|
Medical certificates:
To be fair to the honest 399 students, I assume that your MD,
despite his/her (required) College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario number,
is like the one above and feels that his/her time has better uses than guessing
how you sick you were on term test day. Please see course outlines below
about my policy for (often not) accepting medical certificates. A medical
certificate may result in a zero on a term test.
_________________________________________________________
Do you know the way people think at King and Bay?
Above Globe and Mail 2010-2011 poll is a further indication that business people
believe that it's important for students to get an early taste of working in the
'real world'. |
Actuarial Job Market
Here is placement rate info
on an ad for a 'how to stay competitive' Act Sci Club seminar in October 2007.
In March 2011, a candidate for a U of T Act Sci Club position had to estimate in
a speech that '10 or 15' of the graduating class were finding relevant actuarial
jobs. This illustrates both the difficulty of the job market and the lack
of hard data.
http://www.beanactuary.org/find has some info about the US job market, which
appears to be more promising for entry level actuarial students than the crowded
Canadian job market. For a Canadian citizen with a math or act sci degree
and a letter offering US employment, a TN (Trade NAFTA) US employment visa is
likely to be obtainable but check it out first.
http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1274.html
Beanactuary.org/find has (2011) some advice also on jobs outside North America.
Employers
like to see some office experience on your resume, preferably relevant
experience. Try very hard to get some work experience anywhere, even early in
your university career.
Try U of T's
Professional Experience Year program (see below), which wasn't
available to Arts and Science students till 2009. Visa students, also, can seek jobs through the PEY program. Or if you have a relative running a business in Shanghai or
Dubai, maybe ask him or her to employ you at low pay running payroll and
inventory spreadsheets and answering phones in their office. If you
have no relevant experience, that isn't good, but don't be shy about putting on
your resume any work you've done: 'worked on counter at McDonalds' is OK. I
stacked supermarket shelves and worked on an auto production line - when I
wasn't washing dishes in a hotel. Employers may choose to ignore resumes of
candidates who have good grades and professional exam passes but have never ever
done any paid work outside the 'ivory tower' university.
Most recent graduates want to live in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Boston, New
York, San Francisco, Los Angeles etc. but you might have a better chance of
getting a suitable job in a less popular city.
Another way to get your resume noticed in the pile could be to have
attended
Toastmasters (public speaking -
preparation for client contact) and giving ten five-minute speeches to get
a "Competent Toastmaster' certificate; Clubs close to the campuses are
likely to be particularly student-friendly: email and go and try it. Fine for
all students, including early-year.
www.actuarialoutpost.com has job ads and, on the popular discussion board, a
lot of comments and information, much of it correct. See in particular the forum
named 'Careers-Employment'. An October 2009 posting from a Canadian ('up
here') sounded about right: "As for online postings, most of the
people who graduated with me and got hired never applied online. It was either
through previous internships or through contacts/referrals. It seems many
companies are now preferring this approach (at least up here) as it's often a
safer approach in terms of candidate quality + you don't have to sort through
100 CVs to find people." In reality, sending out dozens of online or faxed
resumes is easy and probably worth trying, but don't necessarily expect any
replies.
Attend meetings and talks by businesspeople, e.g. those organised by the Act Sci
club, and force yourself to talk with the speakers, however shy you are.
Maybe, unless asked not to by Act Sci Club officials, hand over a business
card (even a tacky one using Word templates and 'no serrations' card print
stock) so the businesspeople have a chance of remembering who you are if you
contact them months later.
The membership listing at
www.soa.org is very useful in a job search. Maybe look for excuses to send
an email to a potential employer. Don't send a lot of spam and don't be
upset if you don't get a reply. Everyone is busy and everyone quickly
deletes non-essential email, faxes and snail mail. But for example, maybe you'll
notice at
www.soa.org a person working in investments in X-land and you
are a fluent X-ese language speaker and have taken some investment-related
courses. Then try sending an email
with an email 'subject' field such as 'X-ese speaker with investment
skills', attaching your resume. For greater visibility, you could
snail-mail a hard copy resume. A follow-up phone call is likely to be necessary
- stay cheerful despite hearing 'no thanks' a few times and, if your resume is
OK, you may eventually hear 'come and talk to us!'. Then you'll need to Google
the company and potential
interviewers and you'll be
glad you took sessions on
interviewing skills.
Good luck!!
|
