Zillow Group, the search portal behemoth and iBuyer, will hire more than 2,000 employees across the United States by the end of 2021, inflating its ranks by approximately 40 percent, it was announced Thursday.
Most of the company’s new roles will be in tech, mortgage and loans, and product and software development, according to a press release issued. The majority of those roles are also classified as either remote or hybrid positions, with a mix of in-office and field posts as well.
In December, Zillow announced the rollout of its “Distributed Workforce Model,” which established more flexible work location options for its employees, including remote, hybrid, office and field work arrangements.
“While we boldly reimagine how to buy and sell homes for today’s digitally minded consumer, Zillow is seizing the opportunity to reimagine how we work,” Dan Spaulding, chief people officer at Zillow, said in a statement. “Our Distributed Workforce Model is a more inclusive, more personalized, more flexible, more efficient way of working. We are broadening our pipelines to attract more underrepresented talent and are providing career development opportunities that may have not otherwise existed for our employees.”
The new workforce model has spurred the company to expand its new hire onboarding process in different ways, like implementing a virtual new hire open house and a new hire Slack channel to support new employees. With the expansion of its remote operations, the company has identified one of its goals for 2021 as “reimagining traditional recruiting and working norms and being a leader in the future of flexible work.”
During 2020, Zillow also added on a substantial number of new employees, gaining nearly 1,500 employees since March, or about 28 percent of its current workforce.
On Tuesday, discount real estate brokerage REX filed an antitrust lawsuit against Zillow, Trulia and the National Association of Realtors, arguing Zillow’s shift to IDX feed is driving consumers away from REX.
