Back in the day, a property manager changed the course of my life. I know, it's a little dramatic for a starting sentence, but just go with me on this. You see, at the time, I was in the middle of a 6 month course of chemotherapy for lymphoma, and I pretty much refused to acknowledge that when one is in treatment, one cannot do all the things that a normal person can do. I wasn't working at the time (there are perks to having a phenomenal boyfriend who have incredibly marketable computer skills) and I was suffering that variety of boredom and loneliness where you start singing to your dog just because you need someone to talk to. One day on a break from serenading my dog, Fox, I wandered down to the management office of the community where we were living. I probably went in to pick up a package, but what ended up happening is that the manager and I got involved in a good long talk, and towards the end of which she told me I had a great personality for property management and offered me a job.
Several flaming HR hoops later, I became a leasing specialist. All of a sudden, the random skills that I had been gathering for years, and not one of which was anything that someone could base a job off of by itself, pieced themselves together in to this patchwork quilt of an amazing industry that was exactly what I'd been looking for, but had never thought about.
I could do:
Graphics Design
Marketing
Sales
Customer Service
Bookkeeping
Event and Party Planning
and tons more jobs that all rolled together in to this one. Also, my background in psychology and conflict resolution came in pretty handy, too! I became kind of a specialist in resident relations and retention, and I was no slouch on the marketing end either. My real passion, though, is training. I think that training makes all the difference in the world when it comes to how far someone will go and how committed to a job they can be.
I'd like to think that a lot of people "accidentally" fall in to property management. And it's not your normal job. It gets down in your blood. People either love property management, or they hate it. For most, there's no middle ground.
Many of us love to hate it as well, but that's a different story.
Today, I work as a Staffing Facilitator, Recruiter and Trainer for the property management staffing company Career Strategies Inc. out of their new Bellevue, WA office. I'm now in an amazing position where I can help change the course ofsomeone else's life the same way that manager changed mine. And, I do
believe heartily in giving back.
So that's a little about me. In a nutshell...I love my job and I love the industry.
And by the way, Kerry Devine, if you're reading this, Thank You!