Greetings, everyone!

With the school season starting back up and resumes being posted, we thought it would be helpful to bring awareness to our (CA's) new career courses. We've been developing these with Charles Johnson of the Actuarial Development Institute (ADI) through the summer. We believe these courses will be especially helpful to students who are new to the field and exploring how to approach finding internships, writing resumes, interviewing, and more.

Taken from our blog, each Career Course meets you at a different stage of your journey, whether you're just starting an internship search, graduating soon, or already job hunting:

Actuarial Internships 101
Learn when to apply, what employers expect, and how to turn a summer role into a full-time offer through quality work, strong relationships, and a standout final presentation.

Crafting Your Resume & LinkedIn
Build a targeted resume and LinkedIn profile that highlights your exam progress, experience, and potential the way hiring managers actually read them.

Networking & Finding Opportunities
Discover where actuarial jobs are actually posted and how to build relationships through your academic network, local companies, and professional events.

Interview Skills
Walk into any interview ready, with strategies for managing nerves, crafting your elevator pitch, using the S.T.A.R. method, and evaluating an offer.

Personal Branding & Storytelling
Turn your experiences into powerful stories and build a personal brand that helps recruiters remember your name.

Together, these courses provide practical, fast-paced lessons you can put to work immediately.

These courses are completely free! You do need a log in for the site, but you can create one (also for free) at the URL below. We hope these courses help provide a solid foundation and resource to help actuaries on their journey.

coachingactuaries.com/career-courses

All the best, and have a nice day!

I am finishing FSA exams with a little less than 2 years of experience and looking at most roles, they all require more years of experience than I have (by a lot) or they pay less than my current pay. I am curious if companies circumvent experience requirements for people attaining FSA's at young ages, or is this not valued heavily enough to allow you to skip levels. I don't want to be doing analyst-level work for years as an FSA, but how much experience is needed at the analyst level before you can ascend.

Just wondering. My boss has been on vacation for two weeks. My section is very empty with a lot of others on vacation as well. If i go in i literally have an entire section to myself like a ghost town. We have a hybrid working structure with 3 days a week. I’ve been going once a week since no one is here, but i have been on track with all my work in addition to taking on extra responsibilities since we are short staffed

Hello,

Just got informed I landed a summer internship offer at a large insurance company. Gonna have a call with the recruiter later in the day. I was wondering what are things I should ask about? Is it ok to ask about return offer rate or what not? Also I think they have an early start option to start during the school year. Anyone got opinions on that? Thank you!

I'm about to start applying for jobs and would really appreciate any advice or feedback on my resume before I do. Thanks!

I'm an undergrad junior trying to land an internship for next summer. The company's page clearly specified someone with technical background (which I think I have, except no R or real Excel experience as I've worked in a CS company for a year. What should I do to refine this? Should I drop some things entirely?

thank you

Does anyone have a formula sheet for altam. I’m not talking about the one they give u on the exam. I mean something that is comprehensive with all the equations you would likely see. If so could you please send me a picture of it.

I'm a College Sophomore and I'm hoping to apply for an internship for this summer, but to be honest I'm not sure how to edit my resume or what else to add. I also don't know if I should keep High School achievements/grades on my resume, as I only have one year of college under my belt so far, but I figured it would be best to keep it on there as it was fairly recent.

I'm looking for instructors who are interested in developing fellowship exam materials for FreeFellow. The platform currently has 10,000+ users and developing Fellowship exams is the next frontier.

The scope is to develop the following:

• Video Lectures
• Written Lessons / Outlines
• Flashcards

In exchange, I'm offering a 50% share on a net revenue basis. Looking for 1 instructor per exam (both SOA and CAS), you can own multiple exams. Fellowship pricing will sit well above the rest of the site, close to what the market already pays at this level, so there is significant upside. At scale, assuming 25% market share for a given exam, that instructor's take can be 200k/yr. Estimated development time is ~600 hours for the initial build and 100 hours per year thereafter.

I will handle all the technical engineering, customer relations, marketing, basically everything business-related so the scope I am asking from the instructors is quite narrow.

If you've ever wanted an opportunity to have a side gig as an actuary, grow your personal brand, and pay your knowledge forward in the profession, DM me here or LinkedIn. This offer will be available for a limited time until the first few seats are filled.

Happy to answer any questions/comments.

I’m in my late 20s & unfortunately did not find out about this role until I was close to finishing my degree. I’ve been working full time while pursuing my degree due to having to move out alone since I didn’t want to give my dog up. I did 2 years in community and then transferred to an online college after I finished my G.Es and related credits to my major. The university is pass/fail which defaults to a 3.0 by their standards so I’ve opted to leave out my GPA. I’ve been applying internally with no bites nor help from management to aide in a lateral move since they’re very all hands on deck for this current data entry role, sadly. I’ve been on this grind trying to make a decent wage for so long and am hoping to get some feedback on my resume. Anything helps, thank you

those who have passed CP351 - best study advice? (after going through initial passthrough of material on coaching or TIA). flashcards? practice problems? any advice is good advice

Hi! Not getting interviews as much as I'm hoping. So, I figure it's something wrong with my resume. This is my CAS resume. I have one that's also more specific to SOA positions, that has the CAS titles left off in the exam section.

I live in the Columbus, OH area which has large Nationwide, Aon, and Grange insurance presence, but outside of that I'm looking to stay local or work remote at the entry-level.

Also applying and interviewing for internships as well. Thank you for your help!

Hi guys. I just had a quick question. I did ok on ILA 101 and have started studying ILA 201 while also pretty busy in general. I was wondering how many hours you studied per day for ILA 201 and how difficult you'd rate it compared to 101? Taking ila 201 U and there's so much less material on the Infinite actuary compared to ila 101. I'm not gauging how difficult ILA 201 Is due to this

Saw on LinkedIn so posting here. Not mine.

EDITED TO ADD: It's AI. The LinkedIn OP disclosed that. I don't think it makes it less funny.

Does anyone else have issues with BattleActs’ website? I like BattleActs but their website crashes way too frequently for my liking. Last sitting I ran into issues with it crashing multiple times, and since I’ve started restudying for the fall sitting I’ve already have had it crash a few times.

This morning every link would just send me back to the main page and now this afternoon it says “resource limit reached”. It is usually fixed within a few hours but it’s very inconvenient when I have set study hours on my schedule.

Long story short: I went back to school for a second degree in math/CS, after working as a music teacher and musician. For the past year or so, I've been trying to find software roles, but have had difficulty finding interviews. Recently, I did some freelance work building a website for a client. My favorite parts of the experience turned out to be having conversations with the client and helping him navigate ambiguous decisions and weighing tradeoffs, more than the actual coding. I am also missing math, and the actuarial exam process sounds very appealing to me. So I decided that I am going to try and pivot into actuarial, a process I put one foot in a few years ago when I passed Exam P.

I am taking Exam FM this October. I know the market for new grads is tough, and I might not land a job even with FM passed, but, I want to give it a shot. I think I want to start applying before I get the FM results back. So I am asking for help optimizing my resume. There's a few things about my resume that I am not sure about:

• Do I need a summary? I heard it's good to have if you're a career changer.
• Should I include university 2 at all?
• The German Credit project seems pretty weak to me. I think I will replace it with something related to insurance, and also use VBA which I don't yet have experience with.
• The additional work experience. I am leaning towards including it because otherwise there's a long unexplained gap. But I also don't think it looks great to have all of those odd jobs there like that. There's probably not a way to completely smooth over a year of odd jobs after graduation.

Got laid off by a major insurer earlier this year as part of company wide layoffs. Havent found a replacement in almost 9 months. Looked at some data science roles, but anyone have any other thoughts?

I wrote up a cyber risk model for a midmarket healthcare firm based on the FAIR framework and treating the risk of a cyber incident as a constant hazard. I used public statistics on incident likelihood and average cost for the analysis. I'd be interested in getting feedback. I posted it here: https://pastebin.com/ivBpBgBu

If so, would you be so kind to respond with details of the process and whether you used a lawyer or DIY?

when studying for the CAS exams I was frustrated how annoying it was to open up the PearsonVUE sample-exam spreadsheet every time I wanted to use it: clicking through the redirect, hitting next, clicking the spread-sheet button, then dragging out the tiny window it opens in. So I made a chrome extension to do all that automatically with just one click. This made studying less painful for me. And I hope this helps yall too!

you can get the free chrome extension here:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/cas-pearsonvue-spreadshee/ndfkafpdolnjgpkegdboonpjbmnoepfj

Hi everyone,

For the current cycle, I am intending to use this resume for applications.

I recognize my current weaknesses to be the lack of relevant experience, and limited technical skills. I am currently reading a book on SQL to hopefully do a project and honestly put SQL on my resume as a skill I possess. I am also aware that it would likely take a large volume of applications to generate any interest among employers, so with that I would appreciate advice on what to change in my resume.

I am thinking of targeting mid-size insurance companies in Canada as I am led to believe (by AI*) that large insurers tend to have very competitive applicant pools and small insurers do not have much need for entry-level actuaries. Unfortunately, it seems a good portion of them are P&C insurers. I do plan to take some P&C exams before I graduate so I can apply to both kinds of insurers with exams passed.

I would also appreciate advice on the following:

• Are there particular types of employers or adjacent roles that someone with my background should target?
• If I receive at least one interview, what technical and behavioral questions should I expect for an entry-level actuarial position?
• Are there any good resources or question banks for actuarial interview preparation?
• At what point would you recommend reassessing or abandoning an application strategy, for example, revising the resume, pursuing an adjacent analyst position, or pivoting to something non-quantitative entirely?

I am open to any entry-level analyst roles or non-quantitative fields altogether, but I would like to make a serious attempt at landing a role in something that is quantitative before broadening my search.

Thanks everyone,

What are your thoughts on attending a big event out of state right before an exam?

To sum it up, I failed GH101 in July and am planning to retake it in November. I basically didn’t study. I wasn’t motivated and just didn’t really try. I wasn’t even sure I could get a 1 I felt so unprepared and somehow got a 5. So I definitely knew more than I thought.

Today I was invited to one of my best friend’s weddings. It had not been planned and they have been having health problems so just sent out invites and want to keep it smaller than they originally hoped for.. the issue is it is Sunday and GH101 is Tuesday. It is in an entirely different state I would have to fly to get to. So I would have to be there probably Saturday-Monday. And take the exam Tuesday.

I refuse to wait until March to retake it, but I also don’t want to miss their wedding when they’ve had a really rough last year mentally. Obviously everyone is different but I’m curious if anyone has ever been in a situation like this or a vacation right before an exam or has any thoughts on attending or not. I’m just struggling on what to do.

Edit to add:

1. There are no Prometric testing centers in this city so that isn’t an option.
2. If I went, I 100% wouldn’t drink. I typically don’t drink within 2-4 weeks before an exam anyways.