Hi all, I am a student actuary from Pakistan. I just wanted to ask, is it easy to get a work permit from an employer in UK if you are really suitable for some job? Like, can living outside of UK be a disadvantage? they don't easily sponsor visas, is it? and, to non-UK actuaries working in UK, what's it like living and working in UK? I mean the economic and social conditions? thanks Ijlal
I'd say the market is really slow for recruitment to work in the UK, in general, at the moment. Not having a UK experience on your CV is a definite disadvantage. Exam progress is also key and expected to be 2-3 CTs per sitting, 1 ST, 1 SA etc. - you would be competing with people from the UK who are on the UK study package and get study days and tutorials to progress fast with their exams. Being not a native speaker of English is a definite disadvantage. People from Oxford, Cambridge or Warick would always be preferred than any other non-UK educated candidates.... These are my observations. The market is very competative in the UK. I'd even say the most difficult market to get into that I've seen, I would say and especially now.
There is a fair amount of beauracracy for employers to get through. However, if you have relevant experience it may be worth it for them. Depends a lot on what you've been doing and can do. With Solvency II slowing down a bit the market is getting a bit tighter, I'd say.
What is the procedure for getting employment in the UK as a foreign professional ? i.e permit, job contract, etc
thanks Calum and Viki2010 for your replies. I think, I have some advantages on my side too. I have passed the whole CT series by myself (without any kind of support) just by using the course notes. (but this wouldnt help much, right?) I don't have any work experience though. and this is my biggest disadvantage. I was looking for a graduate level position in UK and applied at 2 or 3 places but didnt get any response. even if I do get some work experience here in my country, like currently I am doing an internship here in Pakistan in a consultancy, would that help? and thanks again.
I've limited knowledge of this but a couple of comments that may be of some use. Calum rightly points out that for UK employers to employ non-EU candidates involves jumping through a lot of hoops. Very often the employers most willing and able to do this seem to be the consultancies as they have large HR departments who will have dealt with this before. Now part of your problem may be that your timing's a bit off. In my experience, consultancies tend to start their recruiting process in September for graduates to join at the beginning of September the following year. So if you are applying now, most/all of the positions to start in September 2013 will have been filled. A better bet might be to get in at the start of the recruitment process for September 2014 and make the best use you can of the extra year. You should find that most of these places have a fairly clear recruitment process that does not involve applying on spec, which is a rather hit-and-miss approach since there is no guarantee that your application will end up with someone who knows how to or has any wish to respond helpfully. Hope that helps and best of luck!
One of the main issues, as I understand it, is that external from EU candidates can only be considered if no sufficiently qualified EU candidates can be found. This is unlikely for entry level jobs, but becomes progressively more likely with experience. I seem to recall that actuaries do receive some preference in the visa process, but I don't know much (anything) about it. I would suggest that the best people to talk to would be one of the actuarial recruitment agencies, especially the ones with international experience. The Actuary magazine website's job listing will find you plenty of those.
It is particularly hard to get into a graduate role here in the UK. My employer hires 1% of all candidates who send graduate recruitment form. My classmates have sent about 200 applications back in the day when we were graduates and didn't get into a role (being from outside of the EU). Only about 5% of our classmates did get into graduate roles right after graduation....
Hi, I´m thinking about to go to UK to work too. I´m from Spain, Industrial Engineer with two years of exprecience. I don´t know how difficult is to find a good job there. Thanks.
The problem with this is frankly a vast number of gradutae applications are scattergun approaches from non-serious candidates. I suspect the ratio of recruited candidates to serious candidates may be significantly better. Can't comment on non-EU applications, but given the visa situation I'm not entirely surprised. Numerical graduates are not exactly hard to find. I would say, though, that around 50% of my course (which was Act Sci) graduated with a job offer and I'm aware of very few at this point who still want to work in the sector who haven't found something.
