grad schemes etc
Some of the larger employers might only look for entry level actuarial students as part of an annual graduate scheme process, but there are plenty of actuarial employers who will recruite more ad-hoc, and, in general insurance at least, I would expect demand to be relatively high at the moment. So I would agree with bystander that talking to recruiters and putting together a good cv is probably the best thing you can do in the short term. Most actuarial roles outside the graduate schemes are filled through a fairly small number of actuarial recruitment agencies, so they should be useful.
I wouldn't be put off from graduate schemes by the fact you're not straight out of uni - I doubt potential employers would see this as a problem. (In fact, if you've picked up some transferable skills in the mean time, it could be an advantage. Alot of actuaries didn't start as actuaries (myself included).) As long as you can convince them that you are now committed to an actuarial career - getting one or two exam passes under your belt will really help there, as will getting any vaguely relevant work experience/temporary work and keeping informed about industry issues etc.
Btw, I don't think CT3 overlaps at all with CT1. CT3 is largely stats - if you've studied stats at uni it could be relatively straightforward, otherwise you could well find it pretty tough. The pass rates for both CT2 and CT3 are generally high though.
Last edited by a moderator: Jan 16, 2012