David leads a team of sales recruiters at National General Insurance, but unlike most recruiters, their job isn’t just to judge you on your resume and put you into a pass-or-fail pile. David and his team want to talk. Seriously.
If you apply to National General Insurance, they’ll give you a call. If you don’t pick up, they’ll leave a voicemail and send you an email. Then they’ll call again. That’s because having a real conversation is an essential part of the recruiting process at NatGen. So, they speak to every candidate on the phone.
This new recruiting process is just the latest in a line of innovative steps the company has taken to stay competitive, both as a company and an employer. And so we spoke to David to find out a bit more about it—and how you could end up finding your dream job with them because of it.
How NatGen Changed The Recruiting Process To Find The Sales ‘Intangibles’
One of the hardest things for any growing business is to find the right volume and quality of salespeople. They’re the lifeblood of any organization. Without a great sales team, the product, ideas, and mission simply won’t exist for very long without new business to keep them going and growing.
National General has been in the insurance industry since 1939, and they’ve expanded and innovated to become a leader today. This new approach to sales recruiting, David says, is just another part of that growth.
“We just don’t stand with the old guard of, ‘This is how recruiting was always done,’” David says. “We were growing so quickly that we just couldn’t do that anymore.”
The next step for the NatGen team was to look at the data.
“We reviewed our best performers, their resumes, how they interview, and we realized that we can’t just go off their resumes,” he explains.
Instead, his team at NatGen contacts every candidate and has a regular conversation. This has led David and his team to find many “diamonds in the rough,” essentially, people who might not be the most skilled at crafting resumes, but actually have what it takes to succeed in sales.
There’s another major benefit, too, to NatGen’s method: It takes place over the phone, which—as a test of sales ability—actually makes a lot of sense.
“You can have the best resume in the world, but if you can’t connect over the phone, if you don’t take an interest in the person you’re talking to, and if you’re just not likable, you’re just not going to do well in this role,” David explains. “We’re looking for intangibles that you’re just not going to get from reading black and white text.”
NatGen Doesn’t Just Innovate Recruiting—They’ve Revamped Training To Ensure Your Success At The Company
Sales is a particularly tough industry for turnover—in fact, there’s a minimum of 20% every year. The biggest reasons are a lack of proper training, poor performance, and low morale. Basically, David says, “We know that if they’re not making money, they’re not happy, they’re not feeling the team environment, they’re gonna leave.”
And that’s why the team at NatGen didn’t stop at changing the recruiting process. They redesigned the onboarding and training process, too.
Weeks before you arrive, you’ll already be put in contact with your sales trainer, team lead, and veteran agents who can help you begin the learning and on-boarding process. Once you arrive at the company, the focus will be on a combination of formal training with experiential learning and one-on-one coaching.
The reason it works so well at NatGen, David explains, is because they’re utilizing their top performers to train the newer classes.
“What we did was create a whole new department for new-hire team leads,” he says. “So, we promoted our best team leaders on our sales side to meet and grow the new candidates as they come in.”
The trainers and managers for new hires at NatGen have real, “in-the-trenches” knowledge to share with their classes because they all started in that role. This ensures that each individual salesperson at NatGen can rely on mentorship and training, as well as a sense of belonging, because that what makes salespeople succeed.
David and the team at NatGen want everyone they hire to realize their potential—and that’s why they’ve put so much into finding and honing new talent.
“We don’t just have you come in, watch a few things, and say, ‘Good luck!,’” David says. “We’re invested in you.”Want to start a career with a company that looks for the best in you—and then helps you realize it? Check out open opportunities at National General!
