Why Hire Me?
There are five main reasons why your firm should hire me.1. Professionalism
Too often with actuarial systems and model development, the job is poorly done. Systems get built but the testing is scant. OK - the testing may have been adequate but there is little documentation. Or the system was never designed with the future in mind so 12 months later the whole thing needs to be pulled apart and reprogrammed to build new functionality. I am thorough and meticulous in my work so this does NOT happen. I always consider all aspects of the task at hand, for both now and over the longer term. For example, how the model I am building will interact and communicate with other systems, both present and planned. My years of experience have given me a great appreciation of what happens when the job is poorly completed. Consequently, I have an absolute determination to get the job done RIGHT. True - it takes time and effort but, as I have seen time and time again, it is worth it.
2. My vast experience and knowledge
I have a very broad and thorough knowledge of actuarial systems and modelling. I have a great deal of experience in many applications/languages e.g. MoSes, Prophet, VBA, Excel, Access, SQL and Mo.net. Not only do I have a very good knowledge of applications themselves, I understand how these applications communicate with each other. Systems connectivity is key to intelligent and efficient systems design. Furthermore, I have a very strong natural ability in this field. So if I am unfamiliar with a language/application, I can teach myself lightning fast. For example, I wanted to learn VBA so I typed "VBA help " into Google. I had a running prototype completed four hours later. I can "see" entire systems inside my head and hence how systems piece together, how changing one part of a system will affect another part of the systems and so on.
3. Communication Skills
I worked with everyone from the most junior of staff to the CEO. I can successfully communicate with a wide variety of people and can explain actuarial concepts to non-actuarial people. For example, I often liaise with IT departments. These people are not actuaries and hence I have to translate actuarial concepts into a "IT speak". I frequently have no trouble in getting stakeholders around to my way of thinking. The best example of this getting my contracts extended. Often people who control the "purse strings" (budget committees etc) are not actuaries. Thus I have to explain the work I will do and how this work will benefit the company in plain English. I have successfully done this many times because EVERY contract I have done in the UK has been extended.
4. Teamwork skills
In my career, I developed my teamwork skills to a very high level. I have achieved this by working in many teams across my career. For example, my employment in the Commonwealth Bank where I worked in a number of teams (e.g. management information, actuarial), my days at Classic Solutions (now Tillinghast Software Solutions) where I worked in a a team of MoSes testers, and more recently when I managed a team of MoSes developers at Swiss Re. In part, my excellent teamwork skills come from being Australian. Australians are known the world over as accepting and very easy going. To put it simply, we get along very well with everyone.
5. My deep, intense passion for my work
The strongest reason you should hire me is that I have a deep, intense passion for actuarial systems and model development. I enjoy so many different aspects of the work immensely. From the initial discussions to the satisfaction of a completed model/system ("Job Done"), the challenges of the work (program solving, changing technologies, getting people from other areas of a company to "buy in" to the work I am doing), to staff training and development (it is a genuine thrill to watch people go from knowing nothing to being proficient developers), there isn't a single aspect of this work that I dislike doing. Actuarial Systems and Model Development isn't just a "job" I do pay the rent and bills. To quote Madonna, "It's my art!". And it really is.