Our industry is “challenged” to find qualified and capable people in sales, service and administrative roles. Many agents acknowledge that the lack of the right people is an even bigger a factor in the advancement (of lack of it) for their agencies than the achievement and retention of new and existing customers.
LET’S FACE REALITY!
We’ve encountered many agents in the last few years who acknowledge that they don’t have enough or the right people to advance their agencies. However, most would rather have someone there to answer the phone and talk to prospects and clients – even if they do it poorly — than have NO ONE in the agency qualified to do so.
While this is a rotten, self-defeating point of view, it is REALITY.
What we don’t understand is why agencies are not actively pursuing new people CONSTANTLY to upgrade the quality of employees in their agencies. As the picture of the agent, above, reflects, they are setting themselves up for disaster when the inevitable occurs with inadequate staff. If you have excellent staff and they appear to be happy and with you for the long term, you still need to interview new potential employees in order to sponsor growth in the agency. Many agencies actually avoid growth opportunities simply because they have no one to handle the additional workflow.
It costs relatively little to actively pursue service and sales staff. And whether you seek experienced people or inexperienced people with the right characteristics to succeed in our business, the testing and interview process is both healthy and shows current staff and the general public that your business is thriving and preparing for growth. The side benefit is that if you have any employees who would be best served in another job or industry, the on-going search for new staff members could strengthen your organization before the loss of the dead wood or weak link. But the active word in the first sentence of this paragraph is “ACTIVELY”. You must be telling the world that you are planning for growth and seeking skilled or talented, intuitive new employees. The worst-case scenario is when you are growing or you know you have inadequate staff members but keep them under-servicing your customers for an extended period of time because you don’t have (and don’t seek) their replacements – until a crisis occurs.
But do you know what you are seeking in a Producer or in a service staff member? Most agency owners are excellent insurance professionals but not expert in qualifying and selecting staff. And most agencies are simply too small to afford professional Human Resource managers who are trained to identify and select new employees and mentor them through their initial training period in their new jobs.
So, we rely on testing and interviewing to reinforce our “gut feelings” about candidates. Unfortunately, many agency owners readily acknowledge that they are uncomfortable in the HR role and would rather do about anything than participate in the employee selection process.
We at Agency Consulting Group, Inc. would like to simplify and make that process easier. We do so by simplifying the process with interview questions that are designed to communicate to the employer whether the prospective employee can get along with the customers, with the rest of the staff and with the agency owner. After all, the success of any employee is more dependent upon his/her ability to tune in to and coordinate the needs of the owners, producers and customers than it is how knowledgeable (s)he is in the products and processes. They can be taught the system and procedures and can be educated in the insurance products and carriers. But their attitudes cannot be changed toward their managers, co-workers and customers.
Unfortunately, everyone is on their best behavior in the interview process and the normal testing with which we are familiar for personality assessment can be too easily manipulated by what the prospective employee believes are the “best answers” to the questions asked. If the prospective employee answers the questions legitimately the personality assessment will be accurate. But if the prospective employee manipulates his/her answers to what they consider the “right” answers the results will not reflect the true characteristics of the person. It’s not the fault of the assessment –it is the fault of the person manipulating the answers to the questions.
We don’t have stock interview questions that fit every agency – we design interview questions for YOU and for YOUR AGENCY that will tell you whether the prospect will fit with the culture and personality of the management, staff and customers of your unique particular agency. But since the interview process is intimate and intense, we need to cull out those people who won’t fit in the agency BEFORE the interview process. The interview is for the finalists – the Assessment is the preliminary round to identify the finalists.
We use a different type of assessment that avoids self-evaluation which, unfortunately, is prone to manipulation. Test-takers can determine what the “right” or “desired” answers are and create a great score (just not accurate for them).
Instead, the profile that we recommend, ZERORISK Hiring System (www.zeroriskhr.com ), measures core values and emotional intelligence by asking the test-taker to rank statements from high to low to determine the prospect’s core values and emotional intelligence. There are no right or wrong answers, just answers that make sense to the test-taker. Measurements formed are:
Intuition and Empathy – How they see themselves and others
Results Orientation and Decisiveness – How they get things done
Adherence and Organization – Their organization mindset
Reasoning Types – analytical, unconventional or intuitive strengths
Self-View including Self-Awareness, Self-Expectations, and Balance
These results of these assessments tell you whether the candidate will fit your particular culture and style (we suggest that the agency owner takes this assessment first – it will be at no cost if you call Mike Poskey at ZeroRiskHR (972-845-1669, mike.p@zeroriskhr.com ) and tell him that Al Diamond of Agency Consulting Group, Inc. referred you. The report also tailors appropriate interview questions aligned with the results of each section of the assessment.