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March 11, 2012 at 10:31 PM
It’s no news that the life insurance industry is struggling to replenish an aging sales force and that recent college grads show little interest in the industry as a career choice. This is happening even though many recent college grads are having a hard time landing a career-oriented job upon graduation.
Employment rates for new college grads have fallen sharply in the last couple of years. A 2011 study by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University revealed that just 56% of 2010 college grads had held at least one job by the spring of 2011, when the survey was conducted.
This leads me to another study, just released, that is billed as “the first comprehensive, quantitative study of generations in the insurance industry” — the Assurex Global Generational Workplace Audit.
“Despite a phenomenal 100% placement rate for risk management and insurance majors, college graduates simply do not gravitate toward insurance careers,” says Jim Hackbarth, CEO of Assurex Global, a premier network of independent insurance, risk management and benefits brokers. “Thanks to negative perceptions about the profession, a lack of awareness about rewarding careers and a limited pool of trained talent, graduating students fill no more than 15% of the industry’s hiring needs.”
Hackbarth also said that the tendency to overlook insurance careers by both the Millennial Generation and Gen-Xers “creates an enormous challenge for an industry that anticipates a 50% workforce turnover in the next 15 years.”
