Hiring Non-Insurance Roles

November 25, 2024

Hiring is an important process at any organization. At brokerages, you often start by adding more underwriters, sales roles and professionals with backgrounds in claims. As you evolve, you hire non-insurance roles like marketers and coders. These roles are essential in helping drive innovation, enhancing customer experience and improving operational efficiency. If you’re considering hiring from a non-insurance pool, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Needs Analysis

Before diving headfirst into the hiring process, take the time to clearly define your needs. Are you looking for someone to help you bring in new customers or automate systems? Do you need a dedicated person to handle social media so your receptionist can focus on customer service? 

You’ll need to determine if you have enough on-going work to justify a full-time hire. If you haven’t already, it’s probably best to start by hiring a contractor in the role to better gauge the amount of work you have for them. By bringing in a professional, they’ll likely identify other places where they can contribute with their expertise, which might not be immediately obvious. 

The Right Fit

This part of the process will be similar to the hiring you’ve done for insurance related roles, but there are a few key areas to focus on.

Self-Motivation

  • Managers who haven’t previously supervised coders, marketers or creatives may not know the appropriate timelines for this type of work. Since this new role may be a department of one, it’s crucial your new hire can stay on top of tasks and projects independently.

Problem-Solving

  • Since there may not be other employees in the company doing similar tasks, non-insurance team members will need to think critically and find innovative solutions on their own.

Skills-Focused

  • As we all know, industry knowledge can be learned on the job, so focusing on hard skills is more important for these roles. In the case of marketers, you might benefit from hiring outside of the insurance industry to bring fresh perspective to your brokerage.

Team Player

  • Place extra emphasis on the candidate’s ability to work collaboratively with others. Since they may not be coming from within the industry, they’ll need to rely more on you and your team to provide context to what they’re doing. If, for example, you’re planning to hire someone to code automations for your processes, ask an employee they’d be working alongside to join the interview process for their read on culture fit. 

New Grads

There are waves of new graduates coming out of their programs who are struggling to find that first job in their chosen field, and they’re hungry for a chance to prove themselves. New grads can be a more affordable way to test out new roles. You can also consider co-op programs for a trial run before committing to permanent additions.

Work Samples

Especially in the case of marketers, rather than relying on their interview and experience, ask to see samples of their work to judge them yourself. Fresh grads will have classwork that can function as a portfolio piece. Coders might have case studies of their work they can point to as a demonstration of what they’re capable of. It can be easier to see how pieces might fit when you see real examples and imagine them being done for you. 

Different Perspectives

If you want different outcomes, you have to make different choices. Embracing the inclusion of non-insurance roles can transform your office in ways beyond just what’s anticipated. Adding non-insurance roles can provide a new set of lenses to view business challenges and offer new solutions. Approaching this change strategically can ensure you’ll get the most out of this move in a new direction. 

 

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VOLUME 24 | ISSUE 1