461. What 600 Job Applicants Taught Us About Hiring the Right Person for Your Team

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What's in this episode:
What do you do with 600 job applicants? In this episode of The Insurance Buzz, Michael Weaver pulls back the curtain on the exact hiring process Agency Coach AI used to fill its customer success manager position. Out of 605 applicants, fewer than 60 completed the process from start to finish, and Michael Weaver and Courtney Weaver narrowed that group down to their top 10 interviews in less than two hours. The secret is a system called hurdles before hiring, and it automatically eliminates 90% of applicants so you only talk to the candidates who are serious.

Michael Weaver breaks down the three hurdles every applicant must clear, the candidate feedback that revealed what actually attracts top talent, and why a $60,000 base salary changed the quality of the entire applicant pool. If you run an insurance agency and you are tired of high turnover, bad hires, and resumes that go nowhere, this episode hands you a hiring process you can implement this week.

[00:00] 600 applicants for one customer success role
[02:00] Why hurdles before hiring works in every business
[04:00] The process that eliminates 90% of applicants
[05:00] The three steps every applicant must complete
[07:00] The top three things that attracted candidates
[08:30] Why higher pay attracts better people
[10:00] Video interviews matter more than resumes
[11:30] Narrowing the field to the top 10 candidates
[12:30] Why candidates appreciated a tough process
[13:30] Why Michael and Courtney run interviews themselves
[15:30] Sorting 600 applicants in under two hours
[16:30] Building a pipeline for future hires
[18:30] The 10% rule and always be recruiting

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

I wouldn't even know what to do with 600 plus applicants. That would take me forever to navigate through. Out of 600 people, how are you going to find the best one? This is the Insurance Buzz, and we are your host, Michael and Courtney Weaver. We coach insurance professionals, business owners, and people just like you every day on how to live a life and have a business you are excited about.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Here on the insurance buzz, we share the wins, the losses, and everything in between that comes with being married business partners, training in the insurance space, and growing our business side by side. We also connect with other business owners and leaders making their mark in the world and hopefully inspire you to make yours.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Hey, welcome to the insurance buzz. I am your host, Michael Weaver, and I'm flying solo today. And I want to talk about 600 plus applicants for our customer success manager position and what we learned along the way and what we want to share with you. So here at Agency Coach AI, as many of you know, we are growing exponentially. We are very blessed, we are grateful. And uh so, as part of growth, growing an AI company also means growing our humans within our AI company to make sure that our customers are getting taken care of, that we are providing an exceptional customer service and experience. Because the last thing that we want to be is one of the typical AI companies that you and I have to deal with, which is when you have to talk to an AI chatbot over the internet and you can barely even get anyone on the phone, and that is just unacceptable for us at agency coach AI. So, with our rapid growth that we are seeing right now in the industry, by the way, if you are an agency coach AI customer, shout out to you. Thank you so much for your support. We appreciate you. We have big things happening on this side of things, we have exciting developments, we pride ourselves in being the most advanced AI company built specifically for insurance professionals by insurance professionals, and we feel like that is why we have had so much success working with over a thousand of you already. And we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We appreciate you and we got you. We're gonna continue to develop agency coach AI and make sure that it is the most badass AI tool and tech stack in your insurance agency. Uh, but let me get into this, uh, get into this episode. So, with that being said, I want to talk about the 600 plus applicants that we had for our customer success management position, what we learned, what their feedback was, and uh we'll just go from there. So uh we we shared an episode with you that was called Hurdles Before Hiring back in February when we had decided to bring on a couple cut uh sales professionals to agency coach AI, and we talked about those hurdles that we set up, and we've been huge proponents and fans of hurdles before hiring for quite some time within every organization that we that we have. Uh, and I know it goes a little against the grain for sure because um some recruiting companies out there, some business owners, they they want as many, they want to just hire as many people as possible, get as many people in the door as possible, and and hopefully it works out. If it does or it doesn't, it doesn't matter. That's just not our philosophy. That's never been our philosophy in business. We want to attract the best talent. Um, sure, if we have hundreds of applicants, great, but we want to attract the absolute best. So quality candidates, those individuals that we know will fit our culture, that will come in, that we don't have to micromanage, that we set up for success, we teach them how to be successful, we show them, and then we just expect them, and they are. Uh, they're self-starters. And a lot of times that's going to come with pay and things of that nature, which I'll get into here in a second. But I want to share our hurdles before hiring, uh, just to kind of preface this process as to um how we navigate. Because with 600 plus applicants, if if you just saw that title, heading, you heard me talk about it, you'd be like, Michael, I wouldn't even know what to do with 600 plus applicants. That would take me forever to navigate through. Out of 600 people, how are you going to find the best one? If you're if you're thinking that right now, I I have I have a process for you that automatically is going to eliminate 90% of applicants. 90%. This is tried and true in this one as well. We had over we had over 600 applicants. We had right at 605 applicants for this position. Less than 60, less than 10% did the entire process from start to finish. So we set up a process that we call hurdles before hiring that will automatically eliminate 90% of applicants. So just because we have 600 applicants, we're not looking through 600 resumes. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. We are only wanting to talk to the individuals that actually complete the process from start to finish. So what that process looks like, number one, is they have to apply for the position. So you have to fill out an application. Number two, they have to complete a personality assessment. They have to complete an assessment. This assessment is going to take on average around 45 minutes to an hour, is what we see with applicants that do this. The last thing is they have to submit video interview questions. So we could we have five questions that they have to answer. So they have to submit video answers to these questions. That is our process. They have to do the process from start to finish. They have to fill out an application, they have to complete an assessment, and then they have to answer five questions, submitting a video answer of themselves answering this question. That process right there will eliminate 90% of individuals that apply for your position, to where you are only talking to the best candidates. Or at least the candidates, I will tell you, that are serious about the position at hand. Because if you are not serious about the position, you are not going to spend an hour completing a personality assessment, and you're also definitely not going to submit a video answer to questions that we have for you. You're just not going to do it. And so we let the process eliminate the bad hires. We let the process eliminate the bad applicants. If you're not serious enough about this job and about this opportunity to at least do the process from start to finish, we are not interested in having a conversation with you. That's just how it is. That's how it's going to be. And so we let the process eliminate the bad hires or the bad applicants for us, is what I would say. Or even those applicants that just choose intentionally not to do the process from start to finish and hope that their resume is good enough to get a call. That's a no for us dog. You got to do the process from start to finish. So that in itself, I hope that you take with you. I hope you implement. Shout out to IdealTraits. Woo woo, you guys are great. This is the second time we've used you in a row, and your process has been seamless from start to finish and helped us uh track the absolute best candidates. So uh on to that. I will tell you, out of the individuals that did the process from start to finish, they are some of the best applicants that we have ever had for a position. For a position. So you may be asking yourself right now, Michael, well, what feedback did you get, if any? Because one of the questions we ask in the video survey is what attracted you to this position? And a lot of the candidates were very transparent and very honest within their answer. And I can tell you the most consistent answer we had across the board. There were three things. Number one, remote position. Number two, the pay was in line for what they were looking for. And the third thing was that it was an AI company. While you may not have an AI company, you can't control those other two things. Remote position and pay. So you may be asking yourself, Michael, well, Michael, what was your pay? Out of curiosity, what were you, what was your starting, what was your starting pay? Any benefits. Now we didn't advertise any benefits, even though we are giving benefits. We don't want to attract people just because of the benefits we offer. We just don't. That's been nothing that we've ever ever like prided ourselves on is like trying to attract people because of benefits we offer. Now we do offer benefits, but that wasn't in the initial uh application process. All they saw was was a base, and this is for a customer success manager position, $60,000 base with bonus opportunity every single month, based off of requirements and performance that they would have to do. A large majority of individuals that answered that question said that the pay is what intrigued them, the pay was in line. $60,000. Yo, $60,000 a year is is to I want you to think about this as a business owner. Because when I talk to agency owners, a lot of times they're like, Michael, I just don't have the money. And I always say, uh, you don't have a choice. You don't have the time, your agency isn't operating the way you want, you have high turnover, something has to change. And so if you're tired of high turnover, if you're tired of not attracting the right applicants, what I have found is higher pay attracts better people. Higher pay attracts more quality candidates. It's amazing what a difference in $10,000 a year would do, or $20,000. If you're currently at 40, if you just bump that up to 60, in my opinion, as a base pay, it you would be amazed at the quality of candidates and how that changes. So I wanted to provide you that feedback because that was feedback that we received. I will also tell you the feedback that we had from the individuals that we actually moved forward. Because just because you just because you do the process does not mean that you're actually going to get an interview with us. So we we will keep interviews for less than 10 people. So out of everyone that does the process from start to finish, we're more than likely only going to interview a maximum of 10 individuals, those individuals that really stood out. Yeah, resumes are important, but more so, what's important are the video interviews. How did they ask answer the questions? How are their communication skills? How do they present themselves? So that was really, really important. Like it's like one of the individuals, you could tell they were reading from their computer on with an AI generated like strip. Obviously, you're not gonna you're not going to get an interview with us if you're doing that. I appreciate you using AI, but I want I want your genuine, transparent answers. And so video videos will show you a lot around the individual that that you are going to be interviewing. So we navigate the assessment tests, the resumes, the video interviews, and that's how we narrow down the top 10 candidates that we are going to call in for an actual like interview, a video interview where we're going to have a one-on-one interview with them and just ask them some questions, get to know them a little bit more, why they're interested in the position, what their background has been, things of that nature before we move on. I can tell you that in the interviews that we conducted, again, some of the best candidates that I've ever had had the um I don't know, the ability to interview. Like this was a really tough selection moving forward with the individuals that we're we're choosing to move forward to because the talent pool was so incredible. For those, for those of you who think that people just don't want to work today, or there's no talent out there, and those are there's no quality people, that's just not true. That is not my experience. That wasn't my experience when we hired sales professionals a few months ago, and that is not my experience now when hiring customer success managers. I think that more so has to do with what you're willing to pay someone and maybe some of the things in your job descriptions and things of that nature. So we had quite the candidate pool, a lot of quality candidates here. And the one positive feedback that we got across the board from every interview we held is they said, look, thank you, but your process was frustrating. Your fra your process was was not the easiest process in the world, but we appreciate the process because we know that you're a serious employer. If you're going to make us go through all of these steps, we know that you're serious. That was across the board. And I want the process to be difficult. Why would I want to make it easy for me to just get in front of you so you can sell it? No, I want the pro are you, do you have the grit? Do you have the tenacity? Do you have what it takes to get through the first initial process? Because if you don't, you're not gonna make it within our organization. No freaking way. You're gonna get chewed up and spit out by customers. Like dealing with people, it takes a certain type of character, certain type of person. You have to have grit, you have to have tenacity, you have to have follow through. So this is this is an important piece of the process, but they appreciated it with across the board. They said this was different, this was a different process. We can tell that you are taking this very serious. And then the other common feedback we get is that they appreciated the owner of the company actually being on the interview. A lot of them were surprised that it was actually me and Courtney that were interviewing them. They thought it was going to be somebody else within the organization. And as we told them, look, culture is extremely important to us. What we are building here is special. What we are building here is exciting. What we are building here is innovative. It creates positive impact across the industry. It is making insane changes. We are becoming the standard across the insurance industry of becoming that go-to tech stack that professionals and insurance agents need and want in their agencies. We are the most important tool in their tech stack across the board. That is what we get told from agents. So why would we not want the best people working with us? What we are doing over here is special, and we want special individuals working with us. We want somebody that's bought in, that has a vision. And that's really, really important. And that's what that's what I want to share with you all. The opportunity that you have is a really great opportunity. It's an important one. You have to start positioning that it that way. You just don't want to attract every Tom, Dick, and Harry across the board to show up your door for an interview. No, you want the best candidates. At least in my experience, if I'm in your shoes, that's who I'm trying to attract. Now, here's the best, here's the best part. 600 applicants, less than 60 did the entire process from start to finish. It took us less than two hours. It took me and Courtney less than two hours to go through all of the applicants and narrow down those individuals that we were actually going to call in for a one-on-one interview. How incredible is that? Again, shout out to Idle Traits. And I get nothing for this, y'all. You do not have to mention to Idle Traits that I'm that I that I mentioned them in this podcast episode. I do not care. But when I receive a good service or I have a good experience with a company, I'm gonna share that. And so, bam, less than two hours to navigate through candidates to see who we were gonna interview for our position. That is insane. That is powerful. Not only that, it gave us a pipeline of individuals to contact through this rapid growth, and we told them that. The individuals that we chose not to hire, I made sure that they knew hey, just because I'm not hiring you right now doesn't mean that you're never going to get a call from me. And while at that time maybe you already have another position or you're not interested, hey, you did a great job during this process, and you're somebody that I'm going to want on my team in the future. Just not right now. Right now is not a good fit. So I'm building a pipeline of quality candidates I can contact in the future so I don't have to go through this process again. That is what is incredible. If you do this the right way the first time, you start to build pipelines, just like we're about to onboard more sales professionals. I didn't have to advertise for that. We had a pipeline of sales professionals that applied the first time and have contacted me over the last few months that were able to pick and choose quality candidates from our pipeline. And when you start doing this the right way and you start you start attracting quality candidates to you, you start putting quality candidates in your pipeline, your job as an entrepreneur and business owner gets a lot easier. Because without a doubt, people are the most difficult. I I think I think managing people, finding the right people is the most difficult part of business ownership. And if not the most difficult, one of the most difficult parts. And that's why I wanted to share this with you right now. So again, I hope that your I hope your takeaways are you need something to help you attract quality candidates. You need hurdles in the hiring process that allow you to only see the best candidates, that you can attract quality candidates, and it's not going to take a ton of your time, less than two hours spent navigating who we're gonna call in. And then each interview is anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes. Me and Courtney have that thing dialed in. 15 to 30 minutes an interview. We can get to know anything about anybody in 15 to 30 minutes. With every other process we've we've put along the way, look, within the first five minutes of that of that interview, I'm typically like, yay or nay. That's just how I am. I get a gut feeling based off their assessment, based off how they show up, then they show up on the call, boom. I know super quick, like bam, we're moving forward with this person, or not right now, we're gonna stick them in the pipeline, or hey, no, this person is just a never. We we we were wrong in bringing them in for an interview. So make sure hurdles before hiring, make sure you're attracting quality candidates. Don't forget the 10% rule. If you have the correct hurdles in place, you will narrow down to the 10% of people that are actually serious about the position at hand. Make sure that you're doing the things necessary to attract quality candidates. So typically pay. What's the work gonna look like? What's in it for them? Um, and lastly, always be recruiting. Whether you're doing it yourself, whether you're hiring somebody to help you, uh, whether you're hiring a recruiting service, because there's all kinds of different services out there. But this is a place where you always need to be recruiting, you need to feel at least you need to get a pipeline of individuals to where when it's time to hire, you have people you can contact, or you or you have that person that you're like, okay, I'm contacting them right now for a position. So, with that being said, I hope today was beneficial. Uh, we wanted to share our experience of just what we're navigating with uh or navigating through currently at agency coach AI. The same struggles you have are the same struggles uh that we have. And so if we do something that we're like, man, this this works really well, we're always going to share that with you. And so, as always, your time and attention are by far your most important asset. I appreciate you spending time with me today on the buzz. Go out and make it great. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Insurance Buzz. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, and leave a rating and review. If you want to take your insurance agency to the next level and join our community, simply check out Weaver Sales Academy at www.weaversa.com. Again, that's www.weaversa.com, or visit the show notes on our new and current programs we have available exclusively for you. As always, time is the most valuable and important asset that we all have, and I appreciate you spending it with me. See you on the next episode.