Another spring, another flood of new college graduates. Yet a job market study completed by the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows only 40 percent of businesses overall anticipate an increase to their rates of college hiring this year, and 60 percent plan no increase or a reduction. That means it should be a buyer's market for employers--including insurance agents and brokers. Yet our industry continues to struggle, as it has for years, to attract recent college grads. In fact, the Griffith Insurance Education Foundation reports that the number of students coming into the workforce is only filling 10 to 15 percent of the insurance industry's current need.
Read "Hiring the next generation."
The agents and brokers at Assurex Global, which includes more than 110 independent firms worldwide, have emphasized the importance of a thoughtful, planned approach to reach this younger generation, known as millennials. Not only do they bring vigor and energy to a firm, but the recent Young Producer Study, conducted by Reagan Consulting, shows a healthy agency has a weighted average shareholders' age below 55 and a weighted average producers' age under 50. As a group, millennials are confident, focused and team-oriented. They're loyal, too--a 2006 New Paradigm study shows college graduates hope to have "one or two" rather than "many" jobs over the next 10 years.
Unfortunately, this younger generation seldom has "insurance" on their career radar screen. The industry is plagued by negative perceptions, and "producer" is more likely to be identified as a career related to the Hollywood movie industry. Amazingly, this is in spite of a staggering near 100 percent placement rate for collegiate risk management and insurance majors.
The insurance industry is like a great novel that never makes it off the shelf because of a poorly designed cover. To change that, we need to "sell the sizzle"--lead with the job descriptors or adjectives that truly appeal to the millennials' sensibilities--challenging, diverse, high-tech, flexible--not with nondescript, misunderstood job titles. And we must develop career programs to keep new hires committed with mentoring, team building, formal validation and work/life balance.
The rising stars you're seeking are out there--we've met them in our agencies, during career forums and at college scholarship presentations, like those we've supported through the Griffith Foundation or The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers' Foundation for Agency Management Excellence Scholarship Program.
We can no longer allow a stale industry image to remain as our calling card. It's time to connect and control our future. We're already client-valued experts with leading-edge risk management tools--now let's become experts at selling ourselves. So go hug a millennial and tell them how they can impact the world in an industry that's the best- kept secret out there.
