Building Your Pool’s Relationship with Post-Secondary Institutions
1. Identify post-secondary schools.
Explore partnerships with a variety of post-secondary institutions, including 2-year colleges, to meet your pool's needs and understand available options. A broader search ensures consideration for non-traditional programs and/or schools that may be a good fit.
Try not to limit your options to schools or programs that directly align with pooling or insurance — we all know that many of our best employees have surprising backgrounds. Students from the sciences (i.e. actuarial science, math, data analytics) have analytical skills to support finance and underwriting. Liberal arts students (i.e. business, English, journalism) are being primed to question, analyze and synthesize information, which are all valuable skills for claims and member services roles.
Build relationships with multiple departments at a school to bolster awareness of your pool and enhance your pooling pipeline.
Start this work with schools nearest your pool. Research by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a not-for-profit nonpartisan independent research organization, found that on average about 50 percent of college graduates worked in the same metro area as their college while 66 percent worked in the same state. In fact, only nine states import more graduates than their colleges produce.
This insight means that your pool’s best bet for building a strong talent pipeline, as well as for retaining staff, is to invest locally with the schools in your backyard.
Resources
The U.S. Department of Education College Map and Canadian University and Colleges Map can help your pool identify schools to work with based upon school program, degree, location and more.
2. Connect with career centers.
Depending upon the individual school, career centers may help your pool develop and implement internships, facilitate meetings with giving offices for scholarship support, connect you with academic departments and faculty, invite participation in virtual and in-person internship and career fairs, engage your pool in student mentorship and more.
3. Connect with giving offices.
Pools that offer scholarships should connect with school giving offices to explore the school’s unique scholarship opportunities. These offices often help develop, manage and implement endowed and other scholarships.
4. Build relationships with academic departments.
Volunteering or working alongside professors in the classroom (like offering to guest lecture)i s a great way to connect directly with departments and faculty that can support your internship goals.
5. Connect with student organizations.
Review student organizations at targeted institutions as they may align with your pool’s needs.A school might not offer a degree closely aligned with your pool’s needs, but may have relevant student organizations that are in alignment. Institutions often have clubs relevant to specific areas of study, academic department, occupation and profession, as well as related to student interest and identity.
Resources
Gamma Iota Sigma, the insurance industry fraternity, has a network of 105 chapters in colleges and universities in the United States and Canada representing more than 5,000 student members. The organization facilitates speaking and recruitment activities for students and employers, and offers a suite of online and fee-based tools including a virtual career fair, online job board and more.