How to master insurance sector recruitment

With a shortage of young talent and an industry in flux, insurance sector recruitment is far from straightforward.

However, with a little insight and forethought, you can vastly improve your insurance sector recruitment credentials and rinse every last drop out of your recruitment budget.

Here are three key areas you need to be aware of to master recruitment in the insurance sector:

1) Insurance sector recruitment trends

To start with, you must understand the prevailing winds:

• The insurance industry has hired record numbers of employees in recent years
• Over one-third (36%) of insurance companies believe they’ll be even better at hiring this year than in 2017
• However, the sector is facing a host of recruitment challenges, including a lack of skilled talent and – most pressingly – a dearth of young people entering the industry
• Young people are being put off by outdated recruitment methods and uncompetitive salaries
• Turnover is high among the young people who are entering the industry, with many choosing to leave after just 12-18 months
• Insurance companies must also find staff to cover new job requisitions and replace retirees
• The highest ratio of vacancies exists among sales staff, underwriters, customer service/admin staff, technologists and claims handlers
• Industry commentators have suggested increasing insurance budgets and modernising recruitment strategies as two direct ways to improve hiring in this sector

*All stats courtesy of Insurance Business

2) Key traits to look for in insurance staff

You must also understand the traits that define the best insurance agents, including:

• Ability to sell (they should have had some degree of training, or attended a relevant course)
• Communication and people skills
• Boundless energy and drive
• Integrity, honesty and forthrightness
• Willingness to learn – or, an ability to teach, depending on the level of experience you’re looking for

Several other traits are also likely to be beneficial, but these are the top five.

3) Strategies for securing top insurance industry talent

So, with all this in mind, let’s take a look at the strategies that could help you ramp up your insurance sector recruitment efforts, focusing primarily on younger staff:

• Reach out via the channels they spend their time on (prioritising social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook)
• Establish two-way relationships with universities running risk management, business management or marketing courses; ask to give guest seminars to students while agreeing to take some on as interns
• Give the younger staff you already have a starring role in your recruitment campaigns and interview process; social similarity is important for building trust, and these employees will understand where and how to talk to candidates in ways you don’t
• Spell out the benefits of working in the insurance sector (e.g. self-determination, varied caseload, technical acumen, learning about risk and other key business considerations)
• Offer professional development in the form of a training or mentorship programme; in the case of the latter, you might find you also reinvigorate the mentor (effectively giving you a hire and a half)
• Consider improving retention by addressing one seriously contentious insurance sector debate – whether agents should get the same commission for renewals as they do for new clients

Recruiting talented staff in the insurance sector is never easy. However, with this degree of insight, you’re sure to set off on the right foot.

Enhance your insurance sector recruitment credentials by contacting the expert Recruitment Group Holdings team today.