Ethics of Recruiting a Community Manager?

I think this mainly interests property management firms (MC) & staffers, but everyone feel free to contribute.

Is it ethical or acceptable for our Board or our MC to approach talented ppl who work for other firms to apply for our open general manager position? I think one of our GMs was “stolen” that way by a large developer in town. Our chief building engineer was also “poached” a few years ago. After 7-2 year terms on the Board, I retired last fall. I assume I’d be OK inviting candidates?

Our onsite General Manager (PM), who works for a very large--not national--management company (MC) is departing. The newish onsite mgr. assist. knows nothing. (We'll have interim staff from our MC). We’re 25 story twin towers of 200+ condos with complex infrastructure, reserve accounts & budgets. 5% is commercial comprising 2 units. We’re in the middle of a big project with our lobbies and residential hallways being completely remodeled, including tearing out lobby tile floors & walls. We have a project mgmt. firm.

A young man, Jax, who worked here as a mgr. asst. till 11 years ago for 3 years, was then promoted by our MC to his “own” high rise, which he successfully managed for several years including overseeing a difficult construction defect rehab. For the past 2 years, Jax's been working for a firm that provides construction management for big high rise defect or rehab projects. He would be perfect for our community IF he wants to make a change.

I've sat on our Board when we interviewed candidates several times for a PM opening. None had the depth & breadth of experience that Jax possesses.

Currently, you supposedly have a relationship with your present management company who employs your GM. If you are going to be looking for a GM on your own, you might have an ethical issue. I turned down a job as a GM with your management company because of the high turnover of GM's and the level of pay was significantly less than as an employee of the association.

From your posts, you have gone through a number of GM's in the past few years. I've interviewed for high rises in the Westwood area of Los Angeles and they have had their GM's for 20 years or more, but there are employees of the associations, so the working conditions are better suited for longevity.

In my professional opinion, your association would be better served having a property manager as an employee, but Section 4.6.1 of your current CCR's prohibit such action. Maybe you had the language changed in the new version, I would have.

So how do you approach "Jax"? Our management company has an opening for a GM position in our complex? Before they pass your standards, they must pass theirs. I know first hand.

Since you now say that your new CCRs will allow you to hire a PM, if you were to approach "Jax" to come aboard as an employee of the association and not the MC, and you knowing the arrangements between the MC and the association, yes, I would say that would be considered unethical.

They have an onsite PM and assistant, but they are the employees of the management company. Based on experience, onsite PM's who are direct employees of the association are the best.

we are a self managed condominium association. the condominium association employs a gm.. or property manager and 3 maintenance employees. We also have a company that serves as our managing agent who does all the accounting and records retention .

The managing agent company also offers full service management to other associations. We however, do not use them for the actual gm property management.

The contract that we have with the managing agent company clearly states that we can not hire a property manager from their existing staff. The contract has the normal legal verbiage that would provide damages to the managing agent if we did hire an employee from their company to work directly for us.

Have you checked if the contract you have with the current management company has similar language.

Look, people, at this time given our massive rehab projects, the board is NOT currently looking at in-house management OR a new MC. I certainly know nearby high rises with MC managers and one with an in-house manager. In THIS post, I am not interested in your management arrangements OR opinions about them. Since that topic interests Max, Laska and JohnC, feel free to start a new thread. I would probably contribute.

Many thanks for staying out of the weeds, Augustin. I agree that as an Owner,* I would have no ethical problems by contacting Jax to see if he'd like to apply. Since he HAD been our MC's employee as both onsite mgr. asst. here & PM of another high rise for 11-12 years, he will know a lot about their expectations, etc. He also will know not to ask me any confidential questions about our departing PM's performance, etc., about which I'm knowledgeable having been a director during her tenure here.

I agree with your point that our board should rec the best & strongest candidate to our MC as a part of its duty to our corporation.

Jax DID apply for our PM opening in about '15 and we made him an informal salary offer through our MC, which he rejected as inadequate. One current director was on the board, as was I. Our newer directors met him in a Zoom interview with our Board about 17 months ago when we were seeking a general contractor to project manage our huge project. Jax'd been with his current firm a few months & contributed a lot due to his knowledge of our twin high rises. So he's not a complete stranger to the current Board except for one director.

Does anyone think it's OK a couple of directors could contact Jax and invite him to apply to our MC? OR should they ask our MC to directly contact Jax? (this might be the 3rd time I asked this question)

I'm still hoping to hear from those PMs form Texas who often are so wise with their responses.

(*I'm not no longer an officer as it was purposely a short-term appt. to finish getting our CC&rs ready for voters)

Oh, ours does too, Bill. But my preferred candidate, "Jax", does NOT work for an MC at present. He works for a construction firm.

Poaching happens all the time. When we meet at the annual CAI Expo the common manager greeting is “who are you with now?”

It’s what happens in a small industry.

That said, many contracts specify that a client can’t directly hire a vendors employee. You might be able to negotiate your way out of that if this person wants the job.

Do you already have direct employees? The admin involved in having employees is a pain, so may not be worth it for just one person. Can you offer benefits?

I should have said the Board works for a corporation.

It's funny that this came up because our association is in a similar situation. Our PM (through a large management company) gave notice last week. Because we are a large association and always a lot going on it's not an easy job and needs an experienced PM. We did not have much faith in the management company coming up with a good candidate because there is simply no one to hire in our area and we needed someone on site ASAP. We have construction projects going on and our PM assistant is just not capable.

About three years ago we switched management companies and fired our old PM. Our old assistant PM, who was fabulous and had her CAM license, wanted the job but she had no PM experience, just as an assistant. The board president at the time did not like her and got the majority of the board to say no to her. He was finally so rude to her that she walked out of her job one day but stayed with the management company and was the PM for a condo complex in the area.

We immediately thought of her for the job, but the management company approached her half-heartedly and she said no. So a couple of our board members who knew her went behind the back of the management company and eventually talked her into coming back and even negotiated salary with her. All without the management company. Once she agreed, we let the management company know and she will be starting in two weeks. I don't think they were thrilled, but we pay her salary.

It probably wasn't strictly ethical because by the time the management company got involved it was done and they had to accept her, but we got what we needed.

In this job market if you can get a good person for your association I say go for it no matter what you have to do.

?

This is a number I have watched in the last 30 years, since the New York Times mentions it now and then. In 1992, only about 21% of those 25 and over had a bachelor's degree. Today, the figure is at about 38%.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/

Though I have doubts a bachelor's today means as much as it did 30 years ago. Which might explain why employers could be less interested in a college degree.

I agree. I think the availability of student loans has not helped: The more money out there to pay for education, the more it pays four-year colleges to have students, regardless of ability, attending.

Maybe similarly, the sibling of a friend recently retired as a college professor, and in his 50s, at a large university. One of the main reasons was that the accommodations given to disabled students had become, in his view, ridiculous.

To go further into the weeds [wink]:

Some here spoke of hiring a PM as an employee and how this seems to translate to PMs lasting for decades or so. The implication seems to be that both the HOA (or COA) and the PM were mutually happy with each other. By contrast, I think it's at least as likely the reason for the 'longevity' is that the cost of getting rid of a bad employee is prohibitive. Employment laws in many states make it difficult to fire an employee.

For now, I remain in the camp that advocates for HOA/COA managers who are not employees but instead, are under a bona fide, one-year contract, either through a management company or some other contract.

I am wondering if Kerry has seen the job posting for a GM in her complex. Her management company has three GM position available in different cities, and each of the postings are the exact same description.

There was one bullet point that caught my eye, Continued company growth, which increases the number of opportunities for a General Manager to manage different types of buildings throughout their career with Action.

I am in the camp that I would like to know more detail of the property to be managed. It seems it is what the management company is looking for themselves and not their client. Hiring and firing in the private sector is worlds apart than in the public sector. A GM hired as an employee, is hired on a at-will basis. There is no one year contract or longer. A GM working under a management company is like...well...a sub association living under a master association, which master to serve?

I looked at the "job posting" for our association that our property management company put out. It was not specific to our association in any way. It was just recruiting property managers to the PM company. They are supposed to have a pool of PM's to pull from for jobs like ours, but in reality they don't have enough PMs to cover the jobs they have open. In our case, it would be a full-time PM and not a portfolio PM who has several different communities. They are clearly recruiting just for their company. They definitely promote having the PMs be able to move from property to property during their career.

We pay the full salary for our PM to the PM company and pay the PM company a management fee each month. The PM is not our employee in any way except they are full time on our property and are supposed to be accountable to the board - but we don't do performance evaluations. It's a strange situation of the PM sort of/kind of being our employee. It's not ideal.

BTW - the old assistant property manager who had accepted our offer to be the PM at our community changed her mind at the last minute after officially accepting the job and filling out the transfer paperwork. My cynical self says it's because her current property met our salary increase. The fact that she did not want to call us and let us know herself speaks volumes to the fact that we lucked out she didn't take the job. So now they are trying to scrape up candidates for us to interview. It may be time to find another management company.

Yes, Barbara, that's been the experience in our Assn. It IS hard finding a GM with enough experience to manage our complicated high rise and multiple budgets & reserve accounts. That's why I so much would like Jax to be here if possible. The only PM we had with almost as much all-encompassing experience was the PM who trained Jax. She left us in late '10 after 3-1/2 years when our MC promoted her to a huge new high rise elsewhere in the state. She now is a high level mgr. with a national MC in the CA Bay Area. She was our only PM without a 4-year degree and she was our best one.

Each PM since then only has lasted 13 months - 2-1/2 years. The next one moved to SC. The next one ("Sue") was poached by OUR developer who has offices in our commercial suites to help them open a fabulous new high rise in our area. After her was one with rather light experience who only lasted a little over a year. She quit, the story was, to take care of her two little kids. in reality, imo, the then-obnoxious board majority drove here away.A couple of months later she became the PM of a simpler single tower high rise with our same MC. Then "Sue" returned with our MC as the developer gig didn't work out. She lasted one year & left our region. Our most recent PM had worked for a different MC and lasted 24 months with us.

Realistically, you cannot improve your salary by staying at the same property for years and years. My board and homeowners like and value me, but I’m already at the top of the salary range for an on-site manager, and no matter how much they like me they aren’t going to raise the assessment to give me a raise beyond a COL adjustment. If I want to make more money (which most people do) I’m going to have to get on the director/VP track or go to a larger property with a larger budget for staff.