his communication with me. He was diligent, proactive, professional and articulate. I was impressed.

Four months later we made him an offer to join us as a Project Engineer in our construction company and two months after that, when he graduated, he came on board.

What type of real estate experience do candidates need to have to work at Bozzuto? If they haven’t worked in real estate before, what’s the best way to learn about working in your field – and to prepare for an interview?

For our entry-level positions, real estate or property management experience is helpful but not required. We are looking for enthusiastic people who genuinely enjoy working with others and care about impacting people’s lives.  Creativity, concern, passion and perfection are our core values. For most of our Bozzuto colleagues, where you work is where our customers call home.  Individuals with backgrounds in hospitality, marketing, retail or customer service, to name a few, are just valuable to us as entry-level candidates with real estate experience.

Naturally, many of our higher level or specialized positions require measureable experience, certifications and/or specialized training.

But regardless of the skills and experience required for our opportunities, as our Chairman and CEO Tom Bozzuto would say – “We want to hire people who are nice!”

Do you use social media to engage candidates? What’s the best way a job search candidate can engage with you during the hiring process?

Yes. We use social media to promote our employment brand and to interact with candidates. Check out our YouTube channel to see our colleagues’ perspectives on the Bozzuto employee experience. You can also find us on Glassdoor.

You can also connect with Bozutto on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or foursquare.

Are there any questions that I haven’t asked that I should be asking? What’s the
question, and what’s your answer?

How should a candidate design their resume? What’s the best way to capture a recruiter’s attention?

The recruiter should be able to understand what you do, where you have done it and your measurable accomplishments within seconds of looking at your resume.
This information should be clearly visible, free of any spelling or grammar mistakes, and properly formatted. We hire several hundred people a year, but we receive thousands upon thousands of resumes. We aren’t able to carefully review every resume so we need to be able to see your value proposition at a glance.

Use it now—actionable—advice for job seekers:

Be humble and put your best foot forward in the interview. There is a lot of eager talent in the job market. Reputable employers have options. Invest some time into thinking about how you can add value to the company and how your experience will lend itself to the job you are applying for.