the group can often collectively find and share the best ways.
When it comes to finding an actuarial job, most schools organize annual career fairs. But schools with actuarial programs
host career fairs where company representatives arrive, by the
dozens, to search for nothing but actuaries (for full-time roles
and for summer internship positions that need to be filled). By
the way, it’s often those internships that result in the full-time
jobs (another helpful tip I include here for the prospective actuarial student).
Schools that have only a student or two pursuing an actuarial career can’t offer this level of industry interest. On the
other hand, the more successful programs with large actuarial
student populations have the opposite problem of trying to secure a big enough space. Here at UConn, for example, we use
the largest ballroom available on campus. Company reps arrive,
set up shop, and informally chat with hundreds of students as
they collect their résumés. The place is literally abuzz.
Once those career fairs end and each firm’s shortlist of
candidates is created, companies can save time and money by
doing much of their follow-up interviewing on campus. Typi-
cally, companies will work through a program administrator (in
UConn’s case, me) to set up a student interview schedule. Com-
panies often plan a full day of interviews—with two or three
company representatives speaking with as many as 25 students
during that day. From an industry cost perspective, this is a very
efficient way of satisfying a firm’s entry-level actuarial needs
that, in the absence of such actuarial Meccas, could be a lot
more difficult and a lot more expensive. No company limits its
recruiting to one campus, but, armed with a shortlist of key
colleges and universities to visit, a company can certainly ex-
pedite its recruiting.
Future Education methods
To be named an SOA Center of Actuarial Excellence, a university
needs to demonstrate that among many other things, it’s producing candidates who can successfully pass actuarial exams. And
this, as anyone who has ever taken an actuarial exam can testify,
is no easy task. Students, with a lot of other things on their plates
