There are serious issues going on if for every role advertised it seems employers want an absolutely perfect match between your CV and the tasks. Basically they want someone who's done exactly that job before. No Actuary job is that hard that your typical Actuary couldn't do; with a good numerate degree and loads of Actuary exams and many years of work experience behind one. So what's going on here? It suggests to me there is a massive surplus of candidates for each post, at least in the UK. This is bad news for anyone who wants another job doing something slightly different.
Good points but I don't expect the 'Profession' to do anything except enjoy seeing the exam fees, course fees etc. flow in. It's in our interest to limit the number of Actuaries to have a viable career. For them, the more the merrier as they get more income.
I think mpyan1 is a little bit of a pessimist. I was working in a small consultancy mainly on the pensions side and was recently able to move into a GI role with a decent size pay rise to boot! The technical side of the move hasn't been difficult, it's the GI-specific industry knowledge that I've had to build upon but if you're happy to put in a little extra work this is possible to do fairly quickly. I'm not a one-off case when it comes to ease finding a new role - 2 former colleagues have also recently moved jobs. I'm not sure about in the rest of the country, but in London any PQ actuary will have a range of jobs to apply for. Personally I would say that the employment prosepcts for a PQ/Q actuary are as good now as they've been at any point in the last 5 years. I think anyone (in London at least) who has struggled to find a new job obviously isn't marketing themselves properly. I agree with what an early poster wrote - some actuaries aren't very good at thinking how to apply their skills. This is important when moving between actuarial areas - you need to be a bit creative when explaining how your pensions experience is relevant to the GI world for instance! To anyone looking for a job/at risk of being made redundant, my advice to you is firstly to stop reading this thread - there are too many pesimistic thoughts and that's the last thing you need. Write your ideal job spec and then go through it line by line, making a note of whether you have any experience in that part of the role. Next, think (creatively!) about whether anything you've done in the past is in any way relevant to the bits you don't have experience of. Finally, for things you've neither done in the past, nor done anything similar, is there any way you could get some knowledge. For instance, could you order the relevant ST notes? Could you attend a seminar at the institute? Could you sign yourself up for a Remetrica training session? Lots of consultancies run seminars for people working in certain disciplines (e.g. LCP run GI breakfast seminars) - could you sign up to attend one of these? Things like this will demonstrate your willingness to learn to a potential employer and in my opinion separate you from the pack a little!
Not really. The best impression you can give nowadays is that you are willing to work for less than others and be an unquestioning, almost unthinking lapdog. Nothing to do with exam passes, seminars attended. Oh, and also don't be a bloke since the pc agenda in the profession and some companies means we are not as welcome.
To be honest I completely agree with BeckyBoo, I'm a 24 year old (male) who's been working for a Lloyd's syndicate for two years (first job after graduating).. As soon as I had worked for a year I was constantly receiving messages on LinkedIn and calls from recruiters about new opportunities. I decided to try my luck at an interview not long ago, for a role which was very different to mine (a client-facing, actuarial analyst role for one of the top brokers in the market) and they made me an offer after a gruelling interview process. In the end I decided to reject the offer because my current company really pushed to keep me.. (the brokers even made a counter-offer!) The point I'm making is that prospective employers don't necessarily want your profile to match the new job spec perfectly.. What they DO want to see is that you can demonstrate how your experience can be beneficial to them. I got the nod before every other candidate because I showed that my knowledge through the exposure I've had at work and through self-learning about the broader industry would benefit their team the most. Mpyan1 definitely sounds a bit pessimistic to me, I think it's important to stay positive and don't discount the importance of being personable as well as technically good. Nobody really wants to hire someone who's going to be a downer or a life-sapping bore. You're also right that it's not just about "exam passes, seminars attended" etc., you need to be a self-starter, be able to improve current processes, use initiative and generally make things happen. If you work hard and aim to constantly improve, then ultimately you'll do just fine. Good luck to everyone looking
