How to get a college grad to consider a career in insurance

Here’s one way to entice enterprising recent college grads to consider the insurance business:

“If you think you’re going to work hard and represent something that truly impacts the end-user, think about it — are you going to have as much impact at an IBM or Proctor & Gamble as you would in the insurance business?”

This was how Bill C. Brown approached a fresh-out-of-college Ron Remak back in 1979. It worked, and a fulfilling and successful career in the life insurance business ensued. Today, Remak is an award-winning top producer who owns Bill C. Brown Associates in Bloomington, Ind., and happens to be the Producer Profile subject in the July issue of Life Insurance Selling. (Read the article by clicking here.)

“It just made sense,” Remak says in the article of Brown’s pitch, which overcame his initial skepticism. “What he said just stuck with me, and I’m incredibly grateful that, one, he told me what he did, and two, that I decided to listen to him.”

Without that meeting, Remak may well have gone on to work in corporate America, having never considered a career selling life insurance. The industry would have been much poorer had that been the case.

How many bright young college grads does the industry lose every year because they don’t even think about careers in the insurance business? We know working in the industry doesn’t sound sexy to a twenty-something business school grad with dreams of corporate America, but we’ve got to do a better job at letting recent college grads know that this is a career that can lead to more job satisfaction — and compensation — than they are likely to earn in the corporate world.

The industry needs an influx of young talent. While some carriers have seriously stepped up their recruiting efforts on college campuses, independent producers need to take every opportunity they can to impress the great potential of this career upon recent college grads navigating the challenging tides of entering the workforce.