The fledgling group aiming to represent independent estate and letting agents is recruiting for a number of unspecified roles to help with the day-to-day running of the organisation.
In an email update sent to interested parties yesterday, the Charter for Independent Estate and Letting Agents (CIELA) asked people seeking to work for the organisation to get in contact.
The organisation will not be assessing applications until after March 1 but has requested applicants to submit CVs and to state the reason for their interest and the specific skills and strengths they could bring to the CIELA.
The update goes on to confirm that the group is currently focusing on completing the line-up of its Founders’ Committee.
The identities of the first ten founder members were revealed last week, with the group agreeing to reserve two positions for women.
The CIELA says it initially received no applications from women agency owners but has since had 'many expressions of interest from women owners of a variety of impressive independent estate and letting agencies'.
It is hoped that the provisional appointments for the final two founder members will be completed within the next week.
Following this, the group plans to open the formal application process for its 12 regional officers during the next seven days.
According to the CIELA, regional officers will hold the ‘most significant’ positions in the organisation, given that they will have dual responsibilities at local and national level.
It is therefore seeking agency owners for these roles.
The update then references the opinions of some in the industry that the group will struggle to unite enough agents and form an organisation with the ‘teeth’ and ‘resources’ to ‘defend against’ and ‘compete with’ larger corporate companies.
“There is no doubt that if all independents united quickly, you would have working for you by far the most powerful organisation your industry has ever known,” reads the email.
The CIELA says it acknowledges that independent agents’ fiercest competition are rival local independent firms.
It says therefore that one of its policies is to make sure that none of its activities either ‘advantage or disadvantage any member against any other’.
The message then reiterates that CIELA’s founders feel independent agents face a common threat from corporate estate agents and online-only advertising services ‘masquerading’ as estate agents.
It warns of large organisations trying to take control of estate and letting agents’ most ‘valuable commodity’ – customer information.
“This last threat is the greatest and all independent agents [need] to be ultra-cautious before entering into any agreements with service providers who claim rights to your information in their contract small print,” writes the organisation.
It ends the update by urging agents to spread the word to industry colleagues and follow the group on Twitter.
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Start as you mean to go on. CIELA has started by 'appointing' its officers rather than creating a framework for their election. There is nothing wrong with self interest per se, it is the fundamental cornerstone of free enterprise but if self interest is in conflict with an organisations aims and goals there is a problem, unless you are the President of the USA in which case you are apparently 'freed from conflict of interest' by the constitution. So CIELA if you want to avoid being criticised for self serving hypocrisy and you want broad long term support for your initiative Infeel you need to resolve what you stand for and ensure your formation reflects those ideals.
There's been an awful lot of correspondence from this 'group' in a very short space of time. Lots of sweeping statements, but their ultimate aim does seem like it'll be difficult to achieve. I wonder if it'll be 'one member, one vote' or if it's just the founding members that have the final say on big issues?
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