Consider these two facts:
- According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2020 more than 40% of the US workforce will be comprised of the millennial generation – broadly defined as those born in the 1980s and 1990s.
- In 2012, The Griffith Insurance Education Foundation conducted a survey and found that less than 10% of the millennial generation was interested in working within the insurance industry. The most common explanations were, “I don’t want to sell insurance,” and, “Insurance sounds boring.”
This begs the question, how do insurance businesses attract talent from a
generation of individuals that aren’t interested in working in the industry?
Sparked by the findings of the survey, leading national insurance program manager and ReSource Pro’s parent company, Distinguished Programs set out to answer this question by leveraging the knowledge and opinions of their summer interns, a group of bright, career focused millennials.
The internship coalition conducted a survey targeting college students through an array of social media sites. Through this research, they found that a majority of students knew little to nothing about the insurance industry. The data also showed that this lack of knowledge about the industry was a major contributor to the pessimistic career outlook in insurance. In order to produce a more optimistic view, millennials suggested that more information be made available in terms of how the industry functions, what key skills are highly valued for various positions, and what sort of income potential is possible. Attracting this generation’s talent pool is all about making the industry more transparent and breaking down pre-conceived perceptual barriers.
Here are 4 ways that insurance businesses can generate career interest from the millennial generation:
- Attend college and community career fairs to provide first-hand accounts from those working in the industry
- Provide internship opportunities for a variety of students with different backgrounds to generate credible word-of-mouth in the millennial community about what it’s like inside the walls of an insurance organization
- Expose millennials to the industry with public workshops/seminars featuring the assortment of career arcs in the industry
- Highlight outside-the-box, interest peaking work activities like investigations, social events or collaborative problem solving
“Insurance is very important for the functioning of the economy. It provides opportunity to take risks and gives people the opportunity to grow.” – Dan Epstein, CEO, ReSource Pro
If the insurance industry can make this crystallized statement more clear and tangible for the incoming workforce, they’ll better position themselves to attract talent from the millennial generation.