We update our property photos and videos every week. So why does the team photo on the website still have someone in it who moved on a year ago?
In real estate, photography and video are not an afterthought, they are the job. A listing without decent images does not get clicks, and a property without a walkthrough video is competing at a disadvantage before a single buyer walks through the door. Every agent knows this instinctively. Yet the same businesses that invest heavily in showcasing a three bedroom home rarely apply the same care to showcasing themselves.
Individual headshots tend to get updated. The moment someone hands in their notice, their photo comes down fairly quickly. It is the team photo that lags behind. The group shot on the website or the careers page can sit there for a year or more, and somewhere in it is a face that no longer belongs there, standing between two people who are still on the team today. Candidates notice this. It tells them nobody has looked closely at what the business is actually putting forward. Even when the team photo is current, it is usually still the same static shot, everyone lined up and smiling on cue. There is no video, no sense of a strategy day in motion or a training session where people are genuinely engaged. It is a photo of the team, not a picture of the culture, and it leaves a candidate with nothing to go on beyond a row of faces they cannot connect names to.
A candidate weighing up whether to join is not reading a directory, they are trying to picture themselves in the room. Team days, strategy days, Property Management training sessions, a new starter's first week, these are all moments where a photographer or videographer can capture the business as it actually operates, rather than another lineup against a blank wall. Booking someone for an hour at the next team day costs very little, and it produces content that says far more than any posed photo ever could. A short video of a training session, or of the team celebrating a result, shows a candidate exactly what they would be walking into.
None of this needs a marketing department or a big budget. It needs the same habit real estate businesses already apply to their listings, treating the update as routine rather than optional.
So next time you are updating a listing, take a proper look at your own team photo. Is everyone in it still part of the business, and does it show anything close to what it is actually like to work there?