Good morning blogosphere! I hope everyone is enjoying and welcoming my favorite season, Fall! So many cool things going on! It’s breast cancer awareness month which is very near and dear to my heart, the leaves are changing, Halloween is the best holiday, my birthday is in October and even more important, I’m getting hitched at the end of the month!! However, before we start celebrating we need to put on our agency hats and talk about something that I have found to be spookier for agencies than ghosts and rewrites!!!
What ghastly topic could that be? Great question, it’s hiring!! Yes, finding the right person for the right job. I have a saying that I think many people unconsciously believe and that is “Finding a job is a full time job and hiring the right person for the right job is a career.” We can all agree that hiring is a pain. You have to find the right place to post jobs, create a job description, sift through resumes, schedule calls, and the list goes on. With the pain that comes from hiring, it’s no surprise that when I speak to agency owners about it they typically tell me that they only hire when they are experiencing rapid growth or when they have a spot that needs to be filled. Instead of monsters and ghosts, this is what scares me the most! It is the wrong strategy!!
It’s the wrong strategy for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that I’ve already covered how many steps it takes to start the hiring process. If you stop what you’re doing and focus solely on that process you are immediately taking yourself out of all other agency responsibilities. The second reason is that you are now hiring out of necessity and desperation. When you are hiring under those two factors it opens you up to hiring the wrong person. The third reason is that the ideal candidate will not necessarily reveal themselves in that time period.
So what do we do? We put ourselves in a position to always be on the lookout for the ideal candidate. When I work with agencies I impart to them that they should always do the following:
- Identify positions in the agency that you believe you could improve upon. It could be a Personal Lines Account Manager, Commercial CSR, Insurance Coordinator(entry level) etc…
- You could also add a job posting for a non descript function and simply advertise that you are an agency looking for the ideal candidate.
- Create the job posting on a site like Indeed where you can set a small budget towards keeping your posting relevant.
- Dedicate at least an hour or two a week towards reviewing candidates that come through your job posting.
- If you find someone who stands out, schedule a call with them!
- Find out more about them and see if they would be an immediate hire or someone to keep in mind for the future.
You’ll want to treat hiring the same way you look at sales. It helps and only serves you better to maintain a pipeline of candidates should you find yourself in a situation that requires immediate hiring. If you think you’re an agency that needs assistance with hiring, the great news is that is something we work with many agencies on. Everything from creating job postings to doing the resume sifting for you. Give us a call and learn about our bulletproof hiring strategies.
