How a large insurance company strengthened its Talent Acquisition team’s confidence and consulting capability through Flawless Consulting®
“The biggest shift has been confidence. Our recruiters now feel empowered to have the right conversations and show up as true partners to the business.”
OVERVIEW
At a large insurance company, the Talent Acquisition team plays a critical role in shaping the organization’s future. The team supports hiring across a large and complex enterprise, recruiting approximately 1,500 employees each year across corporate roles, agency leadership, and high-volume contact center positions.
Despite the team’s expertise, the recruiting process often began in a transactional way. Hiring leaders would open a role and expect the recruiting team to post the position and begin moving candidates through the pipeline as quickly as possible.
This approach created several challenges. Recruiters did not always have the deeper context needed to identify the best candidates. Expectations between recruiters and hiring managers were sometimes unclear. The experience also varied depending on which recruiter was assigned to the role.
Talent Acquisition leadership saw an opportunity to elevate the function from filling roles to serving as strategic talent advisors to the business.
To support this shift, the team partnered with Designed Learning to introduce Flawless Consulting®.
OBJECTIVES
SOLUTION
The Talent Acquisition team participated in a Flawless Consulting workshop, creating a shared learning experience and a common language for internal consulting.
The program helped the team rethink how they approached their partnerships with hiring managers.
Recruiters began conducting more intentional intake conversations with hiring leaders before beginning a search. Instead of relying solely on job descriptions, they asked deeper questions to understand the business context, the skills needed for success, and the outcomes leaders were hoping to achieve.
This helped recruiters move beyond simply posting jobs and enabled them to build a more complete understanding of the role and the talent required.
Recruiters also began practicing clearer contracting conversations at the start of each search. These discussions established expectations around roles, timelines, communication, and responsibilities throughout the hiring process.
Contracting created greater alignment and helped prevent misunderstandings later in the recruitment lifecycle.
This consistency made it easier for the organization to trust the process and allowed leadership to deploy recruiters more flexibly across different hiring needs.
Before the workshop, each recruiter had developed their own approach to partnering with hiring managers. Flawless Consulting provided a shared framework and language that helped the team align around how they wanted to show up with the business.
The team continued building their consulting capability after the workshop by bringing real recruiting situations into team discussions. Recruiters shared examples of conversations with hiring managers, discussed where contracting worked well, and explored where they needed to re-contract or clarify expectations.
These conversations helped reinforce the learning and strengthen the team’s consulting mindset over time.
IMPACT
The TA leadership noted that one of the most noticeable changes was an increase in confidence across the recruiting team.
Recruiters began approaching conversations with hiring leaders with greater clarity and authority. Instead of acting as order takers, they increasingly positioned themselves as advisors who could guide leaders through the hiring process.
Contracting conversations created clearer expectations between recruiters and hiring managers. This helped reduce delays, improve alignment, and create a more collaborative hiring experience.
Hiring leaders also began noticing the difference. In some cases, managers shared unsolicited feedback about how helpful it was when recruiters spent time upfront asking thoughtful questions and clarifying expectations before launching a search.
The shift also gave the Talent Acquisition leadership team more flexibility in how they deployed recruiters across the organization. Because the team was operating from a shared consulting framework, hiring managers could expect a consistent level of service regardless of which recruiter they worked with.
Most importantly, the team’s identity began to evolve. Recruiters started seeing themselves not just as people who fill roles, but as professionals who help shape the future of the organization through the talent they bring in.
As the Senior Manager of Enterprise Claims Recruiting, described it:
“We do not just fill jobs. We are helping build the future of the company.”
Through Flawless Consulting, this large insurance company strengthened its Talent Acquisition team’s consulting capabilities and reinforced its role as a strategic partner in shaping the organization’s future.
