Published Interview with Cindy Wilkosz

1. 1MARCH | APRIL 2016
Developing
Leadership
by Putting
Others First
p. 24
LarryReelitz
2016
Management
Hall of Fame
MARCH | APRIL 2016
B U I L D I N G L E A D E R S I N T H E F I N A N C I A L S E R V I C E S I N D U S T R Y
I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L
Recruiting+
Managing
the Next
Generation
of Leaders
Neglecting recruiting
is like failing to eat
well and exercise.
See tips to give your
firm a recruiting
tuneup.
p. 32
How do
generational
experiences shape
people in the
workplace?
p. 40
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2. GAMA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL4 8
Recruiting
T H E N E X T

3. By Wendy Scheuring
MARCH | APRIL 2016 4 9
Retaining
G E N E R AT I O N

4. 5 0 GAMA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
n 2009, Cindy Wilkosz
began her internship
with the Mutual of
Omaha Neil Chonofsky
Division Ofice’s Blue
Bell, Pennsylvania,
location. She has been with
the company 62 years, and as a training
recruiting specialist, she has been an
integral part of building the business, witnessing the
inclusion of an additional ofice and helping increase the
number of advisors to 120. She currently recruits and
trains new advisors at the company’s Marlton, New
Jersey, ofice, one of the top three Mutual of Omaha
agencies in the United States.
Since she can remember, Cindy Wilkosz has always had
an entrepreneurial spirit. A irst-generation child of Polish
immigrants, she helped build her mother’s business, which
created custom embroidery and design screen printing. She
studied business marketing at Bloomsburg University of
Pennsylvania, where she met her current Mutual of
Omaha boss, Kristi Acree, also a Bloomsburg alumna, at
an on-campus recruiting event.
For Wilkosz, one of the most gratifying changes in the
industry is witnessing how inancial professionals are taking
the very real threat of “brain drain” seriously and imple-
menting measures to reach out to millennials, a generational
term denoting those born roughly between the early 1980s
and the early 2000s. Her irm has given her great latitude to
“bridge that gap,” to penetrate this demographic, and to
actively recruit and vet millennials, especially those just
graduating from college.
At age 27, Wilkosz, a millennial herself, is empathetic to
the worries and ways of her generation. “Many millennials
marry later and still live at home,” she says. “Our genera-
tion has seen the recession in 2008. Looking at the
statistics overall, it’s dificult to sell a millennial or even
educate them about retirement investing, and especially to
recruit them [to join the industry], if they don’t believe in it,
if they’ve seen their parents’ 401(k) or other investments
being taken away.”
T H E I M P O R TA N C E O F M E N T O R I N G
When she was a junior at Bloomsburg, Wilkosz didn’t
know much about Mutual of Omaha, let alone the
insurance and inancial industry. But as she got to know
• Millennials make up about one-third
of the workforce today.
• Millennials feel loyalty to a company
when they feel empowered.
• The mission and goals of the
company for which millennials work
are highly important to them.
• Millennials can be creative and
innovative, and they are looking to be
entrusted with responsibility.
• They are busy using social media
to tap into their extensive network
of contacts.
• Millennials heavily use the Internet to
learn about prospective companies
when considering a career.
Key Characteristics
of Millennials
Ú
I
C O N N E C T W I T H U S !

5. 5 1MARCH | APRIL 2016
Acree, she was motivated to learn more about the
company.
“It wasn’t my irst choice, and I didn’t exactly know
what Mutual of Omaha was. But my parents reminded
me about [the television show, Mutual of Omaha’s] Wild
Kingdom. I did my research and saw this as a chance to
get my foot in the door.”
When Wilkosz came on board as an intern, Acree took
her under her wing and immediately began to coach and
mentor her, teaching her the business. She was entrusted
with projects and encouraged to use her creativity. She
became a woman with a vision and a mission.
The irm’s ofices had no social media presence when
Wilkosz began her internship. She immediately got
started designing and implementing a social media plan,
which included establishing, maintaining and updating
the organization’s presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and
Twitter.
“Sharing information on social media, whether it is
industry-related or not, keeps people connected,” she says.
As an example, she posts on the irm’s Facebook page
links to Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom episodes,
helpful articles about leadership and announcements
about the irm’s local charity participation. Social media is
more about local branding, being a helpful resource, and
building and maintaining a presence within an extensive
network of contacts rather than just selling.
During her internship, she also recognized the impor-
tance of connecting with students, and she realized that
none of the irm’s ofices had working relationships with
the local colleges and universities. Wilkosz immediately
began to develop relationships and establish partnerships
with school career-services ofices to garner recruits.
Being entrusted with responsibility and permitted to
use her creativity made her feel like an appreciated and
valued member of the Mutual of Omaha family. “All
those things made me feel very loyal to the company. I felt
like I was not just a number, but that I was valued as a
person who contributed value to the company,” says
Wilkosz.
Today, she leverages her experiences to recruit, vet and
retain younger agents, keeping in focus that this genera-
tion can be very creative and innovative in inding ways to
tap into new market segments. Millennials carry their
extensive network of friends on portable handheld
electronic devices and connect with that network through

6. 5 2 GAMA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
social media. They have the advantage, says Wilkosz,
because their connections with their college friends are
still current. By establishing themselves as inancial
educators on social media, they set the stage to be a
valuable resource when those friends get married, start
families or buy their irst homes.
A S E N S E O F P U R P O S E
According to The Center for Generational Kinetics, LLC,
and Ultimate Software, “60% of Millennials said a sense
of purpose is part of the reason they chose to work at their
current employer.”1
To reach out to millennials then, we
must consider terminology. “The idea of educating others
about their inances as an insurance-based inancial
advisor is much more attractive to the younger generation
than just selling insurance.”
relationship with the client by taking a inancial-planning
approach.
As a training and recruiting specialist, Wilkosz is a
gatekeeper when it comes to inding out if potential recruits
may be a match. During that initial conversation, her thought
process involves discovering their objectives.
W H AT A R E P O T E N T I A L R E C R U I T S
L O O K I N G F O R ?
Are they looking for opportunities to advance? Are they
interested in trying to build a business? How do they feel
about sales? First and foremost, she is looking for recruits
who view their mentorship as a learning experience. She also
gauges their enthusiasm and professionalism.
She is a matchmaker when it comes to partnering new
recruits with managers, keeping in mind their personalities,
matching those who she thinks will work together well.
Millennials want to work for leaders rather than just manag-
ers, she says. When managers focus on only being a boss, they
can turn people away by making them feel as if they are not
part of the culture. And although new recruits are assigned a
mentor with whom they meet once a week, training and
retaining involves a group effort, with the entire ofice
affording availability to offer advice and instruction regarding
their areas of expertise.
Still, on the way to success, many recruits have to go
through the school of hard knocks. Wilkosz steps in to
provide an environment where recruits feel comfortable to
express their honest opinions without fearing negative
consequences or criticism.
“There’s a lot of hard work and rejection, especially when
you are right out of school, and a lot of that rejection can hurt
the younger generation and make them want to leave the
industry,” she says.
She takes the time to earnestly invest in her new recruits by
being a sounding board, offering them marketing advice and
attending networking events with them, to name a few. The
atmosphere in her ofice is warm and welcoming, and new
recruits are made to feel as if they are part of the Mutual of
Omaha family.
“Having a mentor, having a clear structure and a visible
career path with advancement opportunities, feeling like part
of a team, being appreciated and valued, having conidence in
their managers, and having a sense of purpose in their career
… all these are important to millennials,” says Wilkosz.
1
The Center for Generational Kinetics, LLC, and Ultimate Software.
(2015). Is There Really a Generational Divide At Work? Surprising
Research on Millennials andEmerging Trends in the U.S. Workforce
[White paper].
5 2 GAMA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
Wendy Scheuring has published hundreds
of feature articles and business profiles in local
and national publications and on the web. She’s
taught the art of writing for nearly 20 years, and
is a published co-author, a ghostwriter, editor
and freelance journalist.
“Are they looking
for opportunities to
advance? Are they
interested in trying
to build a business?
How do they feel
about sales?”
“The message theme is clearly about education,” says
Wilkosz. “The emphasis needs to be not on pushing sales,
but rather on building lasting and trusted relationships to
empower people to establish a legacy upon which they
can build.”
Furthermore, the importance of recognizing the
younger generation’s intense use of the Internet when job
searching cannot be ignored, says Wilkosz, including
their research of companies on job boards, social media,
the company website and brand, company reviews
(Glassdoor, Yelp, etc.) and other online employment
ratings. “Millennials want to know and believe that the
company has a mission and purpose,” she says.
T R A I N I N G A N D R E TA I N I N G
The Mutual of Omaha Neil Chonofsky Division Ofice has
an exceptionally high retention rate, between 80 percent and
90 percent. From the beginning, Wilkosz explains to prospec-
tive recruits that what differentiates her company from others
is that it is consultant-oriented and relationship-driven,
focusing not on the product, but rather on building the
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