With less than two months left in 2019, “Can insurance companies and agencies start a search, recruit candidates, complete the interview process and onboard new hires before December 31, 2019?”
The easy answer: Yes, Absolutely!
The difficult task: Condensing a 3-4 month process into less than 45 days. Here’s a guide to help quickly wrap up new hires before 2020 arrives.
Step One: Advertise NOW!
Passive and active candidates are watching job boards right alongside Black Friday ads.
- Active candidates want to find the immediate opening
- Passive candidates are perusing ads
For both types of candidates if your posting sticks out, they will send in their application. Advertise NOW gives you a better selection of candidates and sway the supply and demand curve in your favor.
Step Two: Opportunity Hires
Opportunity Hires are the experienced candidates that magically fall in your lap because you have job advertisements posting (aka following Step One!).
- Producers are awesome opportunity finds. They want to start before year end to have a full 12-month production cycle in 2020.
- Client Service and Staff Level insurance hires are great closer to year end when you have money to burn on 2019’s budget.
Step Three: Start Interviewing Yesterday
While this is always a good philosophy, the practice of immediate Application : Interview Conversion is especially important late in the year.
- Clean up your process. Get rid of roadblocks. If it’s not an important step in December it won’t be in January either.
- Reverse engineer the process. Do paperwork right away. Profile assessments, applications, references and background checks (to name a few).
- Four, 3-hour interviews just turned into one, 4-hour morning meeting. The interview process is now done.
Step Four: A Pre-Holiday Training Program
Is it better to start on December 10th for two-weeks of training or wait until January 5th to avoid a break?
Why it makes sense to knock onboarding and training out in December:
- Everyone is in a better mood around the holidays (even if Q4 chaos bogs them down).
- New employees (and their spouses) can attend company parties and office potlucks.
- They may be able to provide some help around the office. Even if it’s just data entry or answering the phone. All this counts towards 1/1 renewal deadlines.
- 2020 is a fresh start and a clean slate with their desk set up and technology ready to go.
Final Thoughts
So you find yourself abiding by all of this suggestions, and the clock simply moves too quickly to pull of the final 2019 hire to put the bow on top of the year. Turns out this is the gift that keeps on giving (insert Jelly of the Month/Christmas Vacation meme here) as you now are ahead of any 2020 hiring metrics to start the new year. If the worst outcome of pushing the timing a little is sending a candidate home for the holidays with an awesome offer and a mid-January start date, that could still make for a holiday to remember. That candidate won’t be worried about returning to a job they don’t like in the new year, but instead starting a new chapter with you!