While minimizing the risk of losing clients and revenue.

1. Understand the Opportunity
2. Going Beyond the Job Description
3. Research
4. Recruit
5. Build Relationships
6. Interview
7. Make an Offer and Close the Deal

Take a close look at the problem you are trying to solve, so you can find the best available person in the market to solve it. Think about what is good and bad about your company and opportunity so you can represent your story accurately and positively in the market, and have the best chance at finding someone who will fit your culture as well as have the right skill set to accomplish the goals.  

Having transparency about who you are as a company during the hiring process will ultimately lead to attracting the ideal candidate for the position. This step needs to be done first. If you don’t understand exactly who you need to hire, you are setting yourself up for high turnover.

What Candidates Are Curious About

• What types of clients will I manage?
  Share as much as you can about client size, industry, and mix of self-insured versus fully insured scenarios they’ll handle. 
• What support will I have? 
  Think about how your service team is supported in terms of people, software, and other resources like compliance or legal advice.
• Where are the clients located, how much travel will be required?
  Have specifics in mind about physical work and location requirements.
• What about bonuses?
  Talk to candidates about the metrics used to determine eligibility for bonuses. Give details about persistency percentages, upselling and cross-selling, as those apply in your organization.
• Does your company participate in volunteering in the community?
  Have some examples to share, or even better, publish information about your community endeavors on your website. 
• What’s the culture like?
  Do employees like each other? Is there a good relationship between managers and producers?

Understanding the answers to these questions yourself is important, because it helps you to understand the nuances of the opportunity, and therefore better connect with the right candidates. 

A job description is not something that you have to post. We already know postings don’t attract strong enough candidates. This is something to share via email with serious candidates.

Candidates are attracted to details, not generalities. If you did have a posting, and the candidate read it, that was just a start. Many compliance-approved job descriptions don’t really give enough of the specifics candidates want to know, so it’s left up to you to cover the details for more serious candidates.

Rather than take thirty minutes to share the details over the phone, video call, or in an interview with each interested and qualified candidate, why not lay out all the facts beforehand so you can get right down to what you both want to know.

Time-Saving Details to Send to Serious Candidates

• Who will the candidate report to? Share a LinkedIn link to their profile.
• What does the reporting structure look like? Name names. Perhaps they know, like, and respect people in the leadership hierarchy. This is a small industry.
• What is the target size for clients?
• How big of a book will they manage in terms of the number of clients and revenue?
• What will it look like when they are fully up & running?
• What is the range of the base salary?
• What is the range of the bonus and how is that calculated?
• What support is there? Share the team members’ names.
• What do you expect the challenges to be in this role? 
• What do you expect the challenges to be in this role? They should already know the challenges to the job that all the companies share, so be specific about those associated with their role and your company.
• How would you describe your culture?
• Has your company won any awards?
• Does the company do community service projects? Let candidates know that!
• Can you name some key clients to establish credibility, the way you might with prospects?
• If someone is ready to make a change what else might attract them to your company over your competitors?
• Outline what to expect in the hiring process. How many steps, who they might meet, whether there is aptitude, personality and/or drug tests.

As of today, you may not have a large database, but use your CRM to start one. Here are some effective ways to build your database of potential client managers.

• Spend time on LinkedIn looking at profiles and send invitations whether you need to fill a position today or not. Use the search criteria at the top of LinkedIn’s page under the people search.
• You can search in your area, e.g. “Dallas/Fort Worth Area,” and put in the company names one by one either in “Current Company” or “Past Company,” e.g. Gallagher, Mercer, Hub, Aon, etc. Then you can pan through the titles to find the people you think look like potential matches. It’s probably worth paying for a higher level of LinkedIn, like Sales Navigator, since time is money. Then you can refine the search even more and use Boolean search terms in the “Keywords” section.
• For longer-term planning, consider attending conferences and association meetings solely to network.
• You may not have time to have coffee with candidate prospects the way you do with client prospects and current clients, but perhaps you can introduce yourself on the phone to initiate a relationship. It doesn’t have to take longer than twenty minutes and there’s no travel time.
• Try to talk to three new people per week. Then each time you have an opening you have a reason to call again and see if anything has changed for them.
• Keep track of where you are with candidates the way you do with prospects. Even unreturned emails and voicemails area touchpoint. One day you’ll catch them at just the right time, and your name will now be familiar to them.

Now that you have the vacancy, activate that research you’ve been doing.

• Phone, email, text, InMail, and connect on LinkedIn to eighty to a hundred passive candidates who have the potential to be a fit for your role. Most people require multiple contacts. Over time, you’ll have the general phone numbers of the companies where the talent works. The next step is getting direct numbers or extensions from the phone tree. If you’re lucky, a real human might pick up the phone. If you just ask, you might get a direct number from them, or even a cell number.
• When you do actually manage to get your potential candidate on the phone, recognize they weren’t expecting your call and it sometimes takes them a couple of seconds to understand who you are and why you’re calling. The first eight seconds are a bit of a rodeo!
• Of course, the ultimate goal is to have a conversation to learn where they are in their career, tease out dissatisfactions or unmet aspirations at their current company, and to determine together whether your opportunity makes sense for them at this time. However, if the timing is bad now, or there’s no interest, play the long game. Collect the home email and cell phone for future contact.
• It may not be on this search, or the next one, but possibly a need you will have years from now. We all know how fast time goes. If the timing isn’t right for four to six years, fine. That’s here before you know it, and when the situation arises, then, how nice that this time you have a great candidate, primed and ready to go.

Continue the process by understanding the Six Prime Motivators.

1. Better quality of life for the candidate and their family.

This motivator includes both the quality of the candidate’s work and their personal life. The best recruiters deeply understand the benefits a change could bring, and share that vision expertly with their potential hires. 

2. More responsibility in relation to their current position.

This could include not just additional responsibilities, but also new challenges or the size/scope of assignments. Specific to a client management role, that could mean whether they get to work on self-funded business and whether their current firm is even able to win the big groups or the kind of business they want to be working on that challenges them Do they have the compliance support, ben admin software, worksite, and voluntary expertise, underwriters, or technical analysts and other tools and resources they need to be successful where they are? Or are those things they lack where they are and what you can offer?

3. More opportunities for advancement in the future.

Is this position going to offer them a step forward in their career? Offering a growth opportunity doesn’t mean their title has to change, but simply that they will be adding skills that will make them more marketable in the future.

4. Physically closer, or more time for family.

Perhaps moving to a new position means moving to a new area, city, or state. For the candidate, it might be a chance to get closer to home, which might be a shorter commute or even moving back to their hometown. The new position might be an opportunity to work remotely and spend time with family and friends, especially considering how the 40-hour workweek is becoming a thing of the past. Highlight the benefits of a move. 

5. A boss and team they like.

6. Money.

Developing these skills will optimize your interviews with candidates.

• Ask open-ended questions.
• Give long pauses to hear the answers.
• Use minimal encouragers to keep them talking (uh-huh, I see).
• Use mirroring techniques to encourage them to expand. (Repeat the last thing they said with a raised tone). “No budget for additional support so you’re overwhelmed?”
• Paraphrase so you know you understand the issues and they know you’ve heard them.
• Emotionally label where appropriate. “You sound pretty frustrated.” (Annoyed, unappreciated, exhausted, overwhelmed, etc.).

Once they say, “That’s right,” They are open to hearing about what you have to offer!

In the course of this conversation, you will also be able to ascertain whether they have a track record of accomplishments, skills, and personality to fit your culture and opportunity. At this point, you can ask them to follow up with you by sending a resume. I also ask for a candidate profile. This is a simple list of questions that answers some of the basics you'd want to know, like “How well-versed are you with self-funding? How big is the book you're handling currently in terms of the number of clients, revenue, average group size?”

There are a few benefits to having a candidate complete a profile. 

The first is that you get answers to your questions and now notes have been pre-made for you, so you have something to refer back to. This is helpful if you’re fortunate enough to talk to a number of people and need to keep track of who said what. They are also useful to prepare other members of the team who will interview.

Second, you get a writing sample from your candidate. You’d be surprised sometimes.

Finally, they are putting some time and effort into it. They may seem excited on the phone, but if they don’t take the time to complete the profile in a timely fashion, or at all, then that tells you something. 

Actions speak louder than words.

Insisting on a completed profile is something to gauge carefully. Passive candidates might object to yet more work on top of a busy workload, but it’s how you position it. You could decide to pass on the profile and meet for coffee and woo a little more first but proceed with caution.

95% of candidates who end up taking the job will complete the profile.

The ones who don’t are invariably the candidates who pull out at the 11th hour, or take a counteroffer once they give notice.

The first meeting

Have the first meeting “off-campus” and have them meet with the person who’d be their immediate supervisor so they can see if there’s chemistry. You are wooing these candidates who aren’t necessarily actively looking. They are not so much interviewing as gathering information in the first meeting. Meeting for coffee, lunch, or a drink, takes a bit of the pressure off and they don’t have to feel like they’re officially putting their name in the hat (despite completing a profile). This is not a time for an HR interview or applying online. They are not a serious candidate just yet. They have to be “hooked” before you can start giving them ‘official’ steps to take.

Stay with them throughout the process.

In between official interviews, be a sounding board, a coach, and play devil’s advocate. Help them to manage their emotions and answer their questions over the phone.

Deciding To Make An Offer

If the second meeting goes well, it’s appropriate toward the end to start asking what it will be like for them to give notice, even if there are a few more steps in your hiring process.

What could their employer do to keep them, if anything? With the best candidates, there’s nothing. They don’t like their boss, or the types/size clients they work on, or the commute, and so on.

If it’s just money, that’s tenuous at best. 

You can continue with the candidate (you miss 100% of the shots you don't take), but you want to keep your search going and work hard to have another strong candidate. You risk any time invested with someone who is a candidate for a counteroffer. However, given the dearth of talent sometimes you have to take your chances and move forward with someone who is a risk. If you’ve done your job, you just won’t be caught off guard when it happens.

After planting early seeds regarding a counteroffer, when you know you’re going to offer the job, you have to have the conversation again. Prepare them for what they might experience when they give notice.

The Five-Act Play of a Counter-Offer

1. Act One- their employer is shocked and amazed they would come to them with this news.
2. Act Two- they’re saddened and either give them a guilt trip or shower them with love and appreciation that they haven’t seen before. The most overpowering is when this comes from the bosses’ boss, or even higher up in the organization. “We hate to see you go, you’ve been such a great friend and asset to the company.”
3. Act Three- they will question your candidate’s thought process. “You’re really going to go there?”
4. Act Four- they will miraculously come up with a hidden promotion or hidden project that they just hadn’t gotten around to telling your candidate yet.
5. The Final Act- stalling. They will say and do anything in the heat of the moment to keep this employee until they have a plan in place to replace them. Candidates should know, they probably won’t see these promises put in writing, and lo and behold, three months later most of these promises have not come to fruition.

Maybe you have seen these acts from the other side! If you are good at it, you know what you’re up against, and you can foreshadow what’s coming. 

Remember, Recruiting Doesn’t Stop When Your Offer is Accepted 

Recruiting a great long-term employee doesn’t stop when your offer is officially accepted. In fact, it continues well past the first day of work. Have a plan for the first day, week, month, even 90 days for onboarding and retention. 

The first days are the most important, but continue to invest time in your new recruit by introducing them to peers, facilitating training, and building a positive and rewarding experience. Stay in touch with your team’s goals, aspirations, and needs long-term, so you don’t have to recruit again any time soon! 

Recruiting top talent for your benefits agency is an ongoing process that can yield incredible results in the form of a productive, happy, long-term team. Implementing the 7 stages you’ve learned here provides an important base for recruiting success. 

An ineffective recruiting strategy drains you of time and energy. A lack of great service talent can limit your growth, especially when an Account Executive leaves your team unexpectedly. Set yourself up for ongoing growth and success with attention to your hiring pipeline on an ongoing basis.

If it all seems like a lot, that’s because it is. 

Recruiting Services for Employee Benefits Advisors 

We created the 7 steps. Let us help you use them to your advantage.

The Spencer James Group 

The Spencer James Group is a boutique insurance recruitment agency in Denver, Colorado. Since 2003, our principals personally execute every phase of every search process to ensure genuine, lasting success for both candidates and clients.

Our nationwide database covers a wide spectrum of insurance broker/consultants, health insurance, ancillary, stop-loss and worksite carriers, ancillary, stop-loss and traditional general agents, enrollment companies, TPA’s, cost containment companies, benefits administration, and benefits software companies.

CLIENT EXPERIENCES

“With their screening and review process, The Spencer James Group was able to present to me just the right candidate! I did not need to sort through a bunch of resumes, web services, or missed appointments.

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“Steve and the Spencer James Group are exceptional, value-creating business partners in the world of employee benefits consulting and brokerage talent acquisition. Steve helped our Employee Benefits division recruit and land incredible, top-tier client-facing talent that accelerated a critical market for our team. Steve invested in our business, deeply knew our culture, and was our first call for talent needs.”

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“I’ve worked with The Spencer James Group on 50+ searches for both sales and service on a national basis since 2004. Over that time period, I got to know Steve very well both professionally and personally. Steve is a highly industry knowledgeable and sophisticated search professional with a comprehensive National database of employee benefits and financial services candidates. He is a “student of business” who always stays abreast of industry organizational, regulatory, compliance, and M&A developments. I would highly recommend Steve for search assignments in the group insurance and financial services sectors ranging from sales to services positions through the executive level on a national basis.”

- Paul Champi, Former AVP, Human Resources at Reliance Standard