During the past 10 years or so our industry has been involved in an intense effort to determine how to replace the current generation of leaders and employees in our insurance agencies. As the baby boomer generation reached the midpoint in retirement age a year ago in the middle of the tightest labor market in recent memory, urgency around that effort increased. Insurance Careers Month, February, presents an ideal opportunity to continue those discussions on how we can best approach and appeal to new candidates to interest them in agency life.

Much of the thinking about how to attract new talent into our industry has focused on arguments related to compensation potential and, to some degree, the benefits of the nature of the work itself. While those may be valid points, they are typically framed as arguments that naturally appeal more to the generation of those who made them rather than in terms that resonate with younger generations. In a nutshell, each generation is different, and if we want to gain their interest, we need to focus our approach on what our industry offers that matters to them.