RE Placement
Real estate recruitment platform connecting agents with agencies across Australia.
RE Placement operates in the niche space between real estate and recruitment. They needed a platform that served two audiences — agents looking for new opportunities, and agencies looking to hire. I built a Velocity-powered site with dual user journeys, job listing functionality, and lead capture forms for both sides of the market. The design communicates professionalism and trust, which is critical when people are making career decisions. The Australian real estate industry moves at pace, with fierce competition between agencies for top talent. RE Placement recognised this opportunity to create a centralised marketplace where agents could explore opportunities without cold calling, and agencies could access a curated pool of candidates actively seeking positions. This is Gold Coast web design applied to recruitment — understanding the specific needs of a regional market and building solutions that serve local businesses while enabling national reach.
Market Opportunity and Platform Strategy
Solving friction in real estate talent acquisition.
The Australian real estate agent market experiences constant talent movement. Agents regularly transition between agencies, either pursuing better commission splits, improved support systems, or geographic expansion. Agencies invest heavily in agent recruitment — commission splits to recruitment consultants (20-30% of first-year earnings) and advertising costs compound quickly. RE Placement identified that both sides wanted a more efficient marketplace but lacked a mechanism to connect. Agencies couldn't easily advertise openings to the right talent pool. Agents couldn't easily explore opportunities without broadcasting their intention to leave current agencies (damaging current relationships). The platform solves this through privacy-preserving discovery. Agents create profiles that can be hidden from specific agencies (protecting agency relationships) while visible to others. Agencies post job listings with detailed compensation, culture, and support information. Interested agents express interest without the agency knowing their identity until they choose to share it. This anonymity enables genuine exploration without relationship risk — agents can window-shop without consequences. The business model is agency-focused: agencies pay for featured listings (higher visibility), candidate screening tools, and management dashboards. Agents use the platform free, reducing barriers to adoption and building critical mass. The two-sided marketplace succeeds when both sides have value: agents need abundant quality opportunities, agencies need access to qualified candidates. By subsidizing agent access, RE Placement ensures supply is never constrained. Geographic expansion was engineered into the platform from day one. Rather than building for Australia-only, the platform was built to support multiple regions, each with independent payment processing, compliance frameworks, and user bases. This positions RE Placement to expand into New Zealand, UK property markets, or other English-speaking real estate markets where agent mobility is a market friction.
The integration with compliance and legal requirements was meticulous. Real estate licensing varies significantly by state and territory in Australia. Queensland requires specific licensing for agents and brokers. NSW has different requirements. The platform needed to accommodate these differences: license verification, continuing education tracking, and state-specific regulation awareness. Rather than hard-coding specific requirements, I built a flexible framework that could adapt to new regions' requirements without code changes. Data privacy was paramount given the sensitive nature of employment information. Agents' contact details are protected from visibility until they choose to share. Application history is private. The platform doesn't track or share employment status information that could inadvertently reveal someone's job search to their current employer. These privacy protections were built into the database schema and access control layer, not just application logic — even if the application code had a bug, data privacy was maintained at the database level. The marketplace dynamic required careful consideration of incentives. Should agencies be allowed to contact agents directly, bypassing the platform? This would reduce friction for both parties but destroy the marketplace. RE Placement required all communications through the platform, ensuring all interactions are tracked, moderated, and part of the permanent record. This creates accountability: inappropriate or unethical communication can be documented, and repeated violations result in account suspension. This transforms a traditional employment market into a trustworthy institutional one.
Recruitment Platform Design
Two Audiences, One Seamless Experience.
A recruitment platform built for the real estate industry with dual user journeys, job listings, and conversion-focused lead capture for both candidates and hiring agencies.
Project Overview
Building trust in a two-sided marketplace.
Recruitment platforms need to serve two masters — the people looking for jobs, and the companies doing the hiring. RE Placement's challenge was making both audiences feel like the site was built for them. I designed distinct user journeys that branch from the homepage, with dedicated landing pages for agents seeking positions and agencies looking to recruit. The job listing system is easy to manage without technical knowledge, and each listing page is structured to maximise applications. Trust signals — testimonials, placement statistics, and industry credentials — are woven throughout to overcome the natural skepticism people have when changing jobs. The user experience design required deep empathy for both sides. Job-seeking agents need to feel confident that their information won't be spam-blasted to competing agencies. Hiring managers need assurance that candidates on the platform are genuinely interested and qualified. I built the platform with these concerns central: agents can control which agencies see their profile, and a simple "express interest" workflow prevents inbox flooding. For agencies, a management dashboard shows candidate pipeline, interview status, and placement outcomes — providing the visibility and control that recruitment managers demand. Gold Coast real estate agents are a specific demographic: they're typically mid-career professionals earning strong income, tech-comfortable but not tech-obsessed, and making deliberate career moves only 2-3 times in a decade. The design reflects this — no flashy startup aesthetic, clean professional layout, clear value propositions. Every element is focused on reducing friction in the application process. Complex multi-step forms were broken into shorter sequences. Application status is tracked in real-time. Communication between candidates and agencies is seamless, reducing the back-and-forth emails that plague traditional recruitment.
Two-Sided Platform Features
Serving candidates and employers simultaneously.
The dual-audience challenge required distinct user experiences. Job seekers access the platform primarily to explore opportunities and express interest. They see job listings, can filter by location, commission split, and company type. Their profile is privacy-controlled — they can hide from specific agencies if desired. Application process is streamlined: click "interested," optionally add a cover message, done. The platform handles outreach coordination, preventing inbox flooding while building warm connections between candidates and agencies. Recruiting agencies benefit from dedicated dashboards showing candidate pipeline, interview status, and placement success metrics. The system tracks the full hiring workflow: initial expressions of interest, phone screenings, office interviews, offer stage, and placement completion. This visibility into funnel stage enables agencies to forecast hiring success and identify bottlenecks. If expressions of interest aren't converting to phone calls, something in the screening process needs improvement. The data reveals it. The business model is straightforward: agencies pay for featured listings (higher visibility in search), while candidates use the platform free. This freemium approach aligns incentives — the platform succeeds when good agents get great candidates, creating value for everyone. Premium agencies get better placement outcomes, attracting more premium candidates, creating a virtuous cycle. The Gold Coast real estate context is crucial. The platform launched during a boom period with high agent turnover. Agencies were paying recruitment consultants 20-30% of first-year commission to place agents — expensive and slow. RE Placement reduced that friction dramatically. A good agent could express interest in 5 agencies simultaneously, review opportunities, and make an informed decision. An agency could see a candidate's experience level and contact history instantly. Both sides got what they wanted: faster, cheaper, more transparent hiring.