Real World Skills
Tim Loiseau thought these two apartment units would be the end of him.
When he first began his new position as the real estate manager for Student Agencies Incorporated, located at Cornell University, Tim was thrown into the water and quickly had to learn how to swim. He had to balance his newly given duties with his education, and he experienced a lesson in time management. Hours and hours were spent on the phone, sending emails, and visiting office hours, and he finally identified the commitments he needed to prioritize and get done.
There was a reason why Tim was so busy. He was just entrusted with managing the company’s real estate portfolio, which totaled nearly $15 million. There was a mix of three buildings, commercial tenants, and managing tenant relations while ensuring they were compliant. He determined the rents, developed acquaintance costs, and put forward an entire budget. He had to develop an entire marketing initiative to bring students in and show these apartments.
“Right off the bat, you come in and you immediately have to learn about facilities management, code compliance, rent agreements, and budgeting and marketing,” Tim said. “This is what intrigued me and interested me about this position: real life operational real estate experience. It’s a bottom-up experience, and it’s exactly in line with what I want to do in the future.”
As his marketing initiatives began to take off, Tim was able to cross each rental unit off his list and eventually rent out each unit — except those awful two-bedroom apartments. Every year the real estate manager has a massive problem leasing out two specific units with very unique layouts.
“The units are big open rooms, and they aren’t separate bedrooms,” Tim explained. “The space is just plain weird. I had to get creative with how I leased them out.”
For an entire month, Tim tried everything, to no avail. His boss kept hounding him about these units and whether they had been rented out yet. He posted ads on Zillow and Purchin, he reached out to his own personnel and different social circles he was associated with, yet no one would bite on the units. He used traditional flyers to try and reach anyone at all.
At one point his boss came up to him again and asked why he was struggling so much. He reiterated that they needed to get these apartments leased. Time was ticking down, and he soon had to meet the deadline to sign rental agreements for all the apartments and convey his results to the rest of the board.
“It was a lesson in perseverance. Every day I was pushing myself to try and get these apartment units signed, and I just never gave up. It was overwhelming and out of control. It was in my power, but I couldn’t get it to translate. It was demoralizing,” Tim recalled.
But then the craziest thing happened. One day, Tim had two showings back to back, and he was able to sign both of them within those two showings. After a three-week grind and struggle, he was finally done. He had accomplished his goal. Not only did he meet his targets, he even exceeded the expectations set for him.
“My proudest moments would be with all the properties I leased out. They’re located right at the entrance to Collegetown, and it’s almost a guarantee to lease them out. The question is whether you capture high rent rates, though. Once I had finished leasing them all out, I was able to go into our board meeting and say, ‘Hey, everyone, I got all of these numbers and accomplished our goals. Not only that, but I got a 12-percent increase in total revenue across our units.’ The Google alumni on our board of directors told me I did a great job, and that was the most satisfying feeling in the world,” Tim said.
Tim’s story is similar to countless other experiences shared by student managers of SRBs. While not many other managers are able to run their own $15 million real estate portfolio, every business offers unique business applications that students will be able to take with them onto their future career aspirations.
In Tim’s case, he was able to pick up important hard skills, which apply directly to the field he is interested in pursuing. That is the case with some managers in certain jobs they take. Ganzorig [AB3] Batbold, a colleague of mine and a fellow student manager at Vital Vittles, Georgetown University’s student-run grocery store, was able to pick up more hard skills himself. Even though he is a physics major, he believes his work as a data analyst will help him pursue a different career path than one in physics.
“Being on the management team has taught me so much about the inside and out of a grocery store, and you learn problem-solving skills you need to adapt,” Ganzorig explained. “I worked a lot in Excel, and my major doesn’t necessarily correlate to that, but having a different job with a different industry was really eye opening and has led me to consider a different career path than what I initially thought of at the beginning of college.”
Another student manager with a similar mindset is Catherine Schult [AB4] from The Hoot at Rice University. Although she is a bio-engineering major, working at The Hoot — a late night student-run cafe — has allowed her to explore a different industry and think of different career paths.
“I know I want go into business, whether it’s management consulting or going to go get an MBA,” Catherine said. “It’s not that I don’t like engineering, but I found myself spending more time researching small things about the business than reading additional articles related to my field of study. The former general manager is now a consultant, and that’s a path I would want to explore.”
Catherine believes this job has been really great for the opportunities it has opened up and for the people skills that she has developed. She has been able to learn a lot about people through her management position and overall has attained useful concepts related to leading people.
Of course, not all managers learn applicable hard skills that apply to their future career aspirations. Some positions or responsibilities that students take on that may be completely different than what they intend to do for a future career, which is totally acceptable. Individuals are still able to develop important “soft skills,” which begin to set them apart from other job applicants.
