Future Fellows Online and the CAS Website
If you’ve taken an exam in the last few years, you may have occasionally noticed a blurb in the examiners’ reports telling you to refer to a Future Fellows article about exam-taking strategies or some other exam topic. If you’re like me, you probably ignored those and continued with life — that changed for me when I started to utilize Future Fellows. Future Fellows (FF) is a valuable resource for candidates that goes beyond the occasional shout-out from the Exam Committee to one of the articles available online.
What is Future Fellows?
For those who don’t know, FF is not just a printed newsletter but also a section of the CAS website dedicated to directing candidates towards relevant resources. Both are put together by the Candidate Liaison Committee (CLC). If you want more background on what the CLC does, I recommend reading the article in this issue by my colleague Leisha Cavallaro.
This year, for the first time ever, the CLC conducted its own candidate survey. We learned that over 25% of candidates did not read the FF newsletter; over a third weren’t often able to find what they were looking for on the CAS website; and over 70% don’t even read the FF blog. (As a candidate and author of FF blog posts, I am heart-broken!)
Other than the written aspects of FF, some of the most under-valued aspects of the FF landing page on the CAS website are links to the Regional Affiliates’ resources and career resources.
There are 17 Regional Affiliates listed on the CAS website that can be accessed through the Future Fellows Online portal. Most of them represent some area of the U.S. or Canada, but there are also Regional Affiliates in Europe, Bermuda and Asia. Many of these Regional Affiliates post their meeting presentations and minutes on the CAS website, so it is a great source of relevant industry knowledge as well as local insurance topics. Pro tip: Read through some of these presentations before an interview. You may impress a potential employer with your vast actuarial or insurance industry knowledge or your familiarity with a presentation by one of their colleagues.
Speaking of interviews, the careers section of the CAS website is something I recently discovered. It works like any other job search website (Glassdoor/LinkedIn) in that you post your resume and get connected through the CAS website. I find it useful because it bypasses all the irrelevant jobs you would find on other websites. It also explicitly splits out internships and international opportunities, which is particularly helpful for many candidates.
On top of these resources, FF Online also directs you to past newsletters, current exam information, CAS events, continuing education resources and much more!
Plans for the Future
The CLC is pleased to learn that the overall CAS website is undergoing a digital transformation and will be significantly restructured. As a part of this transformation, FF Online is also planning some updates to increase candidate engagement. Some things we have in mind are updating the landing page to be a more informative experience (instead of a page full of graphic buttons) as well as creating a Future Fellows email address that candidates can use to contact us.
The CLC also has a “wish list” of things we would like to see implemented and are actively working to get them done. Some items on the list include formatting and indexing earlier articles to be more user-friendly and searchable, and creating an FAQ for common questions and resources to find the source of the answers.
If you have any ideas for the website or things you would like to see discussed, now is the time to reach out to the CLC. Please use the feedback form at http://bit.ly/CLCFeedback.
