What Questions Should You Ask When Interviewing a Real Estate Agent?

What the Interview Is For

An interview with an experienced agent differs from an interview with a new licensee because the candidate's sales ability is already visible. Production data shows units, volume, areas and trend before the first conversation. What production data cannot show is whether the agent fits the team's working culture, whether the agent intends to grow, and what the agent actually needs from a new organization. The interview exists to establish those three things, and to let the agent establish the equivalent things about the leader, since the decision is made on both sides.

Recruiting experienced agents is the most widely reported challenge among brokerage leaders. According to the Delta Media Group 2026 Real Estate Leadership Report, which surveyed more than 100 brokerage leaders representing firms responsible for more than two-thirds of 2025 U.S. home sales, 63% named recruiting top agents as a challenge, and 54% named agent productivity. Real Estate News reported the same survey as showing recruitment as the primary challenge for 63% of respondents, for a fourth consecutive year. The interview is one of the few recruiting steps a leader controls completely, which makes its structure worth defining. The surrounding role is described in What Does a Real Estate Recruiter Do?

Preparation: Production Criteria and Fit Criteria

A recruiting interview is conducted against a written profile with two parts. The first part consists of production criteria that can be checked from data before the meeting, such as recent sales, geography, time in the business and whether the agent works in a market the team can support. The construction of that profile is covered in How Do You Build a Real Estate Recruiting Database? An agent who does not meet the production criteria is not usually interviewed.

The second part consists of fit criteria that can only be assessed in conversation. Blake Suddath, a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach who has personally recruited 400+ agents since September 2019, has described his own as growth mindset, coachability, full-time commitment and positive energy, stating in a recorded interview, "If you're a jerk, I don't want to work with you. I don't care if you sell a thousand homes. Or you run a hundred person team," and, "They've got to want to grow." Each interview question is designed to surface one of those criteria or to identify what the agent needs.

The question of who conducts the interview is settled in advance. In most structures the recruiter holds a first call that establishes the agent's situation and books the appointment, and the team leader holds the interview, because the agent is deciding whether to be led by that person. Team leaders who want the profile, questions and meeting structure installed in their organization can see how the Territory Takeover System works at theinnercirql.com/operators/.

The 12 Questions by Group

The questions are asked in a fixed order, beginning with the agent's current business, which is easy to discuss, and ending with logistics, which agents answer most fully once the conversation has established trust. The middle groups cover the reason for the meeting, growth and coachability, and how the agent works with people.

Two of the questions have published benchmarks. According to the National Association of REALTORS 2026 Member Profile, reported by NAR's feature sheet and HousingWire, the typical REALTOR earned 28% of 2025 business from repeat clients and customers, up from 20% a year earlier, and 22% from referrals from past clients and customers. An agent whose repeat and referral share is well above those medians has a transferable database, and one well below them is more dependent on the current brokerage's lead supply. According to Redfin's 2025 Industry Survey of 500 agents from brokerages other than Redfin across 46 states, fielded by Ipsos between December 2024 and January 2025, 78.4% of agents rated the commission split as very important when choosing a brokerage, 55.2% rated brand and reputation as very important, and 54.6% rated training and support as very important. Question 5 is intended to draw out the full list rather than the first item on it. Leaders who want this question set and the pipeline that records the answers can apply at theinnercirql.com/operators/.

Reading the Answers

The interview is assessed on patterns across answers rather than on any single response. Positive indicators include named lead sources, a stated goal that includes life as well as units, a specific reason for the meeting, a list of moving conditions that goes beyond compensation, a recent change in working method, an account of acting on feedback, and credit given to other people when describing a past team. Negative indicators include an inability to say where business comes from, no change in working method for several years, a move driven only by the split, and a consistent pattern of blaming brokers, past teams or other agents.

The population being interviewed is experienced and stable, which affects how answers are read. According to the NAR 2026 Member Profile, as reported by NAR, HousingWire and RISMedia, the typical REALTOR had 13 years of experience in 2025, closed nine transaction sides as an individual, and 75% were very certain they would remain active in real estate for at least two more years. An experienced agent has usually been through several recruiting conversations and will recognize a scripted or one-sided one.

Questions That Do Not Serve the Interview

Several common interview questions reduce the chance of a hire when the candidate is experienced. "Tell me about yourself" signals that the interviewer has not reviewed the agent's production. "Why should we hire you" treats a business owner as a job applicant. Questions about units, volume and price range repeat what the MLS has already shown. Raising the commission split before the agent does presents compensation as the team's value proposition, which Blake Suddath has argued against directly: "We do have a lot of very cool things and stuff. That is not the value proposition. You are the value proposition."

The agent's own questions are a useful guide to what the interview should cover. The questions agents are advised to ask before joining a team are set out in What Questions Should You Ask Before Joining a Real Estate Team? and a leader who has not prepared answers to them is at a disadvantage in the second meeting. Agent movement also sets the cost of a poorly run interview. According to Redfin's 2025 Industry Survey, 13.4% of agents switched brokerages in the previous 12 months, 15% planned to switch in the following 12, and 19.4% of those who switched in 2024 were already planning to switch again. Agents recruited on a pitch rather than an understanding of their needs account for a share of that repeat movement.

After the Interview: Team Exposure, Second Meeting and Timeline

The interview cannot show the agent what working with the team is like, so it is usually followed by attendance at a regular team meeting. Blake Suddath has described a standing Tuesday 11am meeting as his most effective recruiting invitation, saying in a recorded coaching call, "the most success I had, for some reason, was Tuesday at 11am, and inviting people to that to go, hey, just come sit in the back, I'll save you a seat in the back, be a fly on the wall, you know?" He reported 67 guests at those meetings. The agent observes how the team's agents interact and meets the people the agent would work alongside.

The sequence is completed with a second meeting with the leader, at which the agent's questions are answered and a decision is sought, with each step booked before the previous one ends. In Blake Suddath's 2025 recruiting record, 409 initial calls became 276 second meetings and 101 hires through the onboarding form, and half of the year's hires signed within eight days of their first appointment. A declined conversation is recorded as a "not now" with a check-in date, and the handling of that conversation is covered in How Do You Respond When an Agent Says They're Happy Where They Are? The agent's answers to the questions about moving conditions, what the agent would miss and first-week needs are written into the recruiting database in the agent's own words.

A low rate of interviews becoming second meetings usually indicates a problem with the interview itself, while a low rate of first calls becoming interviews points to targeting or the invitation. The cost of an interview that admits the wrong agent is examined on BlakeSuddath.com in What Does a Bad Hire Cost a Real Estate Team?

Frequently Asked Questions

Real estate team leaders, broker owners and recruiters who want a recruiting interview built on a written profile, with the questions, the meeting structure and the follow up installed in their market, can apply with Blake Suddath and Tyler Lewis at theinnercirql.com/operators/.