Start with the license, not the pitch
A legitimate recruiter in this business holds a state insurance license, and that license is public record. Look the person up with your state department of insurance before the second conversation. You are checking three things: the license exists, it is active, and the lines on it match what the person says they sell. Do the same for the agency name they recruit under.
While you are there, look for disciplinary actions. Regulators publish them. A recruiter who encourages this lookup is telling you something. A recruiter who waves it off is also telling you something.
Get the contract answers in writing
The pitch ends. The contract is what you actually live under. Ask these questions and get the answers in writing before you sign.
What contract level do I start at, and what exactly moves me up? If a policy lapses, how are chargebacks handled, and can a debt roll up to someone above me or follow me after I leave? If I leave, what happens to my renewals and my client book? Is there a non-compete or non-solicit clause, and how wide is it? Who owns the client relationships I build?
None of these questions is rude. Every honest operator answers them, because the answers are already written down in their own paperwork. Resistance to putting them in writing is the loudest red flag on this page.
Follow every fee
Money in this business flows in specific directions, and the direction tells you a lot. Your licensing costs, the exam fee, fingerprinting, background check, and any study course you choose, go to the state and to outside vendors, not to the recruiter.
Agents in this business also carry ordinary working costs, such as errors and omissions coverage and platform or appointment fees, and a legitimate operation lists every one of them, with amounts, before you sign. What should stop you cold is a large fee paid to the recruiter or the company just to join, or a starter package you must buy from the person who recruited you.
We itemize the licensing costs state by state in our insurance license guide, because a number you can check beats a number you are asked to trust.
Watch how they recruit you
How a recruiter treats you before you join is how the business treats people after they join. Walk away from income screenshots and lifestyle marketing, from pay figures quoted before anyone asks about your situation, from urgency and deadlines to join, and from any plan that starts with recruiting your family and friends before you are trained.
Walk away from anyone who discourages your questions, rushes your research, or tells you not to talk it over with your family. Pressure is not a personality trait. In this business it is a business model, and it does not change once you are inside.
The green flags
The other side of the ledger. A recruiter worth your time answers questions in writing, encourages you to verify the license, publishes or hands over the full cost list, and talks plainly about the fact that most people who try sales work do not stay in it.
They will let you speak with agents who are not in their own chain. They give you time to decide, and they would rather talk you out of a bad fit than sign you into one. That last one is the whole idea behind the assessment on this site: a fit screen that can say no is worth more than a pitch that never does.
How Oihana answers its own checks
Fair is fair. Oihana Consulting is a Hawaii LLC, and the founder, Kirk Noyes, is named on this site, with his background stated in plain terms: retired US Army operations sergeant, almost two decades in uniform, in financial services since 2022.
Oihana recruits for the founder's own team, and the career fit assessment is the front door, not a promise of anything. Licensing costs are the state's and the vendors', itemized on our state pages. Contracting paperwork, including the contract level and the cost list, comes in writing during contracting, before any signature.
Verify all of it the same way you would verify anyone else. That is the point of this page.