The Ontario Broker - August 2019 - 15

BY 2025 ONTARIO
WILL HAVE AS
MANY AS 364,000
JOB VACANCIES,
MEANING THE
MARKET WILL
TIGHTEN FURTHER
AND EMPLOYERS
WILL BE COMPETING
OVER AN EVEN
SMALLER GROUP OF
WORKERS.
willing to spend time upfront to find the
right person, then you save the cost down
the road of paying out severance when it
doesn't work out," says Tony. "You have to
hire people that reflect what you're trying
to do."

job hunting. This exponentially opens
the field and gives you a better chance of
finding someone who fits your brand.
"A lot of folks use LinkedIn when they're
looking for a job. You want to really tap
into people who might not realize they
want another job. They're the ones that are
comfortable, they're performing and they're
going to come into your business and flourish.
"We've recently purchased all our own video
equipment and started doing recruitment
videos to push out on all the various social
media platforms-not just LinkedIn. We
also have a referral program. When we bring
someone in who's a rock star, we want to tap
into their network."
HIRE LEARNING

"At Zensurance we have three core values-
Inspire. Invent. Deliver. When we're
interviewing, we ask specific questions
around our value system and try to determine
if they'd be a fit for us culturally. One of the
questions I always love to ask folks is, what
inspires you? That gives them a chance to
open up a little bit, be vulnerable and share
what makes them tick," says Trevor.
"If you want someone who aligns with your
mission and vision, you have to strongly
determine what that is before you move
forward. It isn't separate from strategic
planning," says Tony. "People are your
competitive advantage."
LOOKING WHEN THEY'RE NOT
LOOKING

Tony advocates trying to find recruits who
are outside the pool of candidates currently

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Another common option is taking on an
employee with less experience than you're
looking for and developing them to the
level you need. In some cases that may be
the only option.
"Some brokerages are at a point now where
they can't find CSRs. They might have to
find somebody who wants to do the role
and train them up," says Tony. "Or if you're
hiring to replace a boomer retiree, the
higher their skill level is, the harder they'll
be to replace."
Training less-experienced workers can
also help control costs and investing in
onboarding will make that process easier.
"Given we're a startup, sometimes we'll have
to overlook on experience in place of folks
who have a lot of passion for what they do.

15

We're really trying to figure out how we can
bring someone in who's never worked in
insurance but has some other transferable
skillset and turn them into a super broker in
two months," says Trevor.
"We try to make our onboarding process
as engaging as possible and as hands-on as
possible. We set them up with a learning and
development plan customized to them, and
marry them up with a success partner in the
business who came from a similar role. We
find we're quicker at ramping up people and
having them be more successful in their job
than if we were doing a traditional closed
door, classroom approach. I like to call it
free-range learning."
ADVANCED SEARCH SETTINGS

As a digital brokerage, Zensurance has an
unconventional mixture of roles, which can
present its own challenges.
"We're really unique within Canada. About
half of our employees are tech folks-
computer engineers, software developers,
java script developers. But we've also had to
hire a finance leader and a digital marketing
team. The opportunities are endless while
we're growing," says Trevor.
"If we're hiring a sales role versus a tech
role, we'll take a different approach. We'll
change the type of language we use when we
advertise and look at platforms that folks in
that space are using. Computer engineers
aren't on LinkedIn. We've had to get away
from the regular way of doing things to try to
generate leads in non-traditional ways. The
most important thing for us is the talent.
If you don't have the best people you won't
have the best results."

AUGUST 2019
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The Ontario Broker - August 2019

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