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Career advice for recent graduates in actuarial science

As the actuarial profession is very much in demand on the market, you may forget to be proactive and let yourself be driven by opportunities that have come your way. It’s a natural behaviour, as it is only with time and experience that you will really figure out your work preferences. Being open minded and shaping your own opinion about the job market is important, but it should not stop you from being aware of what you are getting into.

Here are a few tips that we advise you to keep in mind and that will help you make the right choices regarding your professional career in the actuarial field.

1. Ask yourself the right questions

As a junior actuary, it is difficult to know what roles and work environments suit you best when you have a limited knowledge of the professional possibilities in the actuarial sector. Here are some criteria to consider when entering the job market as an actuary :

💬 Do you prefer working on a variety of assignments or do you wish to specialise in a particular actuarial field?

💬 Are you more oriented towards Health, Life or Non-Life insurance?

💬 Are you more into quantitative operational tasks, or do you see yourself best in a control function, or maybe in R&D?  

💬 Are you more comfortable imagining yourself in a local or in an international company?

It’s all about asking yourself the right questions according to your priorities, personality and career aspirations.

 

2. Stay close to the market

Staying in touch with the actuarial market’s latest news will benefit you in many ways, both in the short and the long term. You can start as of now by subscribing to our monthly newsletter, where we share and analyse the latest headlines from the financial industry, with a focus on insurance companies and actuarial news. Also, do not hesitate to read about companies as it will save you from wasting your time applying to businesses that do not match your career aspirations. Each company has its own history and its own corporate culture. For instance, some companies are more or less at the forefront of innovation, some have flat management culture, other will be more hierarchical…, and so on. Trust us, when the time comes, it’s good to know! It will also enable you to build, as you go along, a 360° vision of the market and if you do not seize the added value that it is in your day to day as an actuary, take it as an exercise that will help you strengthen some of your soft skills such as intellectual curiosity, the ability to step back and analyse a situation as a whole. You will see that it is very appreciated in the business.

 

3. Stand out

There are several ways to stand out as a recently graduated actuary: through your resume, through some of your specific skills, through networking, and so on. However, to stand out you must be able to look at your (professional) environment and at yourself with a critical eye. If you have followed the previous recommendations, you may already have a good picture of the skills you could use to stand out on the market or of what you might do to acquire those skills.  To date, our experience enabled us to identify 3 key competencies that give employers a hard time when they are looking for a candidate and that will with no doubt make you stand out as an actuary.

 

4. Keep in mind that there will be a next step

The excitement of starting your professional career could overshadow your long-term goals. However, it’s important to keep them in mind, especially when making career decisions. What you do today will affect what you will do tomorrow, and there is no need to make things harder than they already are. For instance, if you’re graduating and you didn’t figure out what your work preferences are, and you’d like to keep the doors open for the future, then we would advise you to start your professional career in consultancy. If you’re not comfortable with that, we would advise to go along a career path that you planned, as it may be more difficult to switch for one field to another than the other way around.

 

Asquare Partners for candidates: what are the benefits?

Searching for a job through a recruitment agency in actuarial science means letting yourself benefit from its experience and expertise. It’s been more than 6 years now that we have been recruiting talents for the financial industry, with a particular focus on actuarial science, risk management and data science.

As a recruitment agency, our goal is to help you find a job that suits you and give you the best odds possible by:

  • Giving you relevant insights on the insurance market, locally or internationally
  • Presenting your profile in the best light for interesting opportunities
  • Accompanying and advising you along the recruitment process·es
  • Giving you valuable feedback

 

How does it work ?

You can create your account in our candidate portal or directly send your CV to one of our consultants. This will allow us to contact you to introduce ourselves, get to know you and see if we already have an interesting opportunity for you in our pipe! You can also keep up to date with the market latest news and the latest job opportunities by subscribing to our monthly newsletter, following our LinkedIn page and taking a regular look on the Careers section of our website. We are looking forward to hearing from you!