Helping REITs find strong local talent, and alerting early career job seekers to opportunities within the REIT industry, are key drivers behind the launch of a new website, AllTheREITJobs.com.
While the site is up and running, with more than 4,000 REIT jobs currently listed, there is still work to be done before it becomes fully functional, says founder David Auerbach, chief investment officer of Hoya Capital & Hoya ETFs, and a REIT industry veteran.
The site, a not-for-profit venture born out of Auerbach’s personal passion for the industry, aims to breach a glaring hole in the market, he says. On traditional job sites, listings can be old or filtered incorrectly. “A lot of the REIT jobs are showing up under financials on some of these other websites. They get lost in the noise of all the job opportunities that are out there,” he says. The end result is that REITs are getting candidates that are “outside the scope of the focus,” he adds, while job seekers can get discouraged and frustrated.
AllTheREITJobs.com is geared towards undergraduate and graduate students at educational institutions with a real estate or REIT focus. “There is no resource in place to help people get their foot in the door in the REIT industry; I'm trying to provide that resource,” Auerbach says. The new site will create a database of applicant resumes that REITs can access and will also include a list of REIT internships.
Working behind the scenes to help launch the new website is Jonathan Rigby, an intern from the University of Texas at Dallas. Rigby has been working to create individual pages for 200-plus public REITs, list job openings, enable job seekers to apply directly from the site, and provide REITs with user IDs and passwords.
Auerbach notes that the website is a work in progress, as REITs are added and removed from the site in response to IPOs, privatizations, or mergers, for example. Once Rigby completes the initial infrastructure, the site will begin auto scraping job listings directly from REIT websites.
Auerbach says he has been approached to expand the site to broader real estate asset classes including C-Corps and service providers. “We hope to tackle this part of the project once we get the REIT side firing on all cylinders.”
Meanwhile, Auerbach is looking to raise one-time sponsorship funds from the industry that would be invested in an endowment or trust, with the proceeds used to cover the cost of a professional coder to work on an as-needed basis, and allowing the site to operate on autopilot for years to come.
“This is a give-back legacy initiative to the REIT industry. My sole purpose of this is to make sure that there is a resource in place for the next 25-plus years, that this job platform exists for folks that want to get involved in the world of REITs,” Auerbach says.