I have never met anyone who spent their childhood dreaming of a career in insurance. Doctor, lawyer, professional baseball player, pilot — sure. But insurance agent? It’s not really a “sexy” choice. Most of us who are in insurance were born into it or fell into it by happenstance. The good news is that once you get into insurance, you tend to stay there and enjoy the ride. The work is interesting, the pay is competitive and rewards can be many. So how do we attract the next generation? How do we turn happenstance into master plan?
Seven years ago, my agency, like our peers, looked over our employee landscape and saw an aging workforce. Worse, when we went to look for replacement talent, our job pool existed primarily of “retreads” — people who already worked for our competitors or were let go by our competitors. There was no longer a pool of trained agents waiting to be hired. In the past, our carrier partners had engaged in training agents, but when that practice discontinued, what was a pool became a raindrop.
Expanding Your Talent Pool
We decided that our best bet would be to hire and train our own pool. We set out looking for intelligent, hard-working, career-minded individuals. We preferred someone who had not really been in the workforce very long as we wanted to instill our work practices and habits as opposed to spending time breaking old habits. The key to attracting this talent was to find the right place to recruit them. This was our first foray in to Monster.com. In the past, we used more traditional sites, but this time we were looking for a new type of applicant.
The other factor we considered was writing the ad in such a way as to attract what we wanted:
We are looking for a high-energy individual to join our dynamic insurance team. This entry-level job offers the opportunity to develop your skills and help you find your niche in insurance. This position is right for someone who enjoys a fast-moving environment and is computer-savvy.
This ad attracted a greater response than we had received in many years. By opening ourselves up to entry-level employees, we were not relying on the retreads.
The weeding-out process was pretty easy for us. We looked for resumes that matched our criteria and then invited those that matched to do a phone screen. More than half of those invited to the next level never called us back, so those that did were truly interested. The phone screen questions were geared at getting details around the resume. We also included some questions about adaptability and people skills. From the phone screens, we selected our top three candidates for a live interview.
In the live interview, we explained what the job would be like in the first six months (nose-to-the-grindstone data entry, intense study sessions on insurance, etc.) as well the next six months (job shadowing at all levels, working on client-facing materials, etc.). They were told the goal was for them to “graduate” from the data entry to the client-facing job. The interview questions were about problem solving, working with people, dealing with change and conflict. We were looking for candidates that thrived on change, got along with everyone and wanted to work with clients.
Hiring Long-Term Employees
Our first hire, Jenna, had worked as a waitress on a golf course and had done some work in retail at the mall. Her college major was accounting and finance. Her references raved about her personal skills and demeanor. In the end, she was in the entry level role for one year as we were still perfecting the training program. She spent her time doing mail, policy assembly and policy processing. After a year, she accepted a job as a persona lines producer (a job she still holds six years later).
We have since had five other candidates go through the program. We have learned a lot about training them and moving them into their final jobs. They have gone on to be commercial lines CSRs, personal lines CSRs, life CSRs and commercial lines account executives. All of them are still with the organization and continue to thrive as they grow and learn. I asked them for their feedback and here is what was said:
The Grow Our Own program is great too for those that don’t necessarily know what they “want to do when they grow up.” The program not only hires young people, but it retains them. We all knew that {our hiring managers} cared about what happened to us and where we ended up. Taking the time and effort to look at options and discuss what makes us happy goes a long way in choosing a path. I truly believe our retention in the program is so high because we all know there’s always opportunity to grow, that we can always reach out and be honest about our goals and aspirations, and make moves if necessary to keep us happy and loving what we do every day.
If this topic interests you, consider coming to the session “Attracting and On-Boarding the Next Generation” at Applied Net in Nashville. I will be presenting alongside other agency personnel and Applied Systems professionals about our efforts to attract, hire and retain the next generation.
About the Author
Patty Andree is the vice president of operations at Johnson Insurance Services, LLC, a bank-affiliated agency in Wisconsin and Arizona. She oversees all non-client facing aspects of the business including reception, accounting, systems, processing and training. She lead the effort to move her agency from TAM to Epic and works to continue enhancing productivity by using Epic as much as possible. In the industry since 1996, Patty has also worked as a Business Development Coordinator and Commercial Service Manager.
Patty serves as the president of the Wisconsin Chapter of the Applied Client Network, Secretary of the Large Agent Alliance and as a member of the Member Relations Committee. She is a regular presenter for her chapter on reports, management, systems and auditing.