My Ideal Job

An ideal job for me is a job that will help me enhance my knowledge and skills; a job that will help me grow professionally and personally as a person; a job that will make me interested to work and give my best performance each day. Actuary is my ideal job.

This career attracts me the most is because of its variety of work. You can work in specialist areas of insurance, pensions, benefits, healthcare, investments and banking, or for any large organisation where risk management plays an important role, or for a consultancy advising on all sorts of projects. Secondly, the international opportunities attract me to this career. Actuary is a truly global profession, actuarial work transfers well from country to country. Once you are qualified, you can go to anywhere in the world with your actuarial skills. It attracts me also because of its rewards. Actuaries are well compensated. Even at entry level, salaries for actuarial assistants are normally high. In fact, it’s one of the highest paid professions.

To become an actuary, you have to be a “numbers person”. And I am kind of a “number person”. I have skills of problem solving and using math or statistics to solve a complex problem. I know that because I am doing pretty well in math at school. I got an average of 95 for academic math last year and have an average above 90 percent right now in academic math and I really love maths. I am a visual learner, I enjoy making graphs and charts and I prefer to get information by reading.

In case you wonder how to write a kickass resume for your ideal job, you should definitely read this article.

I am a helper type. I like to explain things to other people; enjoy helping my friends to solve their problems and like to find out other people’s opinions. I am also a detail type. I enjoy working at a steady pace and I prefer to follow a set of instructions. Like a doctor or lawyer, an actuary achieves professional status by passing examinations to prove a certain level of knowledge. To become a fully qualified actuary, you must pass a series of exams administered by the Society of Actuaries (SOA) or the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS). To prepare myself for being an actuary, I will keep my interest in math. Also, I will take subjects that are related to this career in grade 11 and 12. For example, Math, Probability& Statistics, Accounting, Business, Computers, Algebra & Geometry, Calculus, Economics and Law. I will also practise and develop my some other skills such as communication skill, group work skills and etc.

From the interview with Amresh, an actuary who works in the group health department of a large insurance company, l learnt that being an actuary must be able to think clearly and logically and must be hard- working and dedicated. I also learnt that actuaries make good professors or researchers in the areas of math, statistics, or bio-statistics; with their expertise in statistics, they could also work as statisticians, analyzing population data for Statistics Canada or public opinion polls for an upcoming election. Through this research, I learnt a lot about actuary, for example, what they do, where they work, their earnings and etc. I learnt how to prepare for being a qualified actuary and what skills to improve. And these all would help me to build my next step in the future.