The quest to hire exceptional individuals can be akin to stepping into scenes from Friday the 13^th or A Nightmare on Elm Street. It can be a thrilling yet chilling endeavor, where the stakes are high. And no one wants to introduce any “Jasons” or “Freddys” that could potentially trigger a mass exodus of existing employees. Thankfully, you don’t need to hide in the dark, afraid of who will walk through the door; you just need the right lights to shine and uncover candidates' innate behaviors, soft skills, and past adventures. Like hidden treasures waiting to be discovered, they can reveal a candidate's uniqueness, strengths, and challenges.

By delving deep into the realms of personality and implementing a formal hiring process, you can embark on a journey of determining a candidate's fit to the position. This exploration allows you to make more informed decisions, ensuring the individual is placed in a role that matches their inherent talents. Like adept sorcerers, perceptive leaders can harness the magic of multiple data points when adding a new team member. Yet, the first step lies in encouraging candidates to apply.

Out of the Shadows

Your job ad serves as a portal, offering a glimpse into the possibilities that await prospective candidates. It should wield language that paints a vivid picture of your amazing benefits (beyond health insurance and PTO), company culture, and growth opportunities. Also, be transparent about your expectations, whether it's wickedly long hours or hair-raising travel requirements. Your eye-catching ad will be a beacon, and you will see candidates emerge from the shadows who will align with your organization's ethos and fill your inbox with resumes.

Interview Insight

Akin to incantations, behavioral interviews can reveal not only the truthfulness of a candidate's resume but also how they have handled situations in the past. By delving into specific examples and asking probing questions, behavioral interviews draw upon the candidate's experiences, actions, and outcomes, unraveling the essence of their skills and capabilities. These interviews go beyond surface-level responses, diving deep into the candidate's motivations, behaviors, and reactions. Through the exploration of real-life scenarios, you gain a clearer understanding of how the candidate may navigate similar situations in the future. Just like a spell can unveil hidden truths, behavioral interviews unearth valuable insights about a candidate's character, values, and their ability to thrive.

Persona Illumination

The innate tendencies of a candidate's personality may not be fully revealed during interviews, but adding a personality assessment provides another data point to use. The Omnia Assessment is a tool that elevates your hiring process and is forged from the fires of validation. Using a personality assessment before hiring provides unparalleled insight, much like the Mirror of Erised from the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Just as the mirror reveals the deepest desires and truest selves of those who look into it, a personality assessment unveils candidates' hidden potential, aspirations, and authentic personalities. It enhances your ability to identify top talent, build cohesive teams, and foster a thriving workplace culture.

The Power Within

While technical competencies are essential, it is the ethereal presence of soft skills that shape the success of individuals. Communication, adaptability, and teamwork bring a supernatural energy that transcends mere qualifications. Soft skills are like magical ingredients that weave a spell, creating a harmonious work environment and propelling your organization towards success. When they are prioritized during the hiring process, you attract candidates who possess these abilities. As a result, teams are equipped with individuals who can effectively tackle complex challenges with grace and collaborate seamlessly. This infusion of soft skills ensures a workforce that is not only technically proficient but also capable of hitting your KPIs. But to get there you need to have a formalized hiring method.

A Frighteningly Good 5-Step Hiring Method

Step 1: Needs and Wants

Gather your colleagues and envision the ideal person you want to join the team. Define competencies, experience, and personality traits that will ignite the flames of success. Consult with your Omnia customer success manager to build a scoring model that matches the essence of your needs.

Step 2: Source and Attract

Cast your net wide, beyond mere job boards and into the spectral spaces of social media and professional networks. Let the magic of your company's culture and values shine through, beckoning the most enchanting souls.

Step 3: Screen and Assess

When evaluating resumes, conducting phone screenings, and utilizing assessments, you can gain valuable insights into your candidates' suitability. This comprehensive screening process ensures that you identify the most promising candidate who meets your needs and preferences.

Step 4: Decisions and Offers

Gather around the cauldron of hiring decisions. Peer into the depths of Omnia's assessment results, listen to the echoes of interview feedback, and seek the wisdom of candidate references. Extend an offer to the candidate who has the most "yes" boxes checked and possesses the greatest potential for growth.

Step 5: Onboard and Nurture

Welcome the chosen one into your midst. Utilize the personality data you have gathered to help your employee acclimate seamlessly into their new environment. Provide ongoing support, offer constructive feedback, and create opportunities for their professional development. Nurture their growth and watch as they transform into your most fierce ally.

The streetlights are coming on, so it's time to wrap it up. Yes, finding the right candidate can be treacherous, resembling a suspenseful Halloween movie. However, amidst the uncertainties, there are powerful tools and methods that can transform fear into a sense of control and excitement. Starting with your job ad to attract, your interview to verify, your assessment to gain insight, and your hiring method to stay on track, you are well-equipped to handle anything that comes your way.

So, step into the adventure armed with your tools, curiosity, and discerning eye to uncover the true potential of candidates and guide them from the dark woods into the light of your organization.

You’re ready to conquer the market, but there’s a lot facing the industry right now. You have to be ready to overcome some big challenges, like the sophistication of insurance technology, cyber risk, consumer trust, the economy, advertising costs, climate change, and unskilled workers. And that’s on top of the everyday business needs, such as knowing your product lines and agency benefits thoroughly, setting and achieving sales goals, and understanding what your customers want so you can keep them loyal to your agency. Oh, and hiring the right people who can do all of the above. After all, agency success starts and ends with people. That’s why we suggest starting with a strong selection process and a solid pre-employment assessment strategy that incorporates tools like behavioral assessments, sales assessments, and cognitive ability tests.  

Do you know how to select the right people? 

Even the best agency owners can find themselves unprepared to tackle the important and also arduous business of hiring. Those who manage small agencies may have been lucky enough to know and trust the people they hire, like relatives, friends, or individuals from their own circles. It’s always easier working with known quantities.  

However, as agencies grow and change, they are sure to run out of family, acquaintances, and even employee referrals when filling both vacated and growth positions. When this happens, agency owners and managers will be dependent on a more terrifying and riskier place for their staffing needs: the outside world! When working with the unknown, it’s best to collect as much information as possible and use data-backed hiring tools as your insurance against making a wrong hire. Sure, gut feelings can play a small part but should never be the only tool used to select people; too many things can cloud our judgement, and some candidates are superstars at hiding their faults until it is too late. 

The Turnover Illusion 

A common myth often accepted as an absolute fact is that frequent employee turnover is normal, so it almost doesn’t matter who is hired since the employee won’t stay long anyway. That’s why, in large agencies, it might feel like the goal is just to quickly find anybody to fill an open position and hope they’ll stay longer than a year. Unfortunately, this illusion only fans the flames of inefficiency and expense, making the already frustrating everyday problems agencies face even more infuriating. 

When you are ready to start looking for your next superstar employee, consider these 6 easy tips: 

1. Have a structured but not stringent process

Agency managers might think a formal hiring system is unnecessary. Too many bureaucratic layers yield complex problems, while the typical emergencies within an agency can get in the way of following the system perfectly. As a result, stringent hiring practices can seem impractical or too time consuming. And there is certainly some truth to that; stringency can be as problematic as no system at all.  

A formal, structured process is necessary, but you need one that works for your culture and is not encumbered by bureaucratic layers that unnecessarily complicate the process. Find a balance between unstructured and chaotic and overly bureaucratic. Extremes never work; looking for the middle ground will go a long way toward avoiding problems down the road.  

Hiring talented, trustworthy, capable, long-term, and well-suited employees should always be the goal whether you manage one person or a hundred people. Never settle if you can help it. List your needs and some reasons for those needs. This will help you set priorities and see your expectations, strengths, and weaknesses in a real-world way. Think about the specifics of your agency culture and work environment.  

Is your agency high-octane and fast-moving? If so, you have good reason to avoid hiring people who tell you they get overwhelmed easily or hate being rushed. While such patience and diligence are admirable qualities, they could be liabilities in a hectic, highly charged environment. Of course, certain roles might need that methodical approach, so it’s important to think about all factors, like the agency culture, the department’s culture, and the demands of the job itself. One-size-fits-all never fits everybody.   

Also, make sure you stay up to date on the latest hiring trends to stay competitive in the job market. You want to be an employer of choice in your area. 

2. Attract the right talent with the right job posting

Your job posting is the first impression you make on a potential employee. It’s also the best way to quickly weed out people who are not the right fit for the job or your agency.  

Start with being clear about the job, exactly what it is, what it entails, and what type of person is best suited to it. All too often we hear how candidates felt misled about the role. Your biggest employee retention tool during the selection process is honesty. Don’t be afraid to scare people off. The right candidates will want to apply, and the wrong candidates will turn away. But if you aren’t honest, you may hire the wrong candidates, and they will quickly feel resentful of the “deception” and leave or perhaps stay but do the bare minimum. Scaring off the wrong type is best for your retention efforts in the long run. 

That’s why you should also make sure your post shows who you are as an employer and company. Highlight your identity and brand and be bold. More and more, employees want to work for a company that aligns with their personalities. If your agency is playful and lively with a “work hard, play hard” mentality, make sure your post reflects that. Don’t be afraid to use humor. But if your agency is direct, formal, and serious with a “work hard, then work harder” mindset, then be serious and formal in your post. Staying true to who you are will help you attract like-minded people, and like-minded people are more likely to stay.  

Once you’ve posted your job and started collecting resumes, weed out the obvious ones that do not align with your needs. Whittle down your candidates to a number that seems reasonable to you, but keep in mind that, as you dig deeper into each person’s background, you may uncover more than just a few unpleasant surprises. Research shows that 30 to 40 percent of applications and resumes include some false or inflated facts! 

3. Get extra insight from a behavioral assessment

A pre-employment personality assessment will help you look even closer at a candidate’s potential with the job and even the team. If you’re looking to retain strong, productive employees, make sure the people you hire are a match for the job. Omnia helps to set the “job personality” so you can see how a candidate’s traits match up to the best traits for the position. 

The best part is that a behavioral assessment is not a pass-or-fail test. The Omnia behavioral assessment uses the candidate’s responses to a simple online checklist. It’s a quick yet powerfully accurate tool that provides extensive insight into a person’s strengths, motivators, weaknesses, and fit to the job’s demands.   

Within an agency environment, sales hiring is a major concern. A personality assessment is also a sales hiring assessment. Why? Because our assessment’s assertiveness trait is strongly correlated to sales performance. Naturally assertive people are stronger prospectors, presenters, and closers.  

4. Know the skills you need and test for them

Minimize the risk of a bad hire, but make sure any potential new hire really does have the skills needed to do the job even at the most basic level. This can be done by administering proficiency tests that are job appropriate and designed to demonstrate abilities. It might be a bookkeeping test, a Microsoft Excel or Word test, a cognitive ability evaluation, or an insurance terminology quiz. Don’t assume that the person interviewing for your accounting position knows the difference between debits and credits. Sometimes, people say they know how to do something just to get their foot in the door.   

5. Conduct background checks

A background check protects your agency and your employees. Crime and violence are, sadly, not uncommon in the workplace. Make sure there are no issues from a candidate’s past that make you uncomfortable. “Negligent hiring” is a term commonly used in today’s business world and can be alleged if an employer fails to exercise reasonable caution when choosing an employee. Employers could be held financially and legally liable for illegal or violent action taken by employees not subjected to reasonable pre-employment screening. 

6. Get to the bottom of your leadership style

Think about your own management style and encourage your managers to do the same. To motivate and inspire others, it helps to understand yourself. Self-awareness is a powerful leadership tool.  

Are you good with employees who consistently ask for your guidance or with the ones who regularly make their own decisions? Do you closely oversee every detail, or do you expect your team to take the ball and run with it? 

While it might sound nice to simply surround yourself with people who mesh with your own work approach, that’s not always realistic or even wise since different roles require different traits. Knowing how to adjust your style to meet the individual needs of your employees is one of the strongest employee retention tools you can use. 

It might feel daunting, and sometimes it will be, to hire and lead a productive, cohesive, and dedicated team, but it is possible. First, you need to know what you want and seek out employees who can live up to that. Don’t settle for second best. Display your excellence as a decision-maker and take your leadership skills to new levels by employing people who have the potential to exceed your expectations.