Whether you are a college student aspiring to be an actuary or a career changer looking to break into the field, there are skills that you already have or can work on to set you up for success. Math and statistical knowledge are prerequisites for the profession, and you will be tested on those through the actuarial exams. There are other skills that will help you succeed in the profession thatyou may already have or can work on developing. These skills won’t be directly tested on an exam, but they will help make you stand out from the pack.  

The skillset that most differentiates actuaries is communication. When I was younger, I thought I could avoid writing and communicating when entering the profession, but the older me realizes that couldn’t be further from the truth. The most successful actuaries I’ve seen are able to clearly articulate their assumptions, concisely share their results, and appropriately explain their analysis to the target audience. Actuaries will often find themselves in a position where they have to communicate results to a client, a regulator, or stakeholders within their own company. Presenting with confidence and owning a reputation for quality work will make it easier for others to agree with your analysis. There are lots of avenues to improving your communication skills. For example, you can join a local Toastmasters club or practice in a speech/debate club at your university. Finding opportunities to practice an important presentation with someone unfamiliar with your work is a great way to get an outsider’s perspective. 

Programming skills are becoming more important in the profession and are a differentiator for those looking to enter the profession. From my experience, R and Python are becoming essential languages to understand. They are open-source languages and can be used for many different tasks, such as visualizations or building GLM models. They can also be used to automate tasks and cut down on mistakes. Both languages have packages that implement actuarial methodologies, such as the Chainladder package, which can be used to produce high-quality loss development analyses. The best part about these languages is that you can practice them on your time because they are open source. Unlike proprietary languages that have expensive licenses attached to them, you can quickly get them set up on your computer and try to make your own project. There are lots of helpful resources and training materials out there to guide you. Even if your current job or classwork uses different programming languages, having knowledge of one will enable you to quickly pick up another.  

Proofreading and double checking your work is another important skill to work on. Taking that little bit of extra time to review your work can go a long way to helping establish your credibility as you start out in the profession. As an actuary, you might be analyzing a client’s data or developing a binding quote. High accuracy will be rewarded and can help you avoid the awkward experience of sending a follow-up to correct your work. You likely are already doing this today, and it’s a habit that will carry over into the actuarial profession. A good practice I’ve seen is to cross-reference your work with another trusted source you have access to in order to check for reasonability. Perhaps there is an internal report you can run and compare that to the results of your query. Developing your own formulas to check your work can also help catch errors. If you’re segmenting your premium in your analysis, a quick sum across all segments and comparing that to your original data can help to make sure you didn’t duplicate or drop observations. Finally, peer review other’s work to get some ideas for what you can incorporate into your own analysis and to gain intuition.  

Collaboration is also often required in the profession. In actuarial work, there is never going to be one definite answer. Often there will be a range of reasonable answers to choose from, and two actuaries will reach different conclusions utilizing the same data. In my own experience, it’s best to do a combination of defending your selection, agreeing with another actuary’s selection, and sometimes proposing an alternative that lies between your picks. Defending your own selection gives you a chance to rethink your assumptions and articulate your knowledge to the other actuary. Other times, it’s good to go with what the other actuary suggested as they bring different viewpoints and experiences that can aid in the final analysis. Sometimes if you and the other actuary appear dead set on your choices, proposing something in the middle is a good way to incorporate both viewpoints. By doing so, you will be considered a team player, and that will go a long way in managing office relationships. A great way to develop your collaboration skills is when you have a group project at school or with your colleagues. You will come across times when you disagree on direction and where to go next; that is a great time to compromise, so everyone can contribute to the final product.   

Most transferable skills needed to succeed in the actuarial world are soft skills. The path to mastering these skills isn’t always clear, but they are skills you have likely been working on and will continue to improve. Some of these skills can help you pass the actuarial exams. Clearly communicated answers will help graders assess your response. Double checking your work will weed out mistakes. You need to have programming knowledge to pass the recently introduced Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics (PCPA) exam. Exams can get you started in the profession, but transferable soft skills can truly make a difference in success throughout your career.