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Recent Podcasts and Articles

Why Doing It the Easy Way is Often the Best Way for your Actuarial Career

Have you found yourself working really hard at something, only to find that even with your best efforts, you still didn’t accomplish the full extent of what you were looking for? This often comes up during the job search where Journeyers find themselves feeling passed over for job opportunities or during exam studying when Journeyers see others getting better results with less studying.
What if the reason that you’d not seeing the results you want is because you’re working too hard?. Better yet, what if you go do things the easy way and spend less time, effort, and money to get better results. [Read more…]
Why Doing it the easy way is often the best way

Three Myths To Communicating Effectively

There are common misconceptions about communicating what you say in an effective manner. Everyone’s got their ideas about what makes an effective communicator, and everyone will give you their opinions, whether you want them to or not. In this post, we’ll explore three of the most common myths about communicating effectively, and explain why adhering to these myths can trip you up, plus we’ll explore advice on how to sidestep the pitfalls of these myths. [Read More…]

How To Build And Demonstrate Business Skills

Building business skills is an important part of today’s fast-paced world. And these skills can not only be used in the business world, but in a school setting as well.
So how do you go about doing this, especially as you go into the actuarial field? Read more to find out how to build these essential skills. [Read More…]

Studying While Working

When you’re in school, be it college or grad school, or even studying for your actuarial exams, you’re likely also trying to work and earn a living as well. Work, along with other activities in your life, such as spending time with friends and family, or your hobbies, can take up a lot of your time. And granted, it’s natural to want to do well at our jobs. We want to excel and shine at what we do. But how to do this while studying? [Read More…]

Five Methods of Dealing with Overwhelm

We all experience overwhelm in our lives. Whether it’s several things happening at once and we’re caught off guard, or we end up letting certain thoughts run rampant, that feeling of “Oh my gosh, there’s too much to deal with!” can be pretty powerful sometimes. But there are five specific things you can do to ease that feeling of overwhelm and get yourself back to being fully operational. [Read More…]

Achieving Your Perfect Work/Life Balance As An Actuary

For many, juggling the responsibilities of daily life can prove to be a real challenge. This is true for aspiring actuaries and those already in the field. Fortunately, you don’t have to be one of these people. With just a small mindset change and a little bit of preparation, we’re going to show you exactly how to supercharge your work/life balance. [Read More…]

Build Unshakable Confidence For Exam Day

We’re all familiar with the classic test day horror story. The story about the person that spends three hundred hours studying, enters the test room nervously to take the exam, encounters a question they can’t answer, and freezes up. They let one question sabotage the entire test. The only thing you need is hard work, discipline, and direction. [Read More…]

3 Crucial Studying Tips To Nail A Multiple Choice Exam

Along your actuarial journey, there’s no doubt that you’re going to come across many multiple choice exams. When studying for these exams, most people tend to use an ineffective and unstructured approach. You will learn about unconventional yet extremely effective studying strategies for multiple choice exams . [Read More…]

44: 3 Principles of Effective Communication for Aspiring Actuaries

Getting across the message you wish to get across is both easy to do, and not easy to do. Especially when it comes to numbers, people (business colleagues and friends alike) seem to contract a curious case of the “MEGO”s – My Eyes Glaze Over. Thankfully, there are many tools and mindset considerations available to help prevent these symptoms from presenting.[Read more…]
44 - 3 Key Principles to Effective Communication

42: How To Build And Demonstrate Business Skills

Ask an actuary what one of the keys to success as an actuary is and you’ll likely hear that a successful actuary can exhibit business skills in addition to the technical skills. Since these skills are important, we’ll explore how you can build these skills along your actuarial journey.[Read more…]
42 - Build and Demonstrate Business Skills (Actuarial Journey)

Three Reasons Why You Should Take More Study Breaks

Have you ever had those times where you said, “I’m going to study for X amount of hours,” and you head to the library to try and make good on that self-promise? But then you find that after about an hour, your brain feels like mush, and a quick ten-minute trip over to Cheezburger.com for a few cat memes turns into two hours, or a five minute YouTube break turns into three hours of binge-watching videos from all the channels you subscribe to. Apart from all those guilty feelings, there are three specific reasons why more studying for extended lengths of time is not necessarily better, and this lesson outlines those reasons. [Read More…]

Start With You in Mind: Step 1 in Personalized Studying

Two of the main reasons why studying often goes by the wayside are time and motivation—especially with all the other stuff that goes on in our lives. These are the two roadblocks you have faced, or will face, as an aspiring actuary, but you are not alone in this. This lesson, however, will help you get a focus on why you might be having trouble studying when you say you’re going to.[Read More…]

41: Takeaways from Actuarial Talent Supply and Demand Study

“Business skills” are often brought up as something that actuaries need to have in order to be successful. The question is: What business skills matter for actuaries? This was laid out in the Actuarial Talent: Supply and Demand Study that was performed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by the Society of Actuaries (SOA), Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), and Canadian Institute of Actuaries.During this episode, I share some of the takeaways I gathered from reading the report and discuss how you can apply them on your actuarial journey going forward.[Read more…]
41: Takeaways from Actuarial Talent Supply and Demand Study

40: Top Job Hunting Lessons Learned while Switching Careers

Curious about 1) landing an entry-level actuarial job when changing careers or 2) what you can do with an actuarial background in other careers? Whether you’re considering becoming an actuary or curious about what else you can apply your actuarial background to in your career, this episode is sure to deliver value. Let’s do this![Read more…]
Actuarial Journey Podcast

Actuarial Journey is Back – Keeping up Momentum

It’s been a while since the last episode of Actuarial Journey, but it’s back and better than before! Take a listen to this episode as Nemo Ashong shares what led to this break, and what steps you can take as you study for actuarial exams and apply for entry-level actuarial jobs to avoid losing momentum. [Read more…]
Actuarial Journey Podcast

How to Prepare for Your Interview

Now you’re here: at the part of the journey where you’ve landed an interview. You’ve worked hard to get to this point, and you’re excited about the potential future in front of you, especially if the interview is with the exact company you wish to work at. You are going to have to prepare for your interview in a way you likely haven’t before [Read More…]

Building Relationships as an Introvert

Building relationships is truly the key and the core of everything in our lives. This proves true when it comes to making decisions, influencing others, and having the support of others and resources to do what you want to do. But what if you’re an introvert? What if you’re one of those people who gains energy by spending time with themselves rather than with groups? What if you prefer to sit back and think about things before you make decisions, and prefer not to speak unless you really have something dynamite to say? Read more for more information. [Read More…]

Passing Actuarial Exams While Working – Establish, Communicate, and Deliver your Study Brand

Passing exams while working can be difficult, but it’s also one of the most consistent realities of pursuing your actuarial credentials. Whether your Actuarial Journey takes you down the path of Life, Health, Pension, Property and Casualty (P&C) or Reinsurance actuary, being able to maximize your study days and the actuarial study program your company offers is a key component to getting through the exams quickly and achieving your work/life balance. [Read more…]
Passing Actuarial Exams While Working While Working - Establish, Communicate, and Deliver your Study Brand

5 Methods of Dealing With Overwhelm

Feeling overwhelmed seems to come with the territory of making any major change in life and pursing any major calling. As we know, the Actuarial Journey is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes the volume of what we need to do for work, fitness, family, and fun can feel a bit much.
It happens to us all along our journey, whether you’re applying for an actuarial job, studying for an SOA/CAS exam, working for as an actuary in insurance/consulting, or pursing a career change to actuarial work. Today’s episode, I share an experience where I felt that way and the 5 steps I typically take when dealing with overwhelm.[Read more…]
5 Method of Dealing with Overwhelm

Navigating On-Campus Recruiting

When you go to an actuarial career fair, people are already taking note of what you do and how you interact with others. Recruiters are sizing you up to see if you’d be a good team player, have good oral communication skills, etc. Yes, your goal is to eventually score an interview, but at this point, you really need to let your personal brand shine. [Read More…]

5 Reasons to Join an Actuarial Exam Study Group

Today we’re going to discuss an under-utilized study resource that is readily available for each of your journeyers.What is this resource? Study Groups. This is the first episode in our mini series on Study groups and we’ll start it off by taking through why being a part of a study group can be useful to you in the first place. You’ll learn how it can benefit you and what you may have been missing out on while studying.
[Read more…]
5 Reasons to Join an Actuarial Exam Study Group

How to find and Schedule an Informational Conversation

When it comes to scheduling and conducting informational conversations, especially concerning building your brand, consider the following: by reaching out to different people and finding out what led them down their path, you can use all that different information in order to make your own decisions about the type of actuary you want to be. [Read More…]

Achieving your Ideal Work/Life Balance – Part 1

Let’s face it – it’s really hard balancing studying for exams with all the things we have going on in our lives. We have so many roles that we play, so many tasks that we need to perform, and so many people depending on us that often times, it’s a major struggle to feel like there’s any semblance of a balance while studying. The next few episodes are designed to help you maintain control of your life, continue to perform well with work, school, and your family, and of course pass your next exam. Let’s Do this![Read more…]
Achieving your Ideal Work Life Balance - Part 1

Building Confidence for Your Exam Day – Part 2

We’re going to spend the rest of today’s episode talking about how you can keep your nerves in check and allow all of the studying that you have done to naturally manifest itself on the exam day. To put it bluntly, we’re going to spend the rest of the test helping you avoid choking on the test after all the hard work you put in.[Read more…]
Building Confidence for Your Exam Day - Part 2

[Plan] Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals for your effective study plan

Have you found yourself feeling behind in studying without really being able to pinpoint the reason? How did you fall behind – you had such a good game plan and you had reasonable goals. Well, that’s the subject of today’s session, understanding how to set S.M.A.R.T. goals to help you make a more effective study plan and help you with your Personalized Studying.[Read more…]
[Plan] Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals for your effective study plan

The importance of staying organized to be effective (Kate Weaver – IABA)

Kate Weaver is the Executive Director of the International Association of Black Actuaries (IABA). Kate’s journey to success is phenomenal as she shares how she uses her strengths in organization and communication to execute major projects. It’s clear that Kate is passionate about helping aspiring actuaries, and when you hear about what she and the IABA have in store, you’ll see it come through in full force.[Read more…]
The importance of staying organized to be effective (Kate Weaver - IABA)

3 Reasons Why You Should Take More Study Breaks

Have you ever found yourself studying for hours and only to realize that not only have you been staring at the same question for 10 minutes, but you can hardly remember what you just finished reading? This lesson addresses the assumption that you should study really long hours while minimizing your study breaks. Unfortunately, there are a lot of benefits that you’re not taking advantage of when you approach studying that way. That’s why today’s episode focuses on 3 Reasons that you should take more study breaks. [Read more…]
3 Reasons Why You Should Take More Study Breaks

How to leverage the skills you develop on your journey outside of the actuarial world! (Nick Blitterswyk)

Nick Blitterswyk is the founder and CEO of Urban Green Energy International (UGE) who prior to starting this company worked as an actuary, primarily in pension consulting. Listen to today’s informational interview as Nick shares his journey as both an actuary and entrepreneur and how you can leverage the skills you develop pursuing an actuarial career for all paths in life. [Read more…]
How to leverage the skills you develop on your journey outside of the actuarial world! (Nick Blitterswyk)