You’re thrilled with your new employee. She comes with a packed resume and is simply the top person for the insurance jobs available at your agency. What happens when that new hire decides to quit before she’s even started the job? If you’ve ever had the need to hire quickly, you know that you’ll feel some significant stress. Reduce your worry and increase your feelings of security
Have a Backup Plan
When you’re hiring, it’s important to have a backup plan. Your very best prospect might have another tempting job offer. That person who’s overqualified could look at your position as a placeholder job and may be waiting for something different to come along. If you’re hiring, look for several qualified people and keep the names of those who were runners-up.
Be Redundant
As you hire and move your employees into new roles, create several contingency plans. Train current employees to do aspects of different insurance jobs according to their interest so that you have people who are ready to step into a new role. Make sure that each person in your agency knows how to do other jobs as well so that you don’t lose access to information or key processes that are essential when you want to keep your agency running smoothly.
Know What You Want
Before you leap into hiring, make sure that you know what you want. That could have been the problem with that last hire. If you have a poor fit for the position, you’ll regret your speedy decision. Spend a bit of time with the top people in the role or those who have held that role in the past and create a list of skills and traits that are essential for your new employee if you don’t have an accurate, up-to-date job description.
Structure Your Interviews
Develop a structured interview format to systematically assess candidates. According to Paul Petrone, “Interviews with a structured way to assess a candidate are better for screening candidates than non-structured interviews.” If you’re really pushed for time, you can create a hiring team and conduct speed interviews, having different people ask different questions to new applicants. In the Globe and Mail, David Ciccarelli talks about holding “speed interviews” as an effective way to quickly meet a lot of candidates who were interested in joining our team.” This allows a large team to participate in hiring, share impressions, and move to a more in-depth interview orientated toward hiring the right new employee.
Develop a Hiring and Recruiting Team
When you need to hire quickly, you need to spread the word and hire well. Ask others in the agency to spread the word, post on job boards, and work your networks. Develop a hiring team of people from your agency to provide you with a second or third opinion on each candidate, so that you don’t hire too quickly out of a sense of urgency.
If you’re hiring on a tight timeline, you need to be able to review resumes quickly. If you’re swamped by applicants, you can use technology to scan resumes for key points.
Do you want to build your network? At American Agents Alliance, we’re committed to helping you develop your business. Contact us to learn how we can help you grow your insurance agency.
