The review process at my firm is currently wrapping up, but there are also a lot of performance reviews that are typically conducted at the end of the calendar year (and hopefully there is some type of feedback process in the interim!). If you're like me and just went through your year-end review process, you can use this article to help set up a game plan for the full year instead of just the second half!

Performance reviews can bring on a lot of emotions: excitement, anxiety, hope, dread, regret - the list goes on! In my opinion, the most important thing you can do to make your performance reviews a more pleasant experience is to stay ahead of the process and actively think about your performance throughout the year. You don't want to be blindsided at year-end with a subpar review, so it's important to start thinking about your performance NOW!

Read more for six ways to take advantage of the rest of the year in order to have a great year-end review!

If your company does not have a standardized process for mid-year feedback, make sure to set up a discussion with your manager or equivalent to figure out what areas you are performing strongly in and where you need to improve. If you don't receive feedback throughout the year, it might also be good for you to have a similar conversation once every quarter to make sure you are on the same page as your manager. If you are going to have a conversation like this with your manager, I suggest sending a quick email a couple days before letting them know so they can have time to put some thought into your performance. Don't just walk into their office and ask - it puts them on the spot and they might miss some valuable information that they would've thought of if they had time to prepare for the discussion. 

For the remainder of the year, focus on keeping up your strengths while putting additional energy into the areas you can improve. If there are more than three areas you should improve in, you may want to discuss with your manager if there are a few that you should really focus on in the immediate future. Improvements in some areas may also lead to improvements in others, so try to kill two birds with one stone if possible! For example, if your manager says you need to work on improving your communication skills and how you work with others on your team, improving the communication aspect may help improve how you work with others. 

In most cases, you don’t need to be an expert at all tools - be knowledgeable enough to use all, an expert in a few and focus the rest of your energy on improving soft skills to become better at your job and a better leader. These improvements will help you shine in your year-end review!

Is there something you know how to do that others on your team may not know? Are you an expert at excel and want to share some time saving tips? Set up some time to teach others on your team when work is slow. Having a team who is knowledgeable on basic processes and some time saving tricks can save everyone time and reduce frustrations during busy periods.

Reach out to your manager and offer to lead a training session so your team can improve their skills. Even if you set up some quick 15-30min learning sessions to teach some lesser known tips and tricks to speed up day-to-day work, that could still have a huge impact! ​Your initiative and drive to improve the team will not go unnoticed.This could also help set you up for a promotion sooner than you would expect!

It's not uncommon to see trustworthiness listed as a category on performance reviews. In everyday situations, trustworthiness is telling the truth or being able to keep a secret or any other related action. In the business world, trustworthiness can mean consistently completing your work prior to deadlines with minimal errors. 

In order to become the go-to person for your manager, your manager needs to see you as trustworthy. Make sure you are completing your projects in a reasonable amount of time with no errors. Don't delay just because you're way ahead of deadlines - finish the project and find something else you can help with. And this should go without saying, but DO NOT sit on a completed project without notifying the reviewer or manager that it's done. No one likes getting an email to review something on a Wednesday when the timestamp on the file was for the prior Friday...

In addition to providing error-free deliverables on time, make sure you are also engaging with your manager. If your manager reaches out to the team asking for thoughts or help on something, make sure you reply! Even if you think other people will respond with the same thoughts, reply anyway! If you have a meeting with your manager, don't just respond with 'yes' or 'no'. Ask questions. Provide your thoughts (if you are in disagreement, let your manager know and provide your reasoning in a proactive way!). When a manager is looking for their right hand man or woman, they're looking for someone to count on across the board - especially someone they can rely on for their insights, whether they are in agreement or not (just don't be too negative!).

Summer is usually a slower time of year. Use this time to better understand processes and see how you can improve them to make them more efficient. A lot of times, if you ask why something is done the way it currently is, the response will be "it's always been done that way." Don't take that as an answer! Especially if your company has started using new technologies since the creation of the process that could potentially reduce processing time and increase efficiency. 

Focus on processes that take a lot of time. Is there a monthly or quarterly project that is really manual in nature, taking 10+ hours? Is there a way to automate the process to reduce the time to 5 hours? Even if you can't code, bring up your idea to your manager and see if you could team up with one of the experienced programmers on your team to implement your proposed solution. As long as your not busy with regular with, the manager will most likely be open to improving the process!

This is especially important if you are relatively new to the group - a benefit of coming in as an "outsider" is being able to bring in a different perspective. If others on the team have been working on a project for a while, they might not be able think of improvements as easily as a newcomer with outside experience.

Forward thinking plays a huge role in career advancement. Developing ideas to drive efficiencies and creating better processes is a step in the right direction!

If you're taking actuarial exams, chances are there will be an area on the performance review relating to exams and professional development. If for any reason, you don't think you will be able to sit for or pass an actuarial exam during your performance review period, check with your manager to see if your company will sponsor any other exams, such as CPCU or IDMA exams. 

I wouldn't recommend specifically skipping an actuarial exam to take a different type of exam, but if you have a month or two between studying for actuarial exams, you could easily take some of that time to study for a different exam. For example, CPCU exams can help you build on your insurance knowledge, provide a break from the intense studying for actuarial exams, and still allow you to continue your professional development. After studying for actuarial exams, a lot of the other insurance exams will be much easier and won’t require as much studying to pass. 

While it's ideal to pass actuarial exams in a timely manner, reaching out to your manager regarding alternative exams when you're stuck on an actuarial exam will show that you are proactive about your professional development. If another type of exam will count toward professional development, it can also help relieve some of the stress from failing the actuarial exam. It can also help boost your confidence so you'll be in a positive mindset for your next actuarial exam!

If your company’s review process requires a self evaluation or write up on what you’ve done the prior year, how do you remember it all? A year is a long time and it’s easy to forget some of the minor accomplishments you’ve had. Early last year, I stumbled across an article providing excellent advice for capturing your accomplishments - each Friday, take a few minutes at the end of the day and capture your biggest accomplishment for that week in a spreadsheet (at the end of the year you would have close to 52 accomplishments listed).

Sometimes, the accomplishments may be small, like learning how to create a macro in VBA. Other accomplishments may be a successful deployment of a tool/model you’ve been working on for months. No accomplishment is too small for this list and when it comes time for your self-evaluation at the end of the year, you will have a large list to choose from instead of trying to remember everything off the top of your head!

​If you are lucky enough to work for a company that doesn’t require self evaluations, this is still a good habit to have since it can provide perspective on your career and also give you some talking tips when you run into someone from senior management!

Have any questions on the topics in this article? Looking to get advice on your current situation? I'm always open to chatting - send me an email or message me on LinkedIn!

How do you plan to close out the year strong? Comment below!

If you're an actuary, you probably love data. Or studying. Or days off for studying. Or some of the above. And whether you love data or not, you work with it daily and most likely perform analyses or create models. As technology becomes smarter and faster, companies are finding more ways to track information and collect data. This influx of additional data is great for building models and testing assumptions, but can at times make other analyses more complex and complicated. 

Excel is an actuary's best friend, but sometimes even excel can't handle the data if there's too much of it (I used to get the "not enough memory" error way too many times)! There are also quite a few limitations if you are only using excel to review and analyze your data. Based on my experience:

• Pivot Tables and Conditional Formatting are okay for reviewing data, but you can't compare multiple dimensions at once. 
• Filtering and flagging data only goes so far - in many cases you are still scrolling through data reviewing other attributes. 
• You don't get a good overview of your data in excel - it's important to know your population and it's not easy to get an all encompassing overview.  

So let’s talk about data visualization. Sure, data visualization may not be necessary in some cases, but I hope by the end of this post, if you’re someone who thinks “why visualize data when I can easily perform my analysis in excel” that you may have more of an interest on how data visualization can enhance your work. Or better yet, maybe you'll get inspired and develop a proof of concept to show your boss in order to bring in a data visualization tool! Keep reading for five examples of how data visualization can enhance your work as an actuary!

No matter what type of work you do as an actuary, there may be times where you will need to review data quality to make sure the data is expected. Or maybe you need to check the outcome of a model to see what the data looks like. Typically, a lot of this review is done in excel and results in scrolling through rows and rows of data or analyzing pivot tables. There's only so much you can see in a table - this is why when you're reviewing loss development triangles, it's usually best to use the red/yellow/green conditional formatting. Using a visualization tool, such as Tableau or Power BI can help you quickly draw insights and identify the data points you should focus on.

Example: Suppose you need to review claim amounts and premium amounts for a specific period for personal auto policies. Maybe you also care about the deductible amount and age of the policyholders. You'd most likely use a pivot table to review this information, but you could miss the big picture. If you use a visualization tool, you'd be able to plot a scatterplot with claim amount and premium amount on the axis, with each point's size based on the deductible amount and color based on age or an age bucket.

One of the main reasons I love visualizing data is because of the versatility of reviewing multiple dimensions of data at once. It can save a lot of time and help you focus on the most important information!

If you're exploring attributes affecting a pricing or reserving model or doing data quality on specific sets of data, it may be more efficient to use data visualizations to being your review process so you know which characteristics of the data to focus on. 

Example: You may be in a situation where you need to analyze claims for a specific line of business and find patterns for specific attributes of data. Are there specific zip codes that are typically reporting more damage on vehicles? Could the age or number of drivers on a policy be impacting this uptick? A visualization tool can help you explore multiple characteristics on one dashboard so you can see how they interact with one another. Once you know which characteristics you want to focus on, you can finalize your dashboard and any time you have new data you want to review, it's just a quick upload with minimal set-up. 

Data visualizations allow for a lot of versatility when it comes to comparing data, especially year over year comparisons. If you're doing data quality, you may have one set threshold for all of the data when it may make more sense looking at different thresholds for each state. This would add a lot more time to a review in excel, but using data visualization, these thresholds, when used with filters, would make the process more efficient and accurate.

It's also really easy to add in new calculations in Tableau or Power BI once the source data has been added - so if you're in the middle of creating a dashboard and want to see a new combination of data or bucket the data, you can easily do so in the visualization software.

Example: There may be a time where you need to compare data year over year to make sure different groupings of data remain consistent. Maybe you are looking at the loss ratio or a variety of other ratios. Depending on your dataset, there are a variety of ways you could visualize year over year data to compare, from bar charts to scatterplots to heatmaps. You could even use side by side box and whisker plots to see how the population of data has changed year over year.

​When using data visualizations to filter and compare data, the possibilities are endless, as well as the insights that can be drawn from the data. Data visualizations can also make your comparisons and data checks more effective! Just another reason I think data visualization is a great alternative!

There may be some situations where you want to see what your data looks like without certain subsets of data. There isn't an easy way to do this in excel. You could create a VBA macro that could exclude certain records with a click of a button, but why go through all of that trouble when you could do the same thing using visualization software and get a better overview of how different metrics change when excluding data?

Example: If you are interested in how specific lines of business are trending over time and you want to identify and exclude outliers causing large shifts, you could easily do this using visualization tools. With all of the additional features in tableau, you can also have visuals interact where you'd be able to hover over a bar in one chart which could highlight all of the data making up that specific bar in a different chart. 

Depending on the work you do, you may find a lot of relationships in your data which you must use to make assumptions, create models or test for data quality. There may also be processes in place for you to adequately review these relationships. However, when done the right way, data visualizations and interactions between visuals can show you additional information in seconds that may take hours to find in excel. Interactive dashboards can also help you get to the problem areas of your data and see the makeup of those problem areas with quick drill-down features. 

Example: When reviewing certain relationships, such as a loss ratio, you may see that a specific state stands out and you want to drill down to find the line of business causing the high loss ratio. You also want to see if it is one policy driving the loss ratio or many and if they have any other similar characteristics. In excel, you might be able to set specific thresholds and filter on these thresholds to find that data, but you could be missing some other important information. Maybe there is an issue with a specific product across the board, but you only found one point of data above the set threshold, so you let it go. Using a dashboard with multiple visualizations, allowing you to drill-down to the data could quickly alert you to these patterns without missing any specifics due to set thresholds.

I've found the drill-down capabilities of Tableau and Power BI to be very useful in identifying specific areas of data to focus on. It is a lot quicker to find these data points using a variety of visuals than it is to find these relationships in excel. 

I have experience using both Tableau and Microsoft Power BI, but there are also plenty of other data visualization tools out there, too. Check out the articles below for more information!

​If you are interested in applying data visualizations to your actuarial work, I'd be happy to speak more  - just send me a message on LinkedIn use the contact form on this site!

Related Articles:
The 38 Best Tools for Data Visualization 
Tableau vs Power BI: Comparing Pros and Cons

After putting hours of work into creating the "perfect" resume, you hear back from one of your potential employers - they want you to come in for an interview! Congrats! 

At this point, the potential employer likes what they see - if you had no shot, they wouldn't be calling you in for an interview! Now, it's up to you to make a great impression during the interview to land the job. 

While this post is focused on how to stand out in an actuarial interview, the same can go for many other types of interviews, too. Follow the tips in this post in order to go above and beyond so you can have a competitive edge in your interview!

Do not EVER go into an interview without researching the position and company further! Most importantly, you do not want to talk about passing SOA exams when the company you are interviewing with is a property & casualty insurance company! This happens! Don't let it happen to you - make sure you know before going into the interview. 

You should at least know the basics - know what industry the company operates in, lines of business, and other basics. The company website, job posting and a basic google search can give you the information you need about the company.

Do some digging! Can you find any recent news articles featuring the company or the business unit with the job posting? The company website and social media for the company can help you find this relevant information. In both of my full-time positions since graduating, I brought up news articles in the interviews. It's important to do your due diligence and to make sure you can show what you know at the appropriate times.

​For example, if you find an article saying the business unit recently won an award for innovation, don't just blurt it out! Find a way to naturally bring it up in conversation or create a question based around it - "I saw this business unit won an award this last year for innovation regarding XYZ - I would love to hear more on how your team is able to continue innovating and staying competitive in the market." You may also find a new product or service the hiring business unit is offering - leverage that information in your interview to show you are interested in the work the group is currently doing and show you are aware of at least one of the things they are working on. 

Anything on your resume is fair game. Make sure you can speak to anything listed on your resume - you don't want to be caught off guard by a question. At this point, once you're called in for an interview - it's not in your best interest to send a revised resume with information omitted. If it's been a while since submitting your resume and the interview, feel free to send a revised resume with more recent information, but still be prepared to answer to any of the information from the original resume you submitted.

If you have a few years of experience, it's possible you may not remember a lot from something you listed on your resume from your first year. Make sure you are able to put together a few sentences to discuss those points since they won't be as fresh in your mind. 

For your technical skills, take quick crash courses on the basics and applications for the skills. For example, if you list SAS, SQL and R on your resume and you are most familiar with R but have basic experience using SAS and SQL, spend a few hours learning about the basics of SAS and SQL and how they are applied. Find out what the necessary building blocks are to create code and try to find some examples of applications in the insurance industry.

This could be useful for some potential questions you may be asked in an interview and some of your answers. Instead of just saying you know the basics of SQL, you could say you know how to use joins to combine data or pull from multiple databases using the same criteria. Make sure you are familiar with the different types of joins and can elaborate on any of your answers if necessary. If you are familiar with the concepts and can walk through your reasoning on how you would perform a process in any of the programs (VBA, R, SAS, SQL, etc.), this is gold for the interview!

Make sure you know what the job posting is asking for in terms of requirements and the job description. If you are applying to multiple jobs at once, it helps to keep a spreadsheet or another method to keep track of job postings you are applying for. The last thing you want to do is ask the person who called or emailed you to remind you of what position you applied for! 

Going into the interview, you should have an understanding of the skills or experience the hiring manager is looking for, so make sure you know the areas of your resume to highlight to show that you are a qualified candidate.

Perform a full integration between the job posting and your resume. Create a table in Excel or Word and add each point from the job posting on the left and anything that is relevant from your resume on the right. If you do not have an experience that fully correlates with one of the points, find a skill you have that could help you perform that duty. 

Once you've done this, you know what you should focus on from your resume when you are preparing for the interview. You don't want to sound too rehearsed, but there's nothing wrong with saying something along the lines of, "When I saw this job posting, I was really excited to see XYZ in the job description. In my current role, I've not only had the opportunity to work on a similar project/process, but I've been able to refine the process through my knowledge of ABC. I'd be really excited to work through this process on this team and see if there are ways to make it more efficient!". You wouldn't want to do this for every point in the job description, but doing this for a couple of points can show you are really interested in the position and have ideas you can bring to the team to improve workflows.

Don't ever go into an interview without any questions! You also don't want to go in with a limited set of questions that are answered throughout the interview. The questions you ask at the end of an interview are 100% in your control - don't be the person who answers, "No, I think you answered all of the questions I have at the moment." You also don't want to be put on the spot scrambling for questions to ask. 

If you have at least five questions to ask going into an interview, you should be set. There are also tons of articles out there that can help you out if you're stuck. This Actuarial Outpost thread has a couple of good ideas... but there are a few horrible ones mixed in, so just don't be that guy/girl that tries to fit "body bag" into the interview somewhere. This is another good AO thread with slightly less sarcasm (I mean, the second comment in the first thread listed was already sarcastic, so I guess can't get much more sarcastic than that) and more comments. 

For bigger companies, it's pretty easy to find information on company culture from sites like Glassdoor. You can also find one or two people to reach out to on Linkedin to get a more candid view on the company, work, etc. Typically, if you are pleasant when you are reaching out and mindful of their time, people who work at the company will get back to you and be happy to answer your questions and tell you more about the company culture. In some cases, this may be the better route to really find out about the company culture instead of asking your interviewer.

Since you can find out about the company culture elsewhere, use the time for questions to ask thoughtful questions about the department and position. Don't be boring and ask the standard "what does the career path look like for someone who starts in this position" or "what type of skills would make a future candidate successful". Instead, set yourself apart by asking thoughtful questions such as "what are some of the metrics used to evaluate the results of this team in terms of annual and longterm goals" or "how does the work of this team affect the bottom line". Don't be afraid to ask follow up questions, too. You may want to follow up one of the questions by asking whether or not the team is on track to meet their goals and the impact someone coming in to fill this position could have on meeting these goals. If you are confident enough to run with it and the conversation is going well, you may even be able to tie in some of your skills to show you are quick on your feet and you'd be able to work through problems and develop solutions on the job.

This shouldn't come as a surprise - practice is essential to acing an interview! If you are still in university, check to see if you can sign up for a mock interview at your career services center. If you aren't able to practice interviewing with another person, at least make sure you are speaking out loud. You could even record yourself answering questions and see if what you are saying is making sense or if you unknowingly use filler words to break a silence or end a statement. This is even more important if English isn't your first language.

You want to make sure you are getting your points across in a concise manner. Don't ramble, but at the same time, you don't want to leave out important information. You also don't want to practice in a way that will make you sound too rehearsed in an interview. The point of practicing is making sure you are able to speak on all of the points you need to cover without rambling or using filler words.

It's the easiest to ramble when an interview asks the "tell me about yourself question" or "why are you here". The Muse has a short video to help you answer this question in a clear and concise manner. This is a gimme question - I've been asked this question on almost all of my interviews, so make sure you have a solid answer!

This list of actuarial interview questions is a pretty comprehensive list and a great start to practicing potential interview questions. Using these questions, along with the list you made based on the job description and resume, practice answering these questions using the experience and skills that will clearly display the traits the interviewer is looking for. Try to keep each answer to only a few sentences. So for example, if the interviewer were to ask you for a time you went above and beyond, you would want to make sure to use an example that is relatable to a point in the job description. 

With some creativity, you should be able to tie back a lot of your experiences and skills to what the interviewer is looking for in a candidate based on the job description. Practicing out loud will help you refine your answers and help you work through how to display your answers in a way that will make you irresistible to your potential employer!

If you have any experiences you are really passionate about, volunteer work for example, practice how you would broach that subject and how you can relate that to the skills the interviewer is looking for. This is important because in most cases, these extracurriculars are experiences you are passionate about and the passion can come off as enthusiasm while also making you (and even the interviewer) more comfortable. 

Last week I attended the 2016 Insurance Data Management Association Annual Meeting and Seminar. The theme of the two-day seminar was The New ABCs for Data Management Professionals – Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Cyber Risk. 

​This was the first insurance conference I've attended and it was a really great learning experience. I think it's important, especially for recent graduates, to be able to take a break from the typical day-to-day work to learn about other aspects of the industry and stay on top of current news and changes that may be on the horizon (key word: industry disruption). It's becoming more and more important to think of innovation, whether it's product innovation or process improvement. Innovative companies are and will continue to be some of the most successful companies, and the same can be said for people. Attending a conference is definitely a great way to get those innovative juices flowing and provide additional insight outside the scope of your work. 

If you are just starting off (or looking to start a career) in the insurance industry, I hope my key takeaways from the 2016 IDMA Seminar listed below can provide some food for thought.

The keynote speaker from XL Catlin did a great job of describing the "Analytics Journey." In order to implement a successful data analytics program, three key components must be considered: design, influence and culture. Far too many times, design and influence are the main focus. There needs to be a balance between all three to run a completely successful data analytics program. I believe, in a way, this can apply to a lot of different projects - not just data driven programs.

Design - The program must fit seamlessly into current processes, helping to improve workflows. The implementation of the program should make processes run smoothly and more efficient.

Influence - Find the people who have heavy influence on others in the organization. These could be heads of divisions or those who have a large social network. If they are on board with the new program, they will be able to get others on board, too. 

Culture - When implementing a new program, share metrics. Celebrate victories and let others know this is something that is valued. If others are able to see how important a program or initiative is, they will be more excited to participate and help the program succeed.

The most important message of this keynote was that analytics needs to become a larger part of the company culture at insurance companies. Design and influence are the more obvious components of implementing a successful analytics program, but it's just as important to try to find ways to incorporate analytics into the culture.

How can this relate to an entry-level position? Chances are at this level, you will not be implementing a data analytics program or creating a new department. However, it's still important to keep the three points above in mind while performing your day-to-day work tasks. Think of how you can work on improving processes and making them more efficient. Work on building your network at the office. Learn what other teams are working on and share any successes you've had in your team when chatting with others. 

We are living in a data driven world. At times, it can be overwhelming. Companies are receiving more data and information than they've ever received. It's critical this data is managed in a way that can allow for quick use and decisions to be made. Here's an alarming quote from one of the breakout sessions I attended - "By 2017, 33% of fortune 100 companies will experience an information crisis". That's crazy to think of and it's important for companies to make sure they are managing their data in an effective way. It's no coincidence that data scientist jobs have skyrocketed recently (although, in another session it was mentioned that machines will replace data scientists in three years, so who knows!). 

Improved data management will allow companies to come out ahead of the competition and leaders will be able to:

• Drive improved business outcomes
• Capture the time value of data
• Change the game

This is especially important in the insurance industry as there is more discussion surrounding product profitability and increasing revenue. This will be done through analytic decision making and innovation.  

If you are interested in more information on how companies are interacting with the abundance of data and information, the IBM C-Suite Studies were recommended to check out.

How can this relate to an entry-level position? If your job requires you to analyze data, see if there are ways the data can be improved in any way or more meaningful. Depending on the type of information you work with, maybe there are inconsistencies in how the data was captured at a certain point. Would normalization be possible? Can additional fields be added that are captured elsewhere? Can additional analysis and decisions be made if more fields are captured? Think of how value can be added and make those suggestions.

Machine learning definitely seems to be gaining traction in the insurance industry. This is huge. If a computer can be programmed to perform more of the mundane tasks of running programs, transferring information, and setting up analyses, then more time will be available to analyze the data and perform other important tasks. This is especially useful for processing that may be prone to human error. 

Looking at the insurance industry as a whole, machine learning can have an impact on a variety of areas:

• Predictive target marketing for insurance quotes and financial advice
• Fast track underwriting, reducing the amount of time to underwrite a policy
• Form digitization allowing classification based on form type
• Personalization for customers
• Cut down claims cycle, reducing interest costs
• Identify higher risk activity and suspicious claims

​How can this relate to an entry-level position? Start small. If you find yourself having to repeat processes multiple times in excel, try to create a program in VBA to reduce the time spent on mundane tasks. If you work with data, learning how to code will definitely help you become an asset to your company. Try to see if machine learning could have a positive impact on your work.