We’ve noticed something different lately when helping REITs hire that we did not see a few years ago. The most urgent roles are no longer always on the acquisitions side. REIT recruitment in Canada has shifted toward operations talent now, and it is worth discussing why.
A few years ago, the calls we got were mostly about helping REITs hire underwriters and capital markets professionals. That has not completely gone away, but the firms moving fastest right now are the ones prioritizing operations hires. And with the Canadian office market now in recovery, that urgency is only growing.
When capital was cheap, you could buy your way to better returns. That is harder to do right now. So the pressure has shifted to running what you already own as well as possible. Controlling costs at the property level and finding efficiency inside the existing portfolio.
That is essentially an operations job, not an acquisitions job.
Why Canadian REITs Are Prioritizing Operations Hiring
For a long time, growth inside a REIT came from the transaction desk. The acquisitions team found the deals, the debt was manageable, and rising asset values did a lot of the work.
Operations kept things running, but it was rarely where the strategic conversations happened.
That started to change somewhere in 2022 when financing costs went up and valuations came under pressure. Suddenly the portfolio REITs already owned needed to perform better on its own. And that required a different kind of leadership than most firms had been prioritizing.
The REITs that held their ground through that period had strong operators in place. People who understood what drove costs at the property level and knew how to manage them. That turned out to matter a lot more than most people expected.
What Investors Are Expecting Now
A few years ago, investors were mainly satisfied with occupancy updates and acquisition news. That has changed as the questions being asked now are more specific. How are operating expenses being managed? What is driving NOI performance at the asset level? How is the team finding efficiency inside the existing portfolio?
To answer those questions well, you need people who have actually been close to assets. Not just people who can present the numbers, but people who understand what is behind them.
Who REITs Should Actually Be Hiring Today
This is where most REIT hiring searches get complicated.
The profile that fits what firms need right now is specific, and the candidates who match it are not easy to find.
What we hear from clients, and what we see in the searches we run, is that the candidates who stand out have managed assets directly. They have made real decisions about operating budgets, vendor contracts, and capital programs. These candidates know how to read a financial report and connect it to what is actually happening inside a building.
They also tend to think like owners. They don’t wait for someone else to solve a problem. That mindset is hard to teach, but it is easy to spot when you ask the right questions in an interview.
This shift in what makes a strong hire is something we are seeing across the real estate sector. If you work in property management, we wrote about how it is playing out there too.
And like every search we run, the challenge is finding someone who has the right experience and fits within a realistic salary range. That person exists. But they are almost never actively looking.
Why These Candidates Are Hard to Find
The strongest operations professionals are busy and in high demand. They are inside organizations right now, managing portfolios, dealing with tenants and handling capital projects. All while being actively recruited. They are not on job boards and they are certainly not responding to job postings.
Getting their attention requires knowing who they are and having a reason to reach out that is worth their time. That is hard to do without a network built specifically around these roles.
Most internal hiring teams are not set up for that kind of search.
By no means is this a reflection on the team. It is just a different kind of work than reviewing applications.
This dynamic is not limited to REITs. Property management companies are facing the same pressure from a different direction.
Getting the Search Right From the Start
It raises the bar for how clearly the role is defined before the search even begins.
Operations titles can mean very different things depending on the size of the portfolio, the asset class, and how the team is structured. A VP of Operations at one REIT might be running a lean team across a handful of assets. At another firm, the same title has a completely different scope. A Director of Asset Management at one REIT might be focused almost entirely on financial reporting and investor relations. At another, they are deep in lease negotiations, capital planning, and day to day operational decisions.
Same title, but very different job.
If those expectations are not aligned with how the business actually operates today, the search tends to drift.
You end up evaluating candidates against a profile that does not quite match the reality of the role. That usually shows up later in the process, when strong candidates are not progressing for reasons that were not obvious from the beginning.
We have seen this enough times to know that the conversation at the start of a search matters as much as the search itself. The more specific a firm can be about what the role actually requires day to day, the better the chances of finding someone who fits and stays.
The conversation at the start of a search matters as much as the search itself
How Asking the Deeper Questions Changed the Outcome of our Recent REIT Search
We worked with a REIT that was looking for a Controller recently. The initial brief sounded straightforward. But when we got into the details, it became clear the firm needed someone who could own the full accounting function across a growing portfolio with very little support around them.
That meant CAM reconciliations, operating budgets, variance reporting, and year end financials. All of it managed independently, with a lean team and a fast moving portfolio. At a larger REIT, those responsibilities would typically be split across a team of property accountants. Here, one person needed to own all of it.
That changed who we were looking for entirely. The candidates our client was initially interested in had spent their careers inside larger finance teams. They had the credentials but simply did not have the hands on experience the role actually demanded.
The Controller we placed came from a smaller firm where they had managed all of those functions independently. They were not the obvious candidate on paper, but they were exactly the right fit for how that REIT actually operated.
Getting that clarity early made all the difference.
Let’s talk about your next hire
As a recruiting firm working exclusively within real estate and asset management, Talent IQ sits at the intersection of what hiring teams need and what the best candidates are actually looking for. If you’d like to discuss a search or get a read on the current talent market, get in touch.
