2024 grads, how are we doing in the job market?

It's been extremely tough, most firms aren't hiring any analyst positions and if they are they are taking associate level candidates who got laid off from acquisition roles. It could be awhile before we see a change in the market, I am hoping that by the end of this year we will have a better outlook. 

Graduate this week, been applying and reaching out to people at companies I'd like to work at basically all year. Averaging 2 introduction calls a week and usually get referred to others from these calls. Have only gotten 2 informal interviews with MDs at well performing brokerage teams in a major market but they didn't need to hire anyone. Applying/reaching out to acq, AM, and brokerage on the west coast and basically everyone I talk to says their teams aren't hiring. 

Delete

Graduated end of last year from a Masters program and in the same boat. 90% of the roles posted never reach out or a few months later seem to hire anyone (and the only way I've even been getting interviews is through personal connections who put me forward for this 10% that go no where). Have had firms an hour away make me come in multiple times then say no and not hire anyone. This is completely different from 2 years ago when I was getting multiple interviews a week before the Masters. It's insane, seems everyone is in a wait and see approach and even some people who are posting jobs are then losing properties (Mack Real Estate, Vanbarton Group in NYC). Have also seen billionaire families fire a junior person then decide not to rehire on the investment/acquisitions team and other billionaire firms lose properties (Cohens in NYC). So if they're firing people with what I assume to be substantial liquidity, many firms are probably barely staying afloat and have no reason to hire another junior for $120k a year when there's nothing to do and they need that capital to survive.

Didn’t get a return offer from a top firm, and instantly started grinding for jobs. Since I went to a top school for real estate, it was easy for me to get first rounds, but each process lasted like 9 rounds.

I would end up getting dinged at some point in the process, but put all the questions in a folder and practiced and used my friends in the industry to do mock interviews. Eventually got a job from another top firm, but it was after ~10 superdays across different firms in debt, acq, asset management, etc. in total, I probably had over 100 rounds of interviews. My advice is perfect your technical skills. It’s the lowest hanging fruit, and they aren’t typically asking you hard questions. If they ding you on fit, then so be it, it was prolly a blessing in disguise.


Sorry for typos, typing on phone.

Good luck to everyone out there applying, don’t count on an offer till you have the paper in hand.

While I'll say that our firm is growing and we've hired a couple analysts this year (please don't reach out to me as we aren't hiring any more for a year or so), the advice I would give is to really consider if you're dead set on real estate. If you are, I think you can still find opportunities but you might have to go to different markets than you were expecting. If you aren't, I would consider that the amount of hiring that happened in real estate a few years ago likely wasn't sustainable and brought a lot of talent into CRE that likely won't all be able to be fulfilled during a normal real estate cycle (the hiring all happened due to an amplified cycle with insane deal volume). What that means is I think employment will remain more competitive even as the market rebounds and will be a long time before it returns to what we saw in the last cycle. 

Every year its going to be pretty bad, you rarely hear someone say that their are tons of jobs in the market unless their is a crazy economics boom. Just come to terms that its going to be hard and accept that you have to work even harder.