“How do you expect to be taken seriously?”

Monday, May 26th, 2008

The distinguished gentleman who was sitting opposite me was pretending that he is sooo cool. But he was not. He was nervous, I could read it on his body language. He was not nervous like a lady I met the previous week, who “had feelings” because she felt stress being interviewed in a big company. For him the problem was different…

That day I was really late in all my afternoon meetings. I had a contract between a major greek company and one of the best Romanian owners I have ever met. Civilized people, great atmosphere, good intention and logic were the ingredients of this deal. Although the bank did its best so as to disturb all the people (they needed 4,5 hours for a case with maximum duration of 1 hour, keeping us in a room in which you could barely breathe by the heat), everything finished smoothly. This delay destroyed my programme, thus I was late in all my meetings for interviews, actually I had to cancel some of them too. (But a contract always makes you feel better and compensated. Not for the money only, for me the biggest “asset” is the feeling of appreciation of the people, who are satisfied by our work).

The gentleman opposite me started explaining why he has changed so many real estate agencies in the last 2 years. To be more precise, he did not want to explain, I had to ask him 3 times, so as to finally receive an answer (yes, I have this problem, when I meet someone, I try to give to him a chance and I don’t try to judge him so fast). His words were not honest, he was also avoiding to look at my eyes. Sometimes I am amazed by a part of the young Romanians. How can you go to a potential new employer and tell him the following story: “I left my last company because I thought that they received the commission by the client for a transaction we did and they did not give to me my share. But I was wrong, they did not receive it. When they received it, they did not pay me, because I was already gone”…

How is it possible to go to an interview and not to know anything regarding not the company, but not even the domain where the company is activating in? How is it possible to appear to an interview without to be able to explain the basics you write in your cv? There are so many people out there claiming that they want to work, to be hired, to have a career etc. How do they expect to be taken seriously (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9feSWe38lk), when their behavior shows that they do not care about anything at all?

The conversation entered in its last phase with this man. He started telling me about properties that “he has the owners and they are not in the market”. The first one was interesting, known to me but expensive, plus having a budget of land around 60 million euro. This person did not understand anything from what I was telling him, trying to explain to him why it was expensive. The next 5 properties exists… almost since Alexander the Great was ready to invade Persian territory. Properties with very high price, very bad characteristics, very stupid owners, very big legal problems. I informed him that I knew them all, one by one, even explaining to him what was the problem of each of them. He got upset…

This category of agents has a special characteristic: Selective vision, listening, understanding and perception of the environment. So, each time you describe to them something for a property, they do not want to know it, if it is not ringing the bell “I can sell / I can trick him”. They do not want to know about Real Estate, to understand properties or anything else. They just see the money and this is it. There are thousands like this who exist today in Romania, without knowing why they do this business, what is their future, what properties they promote or anything else. They made money in the previous years and they continue believing that they will trick “stupid foreigners” forever.

I informed this distinguished gentleman that we can only collaborate together, as external partners, because his approach to business does not match with mine. I don’t think he heard me. He agreed, but his eyes were colder than an ice mountain, he was already thinking of his next potential victim. Two days after, my colleague in our company in charge with the collaboration with other agencies and partners called him. He talked to her really badly. I guess he felt brave and proud, a young man talking badly to a woman older than him, who does not know him and just had an order to call him. I guess he felt man enough, proud for rejecting her and our “collaboration”. When I called him myself so as to ask him not to insult again anyone from my colleagues, his great skills and courage probably abandoned him, so he just told me few stupid words and switched off his device.
Such a pity… And I had so many dreams…

You can not imagine how fast all these people will change job. Just let us discuss about them in 2 years time…