Not happy with some things at my current position and thinking about beginning the search. Think FSA 10-20 years experience. Wondering what the thoughts here on using a recruiter vs searching for yourself. A few questions to stimulate discussions.
Anyone here find or hire a director or above type position, I know titles vary, using search tools such as linked, Indeed, or company website. Pros and cons.
Thoughts on using one recruiter exclusively vs multiple.
Recruiter recommendations. I know there was an old thread on this, but wouldn’t mind revisiting.
A few other comments. My concerns.
4. A lot of unprofessional recruiters. Don’t want them representing me.
5. If a company hasn’t retained a recruiter. Say new startup, provider group such as ACO, smaller companies, I’d miss out on it if using a recruiter.
6. Similarly if using one recruiter and that recruiter isn’t working with a specific company it’s missed opportunity.
7. Too much effort to find positions and even more effort to deal with manually submitting resume’s or determining who at the company to email.
My experience with recruiters
Landed my current position with a recruiter from DW Simpson about 5 years ago. Very happy with the experience.
We’ve used recruiters to hire here, and have been disappointed to see how a lot of recruiters slaughter peoples resumes. I hate the 2 page word doc resumes.
Everyone we’ve hired that I know of was through a recruiter. It’s cost the company a lot of money and they’re trying to encourage us to find candidates in other ways in addition to still using recruiters.
In addition to all of JSM’s post:
I would recommend using ONE recruiter if your search is nationwide, if only to locate openings. You should be able to tell recruiters not to use your name when they contact companies. One time when I was searching, I got a list of the openings nationwide, then I chose from them which I wanted the recruiter to contact (with the agreement that I would not contact them to skip out on their commission). I want the recruiter to do as little as possible before the offer, then do as I direct in negotiations.
Locally? You should be able to identify those organizations, know plenty of contacts within those organizations, and be able to back-door into an available position that might not yet be publicized. No recruiter required.
I used Pauline Reimer in the past and I was happy with her. I told what I was looking for in terms of type of company, location, and salary and she was helpful in all 3 regards. In fact, she actually got me a decent amount more than I was looking for.
2 pros of using a recruiter (based on my experience) is 1) you do not have to sift through company websites trying to see if the job description makes sense, if the culture is toxic, etc. Pauline and co did that for me. 2) I had to fill out 0 annoying redundant applications online.
I’d also note, if you use a recruiter then when it comes time to negotiate the offer it’s not you talking to the company, it’s you talking to your recruiter who talks to the company and so the recruiter will be trying to get you to close the deal more so than getting you the best outcome, bit of principal-agent problem.
It’s more effort but there aren’t that many actuarial employers. Personally I don’t intend to use a recruiter ever again because of some of the issues you highlighted (they’re limited to just roles they have been contracted to hire for and their incentives aren’t fully aligned with yours are the key ones). There’s a pretty good map of actuarial employers here:
His profile doesn’t say much about actuarial but not important. He’s the only recruiter I will ever use if one day I must use one again. He cares more about the person he’s working with than just filling out a list of open positions with anyone that will take them.
Also SAS could probably use a few more P&C actuaries - but we don’t use recruiters. And don’t expect a “higher level” position just because FCAS - experience is more important.
I’ve worked here for 2.5 years and still have zero SAS coding language knowledge. And part of my job is to build demos and proofs of concept - so that should tell you some things.
I am, well done. But I love it. It’s like consulting work/pay without the consulting hours/stress. The sales presentations and creative writing part is not for everybody though… expecially actuaries.
Same story. I’ve done the legwork to help SAS understand that they represent different industries for y’all already. Getting them to stop saying “insurance industry trends” without specifying what kind of insurance they are talking about hasn’t been as smooth.
