Career Advice

[calexan7]

Hello All,

I am currently a Senior at the Univ. of Tennessee and I'm majoring in Accounting and Finance. I've been contemplating my career plans and I know I do not want to go the CPA route. The insurance business is very appealing to me, specifically Underwriting. My family is somewhat of an insurance family. I graduate in December 2011 and I hope to move to Nashville to start my career. My family and Fiance both live in Nashville. Here is where I need advice:

I have 4 years of work experience but other than that I don't have much that sets me apart from the rest of my graduating class. My GPA will be in the 3.35 range upon graduation. I was wondering if getting the Associate in Underwriting (AU) designation before I graduate would help out my chances of landing a good job in January.

My goal is to land a job, spend two years working and gaining experience while obtaining the CPCU, and then hopefully getting an MBA at night from Belmont University in Nashville after I've spent a couple of years saving money. I was wondering if I could have some input from people in the Insurance business as to if this is doable or not.

Thank you in advance. I'm having a difficult time finding any quality advice from my school and my family.

[bjwestner]

Well let me first applaud you in the fact that you have some idea of what you want to do when you are done with school. Most people do not. I know that when I was finished with school, I landed a job through a temp agency (back in 2001) at a life insurance company pulling staples out of paper and imaging applications. That led me to get interested in underwriting and I moved up to the u/w dept and then switched from a life insurance company to a p&c company in claims.

My advice to you is to keep your options open. If anything from your post, things are a bit too defined and will not likely go in that direction. Whatever path you end up going down, continue your education. Some companies value it more than others, however, it will no doubt help you. The life insurance company that I started at was very big on insurance related education and was very big on LOMA classes and also designations from the American College, thus I obtained my FLMI and CLU designations which helped me quite a bit. Other companies that I have worked at could not care less about letters after your name. I think that most companies do care and you wanting to obtain the CPCU is a great goal. I am working towards that now myself and everything that I hear is that it's the "gold standard" of insurance designations.

If you have your CPCU this would likely be the best thing for you as it would open the door into many fields for you, whether that be underwriting, claims, or even on the sales side of things.

Best of luck to you. Keep us posted with your progress please.

[Dave Medvidofsky]

The fact that you have an interest in insurance, have researched potential career opportunities that align with your interests, and that you have desire to further your studies are in themselves distinguishing. I think you have a solid plan and you need to highlight these points when you go through the interview process.

AU is a great starting point and CPCU is well worth pursuing. I agree with the direction of becoming credentialed and building technical competency within a core discipline before pursuing the MBA. There is also potential for using these designations for college credits with some schools.

Be sure to work with your college placement office/career counselors and be just as clear about your interest when speaking to them as you have been in this post. Also, reach out to insurance companies located in your area and begin networking and contacting them about internships and other opportunities.

Lastly, if you have volunteer interests, it may be worth targetting a few carriers, seeing what community service they support, and deciding if their interests align with your own. I bet you could make some great contacts while also doing good if you volunteered time to those organizations.

Just some random thoughts. Hopefully they help.