Two Recruiting Tools Every Insurance Agency Needs

“Our agency just hired two junior recruiters. I need a lot of resources to overcome their inexperience. LinkedIn has been our ‘go to’ but they want to charge $10,000 for one seat. I can’t afford $20k for each recruiter to have an account nor can I divide the spot. Is that my best option, or are there other resources that will help them fill our open positions?” ~HR Director.

Your agency is accustomed to utilizing tools and resources for sales, service and client retention. What would you do without Salesforce, Zywave, ImageRight and others? I bet you’re constantly evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of those tools. Hiring resources are no different. The HR director’s issue is one a lot of agencies face. What recruiting resources does your agency need? What will those cost?

I’ve made numerous additions, deletions and conversions to Capstone’s ATS, job boards, website and social media, all in an effort to utilize cost effective resources that attract the best applicants. Here’s what I’ve learned. There are a lot of resources available to post jobs and troll for candidates, but insurance is a niche business where you only need 5% to 10% of the candidate population. These recruiting tools can be geared towards insurance recruiting. Not only should they be on your “must have” list, but getting a good ROI means not just buying the resources but consistently using them, tracking progress and defining success.

APPLICANT TRACKING SYSTEM

An ATS will help your agency manage candidate volume, create an efficient hiring process, eliminate time wasted on bad applications and shift money you’re spending on outside resources in-house. Recruiterbox’s blog, “18 Undeniable Reasons You Need an Applicant Tracking System,” has reasons to install or upgrade your ATS. A few examples include:

75% of large companies use an ATS to review and rank resumes before a recruiter sees them;
20% of companies experience a reduced hiring time;
ATS thins the qualified candidate pool by 75%;
A company with 8 employees can save $10,000 using an ATS.

What to Keep In Mind

The ATS’s biggest benefit is improving candidate engagement. Here at Capstone, we utilize our ATS to stay in constant communication with our database. Whether we sourced the person as an active job seeker or a passive recruit, we keep track of important data, set recurring follow ups, apply keywords that are searchable for future openings and automate applications with our job postings.

CAREERS PAGE

Creating or revamping your Careers page is your biggest expenditure but produces the greatest ROI. It’s an easy $15,000 to $20,000 investment. Capstone has overhauled its website three times in my 15-year career. It has to be able to compete with third party job boards and accomplish the following:

Keep money you’d otherwise spend to an outside job board (LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Careerbuilder) in-house
Require little ongoing cost to upkeep (as opposed to job boards that require money for each job post or yearly contract)
Effectively display speculative/opportunity jobs as well as immediate openings
Enable you to create, write and format job postings the way you’d like
Showcase your culture with multimedia presentations (videos, testimonials & social media links)
Boost SEO and company visibility on social media and Google searches

What to Keep In Mind

Your Careers page influences the candidate experience. In October 2020’s column, I wrote about three indicators for a successful 2021 recruiting plan saying, “The employment ‘journey’ holds the key.” Candidates don’t want you to “do something to them” in the interview process. They want you to “do something FOR them.” Make your Careers page an invitation to experience your agency’s culture and employment opportunities. You can track the candidate experience through Google analytics by monitoring:

What pages candidates visit;
How long they stay on your platform;
What action items they embrace.