CBRE Australia Graduate Programs & Internships

What it does: CBRE offers integrated real estate services to investors, owners, occupiers, and lenders in retail, office, multi-family, industrial, and other types of commercial real estate categories.

Mission: To realise the potential of their clients, professionals, and partners by building the real estate solutions of the future

Size and presence: It has 500 offices and over 105,000 employees in more than 100 countries including around 2115 staff in Australia

Best known for The global leader in commercial real estate services and investments

The good bits: Exposure to the industry and networks, good learning experience

The notgood bits: Sometimes the volumes of work needed long hours or extra time outside of shift

The Story of CBRE Australia

The company that is now CBRE was founded in 1906 in San Francisco. It only changed its name to CB Richard Ellis (or CBRE) in 1998, after expanding its geographic coverage and service portfolio to become the first real estate services firm with a platform to deliver integrated real estate services across the world’s major business capitals.

In 2006, CBRE became the global leader in the provision of outsourcing services to major occupiers, including healthcare organisations, corporations, and public sector institutions. In 2019, CBRE reorganised its global businesses into three segments:  Advisory Services, Global Workplace Solutions, and Real Estate Investments. In 2020, Dallas became CBRE's global headquarters city.

In Australia, CBRE’s business lines include:

• Residential projects (brokerage business specialising in residential apartments)
• Advisory & Transactions and Capital Markets (sale and leasing of commercial property, hotels, and development sites)
• Property management (overseeing the safety and management of real estate)
• Global workplace solutions (provides facilities management and project management solutions)
• Debt & Structured Finance (provides complete real estate funding solutions, loan administration, and management services)
• Valuations & Advisory Services

Culture & vibe

CBRE is an international corporation with a very positive reputation, in which you will be able to build up a professional network with people in the industry. Various tasks, such as the management of commercial and retail sites, organising the contractors, liaising with tenants, consultation with owner representatives/management, making valuation reports, or preparation of budget will allow you to have interaction with various groups of people.

CBRE strives to create a work environment that reflects the wide range of communities and clients they serve. Bringing together people from diverse experiences, cultures, and backgrounds produces better outcomes for their clients and allows them to achieve better results.

By actively promoting inclusivity, they create respectful relationships and safe workplaces that strengthen their connection to their employees, suppliers, clients, and the markets they serve. They foster external sponsorships and partnerships with Chief Executive Women, Parents at Work, Pride in Diversity, InterBuild, CareerTrackers, Two Good, Supply Nation and Property Council of Australia, among others, to continue being an inclusive business.

Career prospects

CBRE is a large corporate business with high volumes of work providing opportunities and room to grow. Employees are provided with several platforms to continue their learning, such as:

• Digital Learning Hub (a virtual learning platform to give more flexibility for personalised learning and development)
• Mentoring Programs (different mentoring groups to accelerate careers, such as Women in NSW, NextGen, and Property Council of Australia Inclusive Leadership
• Harvard ManageMentor and LinkedIn Learning (on-demand learning solutions)

Benefits

The benefits for employees include:

• Wellness: employee wellbeing program, counselling and mental health support, discounted health insurance, flu vouchers and onsite vaccinations
• Flexible Working: work outside the usual workplace, vary start and finish time, redesign a role to enable job sharing, use leave to enhance wellbeing
• Financial benefits: parental leave (including 4 weeks paid secondary carer’s leave, paid superannuation while on unpaid parental leave), financial education (financial seminars, banking consultants, home loan specialists), salary packaging, novated lease
• Perks: corporate discounts, social events, facilities (end-of-trip facilities, gym/yoga classes, concierge and laundry service)
• Learning and Development: study leave, the digital learning hub, mentoring programs, LinkedIn learning and Harvard ManageMentor
• Recognition program: reward points to redeem a select product, state achievement awards, circle of excellence (for exceptional achievements)

Social Contributions

CBRE Cares provides a platform for their employees to create real benefits in their communities. Some of their activities include:

• Donations to build homes for homeless youth
• Hundreds of food parcels delivered to Covid-19 impacted families
• Employee vaccination drive helped raise donations for Beyond Blue (Australian mental health and wellbeing support organisation)
• Donations raised for bushfire relief and flood relief
• Donation of more than AU$200,000 to the Australian Red Cross in 2020
• Employee Resilience Fund raised donations to help colleagues facing financial hardship due to a natural disaster or pandemic