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hiring mistakes. While there is not one correct way to select candidates, the chart below presents the more frequently cited steps in the process.

Typical Elements of a Screening Process

Selling the Opportunity

Interviews

Testing

Other Tactics

Detailed discovery of background, skill set and behavior patterns

Sales, personality, intelligence, capabilities, and call reluctance testing

Reference checks, social situations, internships, etc.

Communicating the opportunity and expectations for the candidate and the firm

Throughout the process – however it is designed – it is important to know what you want to get out of it and that the process is designed to figure that out. In addition, the screening process is also a firm’s chance to sell the producer on the opportunity. Firms should be thoughtful about having this discussion with producers.

Interviews

Interviews are perhaps the one constant in the producer selection process. Everyone, it seems, conducts interviews as a foundational element of the process. Although no one interview methodology is widely embraced by the industry, several common characteristics did emerge.

An effective interview process generally begins with an initial phone interview. This interview is typically conducted by a neutral HR employee or someone with no connection to the applicant. The goal of the first phone interview is for the interviewer “to have the feeling that you have found the one.”

“Without a script, your interviewing is nothing more than voodoo hiring. You can’t learn what you don’t ask.”

A $20 Million Broker

Assuming success in the initial interview, the process then continues with applicants meeting with key agency members over several subsequent face-to-face interview sessions. These interviews generally proceed “up the organizational ladder” and are terminated as soon as a poor fit is established. Consider interviewing in teams to ensure that important information is not missed or misunderstood and work with scripts to ensure that critical questions are asked at every step along the way – don’t “wing it” or ask the same questions over and over throughout the interview process.

Testing

Roughly four out of five producers in the supplemental study were tested prior to being hired. As expected, the time-tested Caliper and Omnia tests were cited most commonly, but a number of

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