Your resume is more than a page of bullet points—it’s a reflection of years of choices, effort, and growth! Learn how to structure it and take control of your actuarial career path.
A single sheet of paper. I remember holding mine, wondering how so much of my life could be reduced to a few formatted sentences. At least at that moment, I would see the person receiving it. I would get a chance to introduce myself before a total stranger judged me in a matter of seconds.
Most of the time our resumes, our single sheet of life, are sent off to total strangers. No wonder we often spend immense amounts of time formatting, choosing the right phrasing, obsessing over the perfect adjective to describe ourselves. In these moments, when viewing our own life’s work, it can feel helpless.
The truth, of course, is we’ve been building our resume our entire lives. Choosing where to invest our time and energy, what skills to build, what knowledge to gain.
Having spent a decade making snap judgments on prospective actuaries, based off a single sheet of paper, I hope to help you structure your resume to make it clear and easy for hiring managers to read. I will also be providing guidance on where to focus your time and effort so the items going on your resume help you shine.
Understand the Hiring Manager's Mindset
A good frame of reference to think about the hiring process is to understand how a hiring manager makes decisions. The person hiring you is trying to evaluate how good you’ll be at doing the job they’re hiring for and reduce the uncertainty around your future performance. The two factors that help the hiring manager determine this are:
- A history of high-quality work (think high GPA)
- Their ability to evaluate your technical and academic competencies.
So, when hiring managers look at your resume, or ask you questions, they’re trying to answer the question, “How confident am I that this person can do the work and do it well?"
Highlight Your Education
The top section of your resume should include your GPA, your graduation date, the exams you’ve passed, which exam you’re taking next and when. Most employers want a GPA of 3.5 or higher, most internships don’t want graduating seniors, and most employers want at least one exam passed. The later in your collegiate career, the more exams passed other candidates will have, so targeting one exam a year, starting your freshman year, is recommended.
Showcase Your Experience
The second section of your resume should focus on your experience. The best experience is relevant experience. Relevant experience is any paid for work, or project work, that demonstrates your ability to apply learned actuarial concepts or demonstrates your technical skills. While other work experience can demonstrate some skills that might be used on the job (conflict resolution, leadership, communication), applied skills are the most important for success on the job.
Demonstrate What Makes You Special
The third section to include is your involvement in your career, your community, and your growth. This generally demonstrates three important aspects of your personality:
- First, are you involved in an organization that expands your knowledge in your intended field?
- Second, how do you spend your time recreationally?
- Third, do you have leadership experience?
Applicants who are involved in multiple organizations, and a leader in at least one (ideally one related to their intended profession), tend to have the strongest resume.
List Your Technical Skills
The fourth section to include is a list of your technical skills, including programming languages, software, and certifications. Showing that you have exposure to predictive analytics, object-oriented programming languages, and any certifications for Microsoft is an excellent way to build up strong credibility on the resume. It's likely in your new position that you’ll often work with big data sets, so having experience querying and manipulating databases is a strong resume booster.
Remember: There is no perfect comprehensive resume, but if you structure your resume, and your life, on the items above, you’ll prove yourself to be a standout candidate.