A MORTIMER estate agency has welcomed a familiar face back to its team.
Tom Boles, affectionately known as TJ, joined David Cliff Estate Agents on Victoria Road, three years after his work experience placement at the same firm.
As a student at the Willink School in 2019, Tom enquired for work experience at David Cliff and went on to enjoy a successful week with them.
After staying in touch, Tom joined them on a full-time basis in October and has gone from strength to strength.
David Cliff, managing director of the estate agent, enjoys hosting work experience placements but believes in doing them properly.
This includes going through an interview process to learn about what a student wants to learn from the experience.
“I love doing it and we love doing it as a company, but we’re very strict on how we do it,” he said.
“If we have time, we will interview to ask why do they want to come and what do they want to achieve out of it?
If the discussion goes well, students will join up with the team and get a full experience of what being an estate agent is like.
David said: “You’re going to go out on appointments, go out on valuations and shadow the team on viewings
“If they’re up for it, then we’ll take them on.
“We want to make sure the boys and girls that are coming are interested in what we’re doing and want to come out and actually really take part.
“And we end up having a really good time with them.”
The students are often quiet to start with before coming out of their shell towards the end of the week as was the case with Tom.
David said: “Tom was quite a quiet lad to be perfectly honest but what he did was show that he was doing tasks and he was taking them seriously.
“As the week went on he was asking more questions and being genuinely inquisitive.
“We thought ‘this guy clearly has got some kind of interest in this’ and by the time he left, we were joking about the fact that he might be an agent one day.”
Fast forward three years and Tom has settled into his new role, completing his first sale with contracts exchanged in record time.
Although Tom did the deal himself, David paid tribute to both Craig Robertson and Jay Lota for taking Tom under their wing and mentoring him.
“When Tom sold, he sold two apartments to an investor. I mean, it was unbelievable,” said David.
“He did the chat, he did the negotiation and he kept it simple.
“The confidence boost from that is immense and it was all of his doing. All we did was say ‘there’s an opportunity there if you want to do it’ and he did brilliantly.”
