P R A D

chapter 8 Owning and Leading the Strategy

There are countless variations of hiring and development strategies. Young producers, experienced producers (with or without books), internships, mentoring, recruiters, and personality testing: an agency’s unique hiring and development approach will contemplate these variables and many more. But electing a strategy is merely the first step. Growing the production force is an execution game.

There are four key business practices to elevating and owning the recruiting and hiring process.

1) Elevating and promoting producer recruiting and development

2) Ensuring real leadership for producer recruiting and development

3) Investing the necessary time, capital and resources

4) Practicing accountability

Elevating and Promoting Producer Recruiting and Development

The first step in elevating the importance of a firm’s recruiting strategy is for the agency leadership team to properly value hiring producers. Without the buy-in of the firm’s executives, a producer recruiting and development strategy, no matter how well-crafted, is doomed. Yet, as evidenced by the 55-60% of firms in our industry that are under-hiring, it is questionable how many agency leadership teams are truly convinced of the importance of producer recruiting. Our hope is that this study – and particularly the research on defining hiring needs – leads more management teams to appreciate the importance of producer hiring. When a leadership team buys in, the agency embraces the recruiting and development strategy. At this point, top performers further differentiate themselves by their effectiveness in promoting their producer recruiting and development strategy, both internally and externally. Because the strategy is clearly defined and recognized as a critical initiative, leading firms are able to articulate it effectively to a wide variety of constituencies.

Ensuring Real Leadership for Producer Recruiting and Development

Most agencies cannot definitively answer the question of who leads their firm’s recruiting and development efforts. The answer to the question is frequently a mishmash of individual names operating, often independently, without clearly defined authority, responsibilities, goals and objectives. The all-too-common “we’re all responsible” approach is a perfect recipe for getting

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