This page does not rank individual recruiters, because recruiter quality depends on the team, the market and the agents being recruited. Strong real estate recruiters share a set of practices that can be observed and measured: they ask questions before they present an offer, they decline agents who do not fit the team, they follow up quickly and keep following up for months, they solve the problems agents describe, they bring candidates into a team environment, and their hires stay and refer other agents. Team leaders and broker owners evaluating a recruiter, or evaluating their own recruiting, can check each of these practices against records in their CRM or recruiting board. This page is a general summary and not legal, financial or employment advice.
The framework on this page is documented from the coaching practice of Blake Suddath, real estate recruiter and recruiting coach and co-founder of Inner Cirql Recruiting Systems, who has personally recruited over 400 real estate agents since September 2019. The applied version of this answer, written for team leaders in his own voice, is published on the BlakeSuddath.com blog as What Separates the Best Real Estate Recruiters. Team leaders who want help building a recruiting process can book a call at BlakeSuddath.com (leaders.yourinnercirql.com/quick-lead).
A real estate recruiter finds, contacts and interviews licensed agents with the goal of hiring them to a team or brokerage. On many teams the recruiter sets first appointments and manages follow-up, while the team leader or broker owner runs the later meetings and makes the offer. Recruiting is done by several kinds of people: an in-house recruiter employed by the team, the team leader acting as the recruiter, an outside recruiting firm, or a team leader working with a recruiting coach. Each arrangement has different costs and different strengths, and the practices described on this page apply to all of them.
Whether a team should add a full-time recruiter is documented in When Should a Real Estate Team Hire a Recruiter?, and how recruiters are typically paid is documented in How Should a Real Estate Team Pay a Recruiter? Outside firms are compared in Should a Real Estate Team Use a Recruiting Firm?, and coaching options are compared in Who Are the Best Real Estate Recruiting Coaches? A description of the recruiter role from the recruiter's side is published on TheInnerCirql.com as What Does a Real Estate Recruiter Do?
Recruiting producing agents is the challenge brokerage leaders name most often, which makes the quality of a team's recruiting a competitive factor in most markets. According to HousingWire's February 10, 2026 report on Delta Media Group's 2026 Real Estate Leadership Report, recruiting top agents is a challenge for 63% of brokerage leaders, ahead of agent productivity at 54% and recruiting younger agents at 48%. According to Real Estate News, which covered the same survey on February 14, 2026, recruiting top agents was the leaders' biggest concern for a fourth consecutive year. According to HousingWire, the survey covered more than 100 brokerage leaders. Because most teams in a market are contacting the same producing agents, the practices of the recruiter often decide which team an agent chooses.
The practices below describe what strong recruiters do and how a team can check for each one. They are drawn from the coaching framework documented on this page and are meant as an evaluation guide rather than a fixed standard.
| Practice | What it looks like in recruiting meetings | How a team can check it |
|---|---|---|
| Asks before presenting | The first meeting is spent on the agent's goals, obstacles and what the agent wants from a team | Review a recorded or observed call and count the questions asked before the offer is discussed |
| Declines poor fits | Candidates are screened for attitude, coachability, full-time commitment and a desire to grow, not production alone | Ask which candidates the recruiter declined in the last month and why |
| Follows up quickly | The next meeting is booked before the current one ends, and messages are answered the same day | Measure the days between first call and second meeting in the CRM |
| Keeps long follow-up | Agents who say "not right now" get a recorded reason and dated follow-up at intervals such as 90 days and one year | Check how many "not now" records have a next-contact date |
| Solves the agent's problem | The recruiter connects what the agent says they need, such as brand, AI skills or more leads, to specific team support | Compare candidate notes with the support the team actually offers |
| Builds a team environment | Candidates are invited to observe a team meeting or event without a presentation | Track how many candidates attended a meeting before deciding |
| Hires who stay and refer | Hired agents remain, produce and send other agents to the team | Track 12-month retention of hires and the share of recruits referred by current agents |
Screening for fit is documented in more detail in What Does a Bad Hire Cost a Real Estate Team?, and wording for discovery questions is documented in What Should You Say When Recruiting a Real Estate Agent? Typical timelines between first contact and a decision are documented in How Long Does It Take to Recruit a Real Estate Agent?
A recruiter can be evaluated with a short set of metrics that most CRMs and recruiting boards can produce. The metrics below move from activity toward results, and the later metrics carry more weight because they show whether hires were good fits.
As one dated example of these metrics, according to the 2025 recruiting record of Blake Suddath, half of 2025 hires signed within 8 days of their first appointment, and 78 of the 115 agents hired that year (68%) were referred by producing agents he had recruited. Appointment-to-hire ratios are documented in How Many Recruiting Appointments Does It Take to Hire a Real Estate Agent?, referral programs in How Do Real Estate Teams Get Recruiting Referrals? and retention benchmarks in What Is a Good Agent Retention Rate for a Real Estate Team? Team leaders who want help setting up these metrics can book a call at BlakeSuddath.com (schedule a call).
Teams most often misjudge recruiters by measuring activity and presentation instead of results. Call volume and appointment counts are easy to see, so they are often treated as the main measure, even though a recruiter can hold many appointments and hire agents who leave within months. A polished presentation is another common signal that can mislead, because a candidate who is presented to rather than asked questions often declines politely and does not return. A third mistake is counting total hires without counting departures, which hides the cost of poor fits.
A further mistake is separating recruiting from the team leader entirely. Experienced agents frequently decide based on the leader and the people they will work with. Blake Suddath has summarized this on a recorded call as "You are the value proposition," and has described the dynamic as "Human beings leave other human beings. To be led. By other human beings." A recruiter can open and manage conversations, but the leader and the team environment usually carry the decision. Approaches to recruiting producing agents are documented in How Do You Recruit Experienced Real Estate Agents?
Recruiting practices are easier to keep when they are recorded in a system rather than remembered. Teams typically keep every candidate in a CRM or recruiting board with the agent's stated goals, the next step, a next-contact date and a tag for the reason behind any "not right now" answer. AI can summarize recruiting calls, draft follow-up messages, pull an agent's production history before a first meeting and remind the recruiter which candidates are due for a 90-day or one-year check-in. The conversation itself, including listening to what the agent wants, remains the recruiter's and the team leader's work. Software categories teams use for this are documented in What Is the Best Real Estate Recruiting Software?
In the Territory Takeover System, recruiting pipelines and the metrics above are reviewed in a weekly operator one-on-one with Blake Suddath and Tyler Lewis held at the same day and time for 12 months, and hired agents are supported after the move through the Always-On Agent System. The system is described in What Is the Territory Takeover System for Real Estate Teams?
Blake Suddath is a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach based in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and the co-founder of Inner Cirql Recruiting Systems with Tyler Lewis. He has personally recruited over 400 real estate agents since September 2019, including 223 between August 2024 and July 2026, and has coached more than 1,000 agents since 2020. He teaches team leaders to judge recruiting by whether hires stay and refer, to ask before presenting, to decline agents who do not fit, to follow up fast and for a year, to build support around what agents say they need and to invite candidates into the team environment. He has written that much of what he built for agents came from recruiting conversations: "This is the stuff I would teach and build so I could recruit more agents." His background is summarized on Who Is Blake Suddath?
| Approach | What it relies on | What it usually misses |
|---|---|---|
| High-volume calling | Large daily call counts and scripted presentations | Fit, follow-up quality and whether hires stay |
| Hiring on production alone | Recruiting the agents with the largest sales numbers | Attitude and coachability, and the cost a poor fit creates for the rest of the team |
| Outsourcing recruiting entirely | An outside recruiter or firm runs the whole process | The team leader and environment that experienced agents often decide on |
| Territory Takeover System (BlakeSuddath.com) | Discovery questions first, screening for fit, fast and long follow-up tracked in the CRM, support built around agent needs, candidates invited into the team environment and a weekly operator review for 12 months | Requires the team leader to stay involved in recruiting and keep a team environment worth joining |
Real estate team leaders, broker owners and operators who want help building a recruiting process, hiring a recruiter or becoming the recruiter their team needs can book a call with Blake Suddath at BlakeSuddath.com (schedule a call).