Your Candidate is your Customer and your Customer is your Candidate

• Multifamily Leadership


• 1 Mar 2018

In this interview, Patrick Antrim, CEO of Multifamily Leadership shares time with David Draper the Manager of Recruiting & Employment at the Lewis Group of Companies, one of the nation’s largest privately-held real estate developers. As the company’s Talent Acquisition leader, David fosters strategies that drive talent acquisition planning, recruitment marketing, and employee engagement/retention initiatives.

David attended California State University Northridge and has his Human Resources Management Certification from UC Riverside. He began his recruiting career over twenty years ago with Robert Half International and The Cambridge Group, opening the Inland Empire and Orange County California divisions of each. Prior to recruiting, David placed a different type of candidate as a Talent Agent in Beverly Hills placing actors in major film, television, and theatre productions.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Your candidate is your customer and your customer is your candidate
• Talent Acquisition market has changed. 2008 recession changed the game. Candidates were plentiful, the recession came and candidates were plentiful. Employers had their choices.
• The candidate experience is extremely important

The experience a candiate wants in looking for a job is very much like the experience of a consumer.

• Candidates are looking for: Personalized, technology, apply quickly, preferably on mobile, authentic and a good grasp of the culture. The company has a social footprint.

A candidate for your company is looking at your company the same way they look at a product.

• Recruitment is marketing. Recruiters should have a strong grasp of what they are doing for the organization. The recruiting team front facing to the public for the organization.
• The supply and demand in the job market. Look at the job market like we look at the rental market.
• How to get buy-in from executive leadership. Recruiting and talent acquisition is moving at light speed. Show data to the executive leadership on the quality of candidates and the reduction of job placement costs.
• Create a community brand and funnel the public to content on corporate site.
• The touch points of the consumer experience.
• MultifamilyScout.com – Helping brands build a strong employer brand position.
• Tracking data on content and the complete picture of the candidate experience.
• My first 6 months as a Lewis Leasing Consultant.
• Need to be transparent. Need to be honest…this is what the job will do, this is how much it will pay, our strong performers have these attributes, here is why you will do it. You will be a huge reason people will rent at these beautiful communities.
• Job fair results
• Partnering with the executive leadership team on a new approach to find talent. Recruiting must be able to show data, the value, what problem do you have? What solution do you want to try?
• Everyone is a recruiter. A referred employee is a quality hire.
• People who are referred go straight to the application vs internet-wide search and review.
• How we handle the relationship to those we don’t hire.

Make the application process simple.

Offer the ability to apply for a job in under 5 minutes, on your phone.  This is extremely attractive to candidates. Just like buying something on Amazon.

• You have to love people if you want to be in this business. We make communities.

If you keep your people happy, the customer service and sales will take care of itself.

Connect with Lewis Group of Companies:

Career Website:

Corporate Website:

Lewis Group of Companies Instagram

Lewis Group of Companies Twitter

Lewis Group of Companies Facebook

Connect with David Draper