Important Interview Questions for New Insurance Producers
Selecting a candidate to become a new commercial insurance broker or producer is an important decision. Here are three interview questions that help to assess the cognitive abilities of a new producer candidate:
- Describe a situation where you had to learn a lot in a short period of time.
- This question helps determine the ability to learn quickly.
- How hard did you need to study in college?
- We have previously recommended hiring insurance producers with four year college degrees This question may reveal a person breezed through college without much effort (bad or good or both?) or they didn’t need to study that hard (mostly good) or they didn’t take their formal education very seriously (mostly bad).
- How do you acquire new knowledge in your current job?
- This question is relevant because if they’re light or vague on specifics here, that’s a warning sign that they won’t invest the time and effort in continuous learning in the producer career.
Here’s a key problem solving question that we always ask a producer candidate:
- One major problem a new producer faces is the heavy prospecting required to build the foundation of a book of business. How would you approach the prospecting to begin building your book of business? (E.g. your local network or starter prospect pipeline)
- The answer to this question is important as a practical matter — because this is what a new producer will do at the beginning of the career – and it also sheds light on the candidate’s thoughtfulness and depth of problem solving analysis.
Beyond typical interviews, many of our clients invite new producer candidates to present a business plan, make a sales presentation, participate in a sales meeting, travel with a producer on client calls, or to attend a lunch/dinner meeting. Many of these elements help in the recruiting process and also serve as opportunities to assess the candidate’s smarts to be a successful commercial insurance producer.