Get Your Agency Hire and Hire: The Hiring Recast Every Agency Owner Needs

If your agency is stuck, there's a 90% chance the problem is a people problem. Not a marketing problem. Not a carrier problem. Not a lead-cost problem. A people problem, specifically, the wrong people in the wrong seats, or not enough of the right people to begin with. Hiring is the highest-leverage activity an agency owner can do, and it's the one most owners treat like an afterthought.

This episode is a recast because the original hiring conversation hit hard enough to warrant a second listen. If you missed it the first time, this is your chance. If you heard it already, you're going to catch things you missed.

Why Agencies Hire Wrong (And Keep Doing It)

The typical agency hiring story goes like this: you're drowning in quotes, service calls are piling up, you need help yesterday, so you post a job on Indeed, get a stack of resumes, pick the person who seems least likely to be a disaster, and bring them on board. Three months later, you wonder why nothing has improved.

That's not a hiring process. That's a panic response. And panic responses rarely produce great employees.

The root problem is that most agency owners hire reactively instead of proactively. They wait until the pain is unbearable, then rush through a process that deserves real time and real thought. The result is a revolving door of mediocre hires who cost you training time, client relationships, and cash, and then leave anyway.

The recast on this episode strips the hiring conversation back to first principles. Why are you hiring? What does this role actually need to accomplish? What kind of person succeeds in your specific culture? Those three questions, answered honestly, change everything about how you recruit, interview, and onboard.

Building a Hiring System That Works

A real hiring system has four components that most agency owners either skip or rush: a clear role definition, a targeted sourcing strategy, a structured interview process, and a front-loaded onboarding plan.

Role definition comes first. Before you write a single job posting, you need to be crystal clear on what success looks like in the role at 30, 60, and 90 days. Not a list of tasks. Outcomes. What does a new hire need to accomplish in their first quarter for you to consider this hire a win? Write that down. That document becomes your job posting, your interview rubric, and your performance management framework all in one.

Sourcing determines your candidate pool. Most agencies fish in the same small pond, job boards, referrals from other agents, occasionally a staffing agency. The best hires often come from industries adjacent to insurance: financial services, real estate, automotive sales. People who already understand commission compensation, customer relationships, and the grind of a sales environment. Cast a wider net. Be specific about what you're looking for. Generic job postings attract generic candidates.

The interview process is where you actually learn something. Stop asking candidates what their greatest weakness is. Start asking them to walk you through a time they had to persuade someone who didn't want to be persuaded. Ask about a process they built from scratch. Ask what they do when they're behind on a goal with three days left in the month. Behavioral and situational questions reveal how someone actually operates, not how they perform in an interview.

Onboarding is not orientation. Sending someone through a week of compliance training and then throwing them at a phone is not onboarding. It's abandonment. A structured first 90 days, with clear milestones, regular check-ins, and real feedback, is the difference between a hire who sticks and a hire who's gone before the first renewal cycle.

What This Means for Your Agency

Start with an audit. Look at your last five hires. How many are still with you? Of those, how many are genuinely performing at the level you need? Whatever the answer is, ask yourself honestly: did the hiring process give them a fair shot to succeed?

Then look forward. If you know you're going to need another producer, service rep, or operations person in the next six months, start the process now. Build the role definition. Identify your sourcing channels. Have a structured interview ready to go before the need becomes urgent. Proactive hiring produces better outcomes every single time.

Finally, separate your feelings from your process. Hiring is the area where owner instincts most reliably lead agencies astray. "I just had a great feeling about them" is not a hiring criterion. Your system should be doing the filtering, not your gut.

The Bottom Line

Hiring is a skill, and like every skill, it improves with deliberate practice and the right framework. This recast exists because the first time wasn't enough, the lessons in this conversation are too important to hear only once. Build the system, run the process, and stop letting urgency make your staffing decisions for you. Your next great hire is out there. The question is whether your process is good enough to find them.

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Catch the full conversation:

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Podcasts
• Watch on YouTube

About Craig Pretzinger: Craig Pretzinger is co-host of The Insurance Dudes podcast and founder of a high-performance insurance agency. He helps agents build scalable, profitable books of business through systems, mindset, and relentless execution.

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