Yay Becky!

A few weeks ago at some store Becky ran into one of the women she interviewed with for a job at the library back at the beginning of the year. I think. I don't really remember when, but it was a while ago. They had, like, 600 applicants for four positions. Becky got through their entire application, testing, interviewing process incredibly well and was told she was one of their top applicants, but they could only hire four. They'd keep her information on file and might be hiring again later in the year. So anyway, Becky asked if that was happening yet and was told, "I'm sorry no, we don't have any plans to hire in the near future." So they chatted a bit and went on their ways.

A couple days later Becky got a phone call from the woman. "One of our employees just turned in her notice today. Would you like a job?"

They did a background check. Becky did the drug testing. She starts work on 8/15 as a shelver at the Ashwaubenon branch of the Brown County Library.

Good News!

I got a job working for United Health Care as an Associate Actuarial Analyst. From what I understand, I'll be working with their rate engines. I'll find out more on 9/12 when I start.

Job Hunt

About two weeks ago I sent a resume to Coventry Health Care in Downers Grove, IL for an associate actuarial analyst position. A few days later one of their actuarial directors contacted me by e-mail to set up a phone interview. I had the interview this morning. It seemed to go very well.

Until now, when I've talked to anyone about specific positions it has kind of seemed like the type of position Acuity advertised at the end of school semesters. You know, no specific project to hire for, but there are a slew of candidates coming available, so let's check out the pool and see if anyone strikes us as amazing. If we find any really impressive candidates, hire them just because it'll be a good general investment for projects we have coming down the road.

This interview seemed a bit different in that there is a specific project the actuarial director has and she contacted me because the skill set on my resume matches what the project needs pretty well. Kind of like, "Ooo, this looks like a good fit. Let's call him, make sure he doesn't sound like a total loser on the phone." I must not have. I was invited down for an on site interview next Monday.

It's not a job offer yet, but I'm pretty excited.

Job Search Methodology

(Expanding on a linkedin discussion board topic)

"How to get hired" books will tell you there are two approaches to job searching: front door and side door. Front door means the traditional methods of sending in resumes to apply for open positions. Side door means directly contacting the people in charge of hiring, or who can influence hiring. The books say side door methods are far more likely to actually result in getting a job. Which is not to say that calling the head actuary at some company will get you hired there. You may just be politely told he or she is busy and may or may not get back to you. In fact, more often than not that's what happens. However, most of the resumes we send through the front door get an equally dead-end response, but we do that anyway, right? The important thing is to use both methods. If the books are correct, odds are one of the side door attempts are what will get us a job. But people also get hired through traditional channels, so also keep blasting out those resumes.

One of the side door methods I've used are talking to people I know who know people in the insurance industry, e.g. my insurance agent or a coworker whose dad works in IT for a local company. That hasn't gotten me anywhere, but it could have and it was easy. Another was suggested to me by a recruiter. Use the soa.org actuarial directory advance search feature to find the names of actuaries at organizations in which you are interested. Click their names to get contact information - usually numbers at the companies they work for. The search is pretty good, alowing for partial words to narrow it down. For example, I typed "WI" in the state and "G" in the city to get actuaries in Green Bay, WI. "M" in the city got me both Madison and Milwaukee . . . and Mequon and Marshfield and Menomenee Falls. The point is, just searching by state was too broad, but it's possible to narrow it down. That let me pick several local companies and contact their head actuaries. Just called them up and let them know I'd like to work for their companies and wanted some advice on the skills they look for that I should emphasize or acquire on my resume. Of the five or so I've called, I only actually got to talk with two of them, but they were good conversations. And a step ahead of not talking to anyone.

I've got to admit, though, what seems to have been the most successful is simply sending out resumes to positions I've found through internet job board searches, i.e good old front door methods. I've mostly used http://www.actuary.com/ and http://www.americasjobexchange.com/. Some of the positions I applied for put me in contact with a couple recruiters. One of them set up a phone interview. Another phone interview is with a company responding directly to a resume I sent.

I haven't gotten beyond a phone interview yet, but I keep plugging away. I keep applying for open positions for which I'm qualified and continue preparing for exam FM to be more attractive in those positions and maybe qualify for more. Yeah, the field is tight, but someone gets hired, right? Who knows what goes through interviewers' minds when they're making their decisions? I figure if I just do the best I can, eventually I'll make a good impression on someone. And as competetive as it may seem when there are 100 applicants for a position . . . when I was looking for a mainframe developer job it was 300 applicants. So hey, it's not as bad as it could be.

/elated

"Congratulations! A preliminary analysis of your test results shows that you were successful in achieving the passing score established by the SOA/CAS/CIA for Exam P/1 (Probability)."

/disappointed

"A preliminary analysis of your test results shows that you were not successful in achieving the passing score established by the SOA/CAS/CIA for Exam P/1 (Probability)."

Stress

I ran a red light yesterday. One of those roads without much traffic, but with a light in the middle of it? I saw the corner, saw no traffic anywhere around, but missed the light and totally blew through it. That's not something I do. I'm a very good driver, very safe. I guess I was just preoccupied with . . . well, Becky and I had been talking about jobs I was going to apply to and I just started thinking about the whole unemployment thing. It's been over seven months looking for jobs and being told no over and over and over. I handle stress really well, but that's a lot. I guess I'm starting to feel it a little bit.

Over the past week I've put in applications at United Health Group, Pizza Hut, Pondersa, Applebee's, Papa John's and Jimmy John's. Hopefully something pans out so I have some type of job while taking my class.

Coverage

Insurance companies can drop people or refuse to cover people or charge higher premiums for all sorts of reasons that those people may perceive as arbitrary. The classic example is that males under the age of about 25 are charged higher premiums for auto insurance. I've talked to a lot of people who think that is entirely unfair. Most of them males under the age of 25. They swear that they're not getting in any accidents and they know, they absolutely know, that girls get in more accidents than boys do. So what gives?

"Fair" actually has very little to do with it. And your anecdotal experience is totally irrelevant. Even if it's true that girls get in more accidents than boys . . . I mean, I don't know whether or not it is . . . but even if it is true, all the insurance company cares about is that boys cost them more money than girls. For whatever reason. Maybe boys drive faster, which in turn means the "few" accidents they get into are more severe. And funerals, or extended hospital stays, are significantly more expensive than fender benders. The "why" is something insurance companies look at and can tailor specific plans' rates around related factors like number of speeding tickets. However, the general principal is that when they set rates, it has less to do with you specifically than it does with risk factors associated with your subset of the population.

We're human beings, though. Knowing what insurance companies are doing doesn't necessarily change how we feel about it. I understand that. When Acuity began using credit profiling to influence premiums, that didn't really feel fair. It felt like they were denying insurance to the population that would need it the most in a crisis. The company leadership explained it to employees very well. Explained that there were some very careful studies done to verify that there is no correlation between credit score and socio economic status. They weren't discriminating against the poor. Credit score varies virtually identically regardless of if you're rich or poor. It's just that low credit score correlated significantly with higher insurance risk. They don't really know why and other than making sure they aren't breaking any discrimination laws, they don't care.

The one that still gets me in that irrational, "hey not fair!" part of my brain is denying home coverage to people with certain types of dogs. Not just the stereotypical "bad" dogs, like Pit Bulls or Rottweilers, either. Acuity would flat out turn down coverage if you had a Siberian Husky or German Shephard. Even with no "incident" to prompt a risk assessment. The dogs I would want if we could get one were on the list. My parents couldn't get coverage with Acuity.

But "fair" actually has very little to do with it, right? It's just the risk levels the company leadership sets as acceptable and the rest is math.

So anyway. My brother-in-law, Mike, knows someone whose insurance policy was recently dropped by Acuity. I guess that individual empathizes with my employment being "dropped" by Acuity. He, in turn, knows a recruiter in Milwaukee that sometimes looks for mainframe programmers. He passed her name on to Mike who passed it on to me and I'll be contacting her today.

Course Set

I'm still looking for a mainframe developer job. Those are looking scarce, though. At least relative to the number of job seekers. Great Lakes answered my e-mail to let me know, "You weren't lacking any specific skill. It's just that we had nearly 400 applicants." So, a career change is looking more and more . . . well, not so much appealing as adviseable.

Which got us thinking about, if I'm going to take an entry level position, does it have to be as a programmer? No. And why not do something to broaden my skill set? So I am registering for school . . . but not something that would take so long as law school. I'm going to retake some math coursework at UWGB that will prepare me for the Actuarial exams. If a good mainframe developer position comes along, I'll take that. Otherwise, after this next school year I'll expand my search to include actuarial positions.

Until school starts, because we have to leave this home, we're moving in with Becky's parents in Wisconsin Rapids until we can find a place in Green Bay.

Changing course

Getting an answer from Great Lakes was a critical point for us. With the pace things seem to move, even if we hear back from Land's End, Kohl's or Transamerica this week for an interview, and even if I were to get a job, by the time the process is over, it could be past the June 11th cutoff date for us to be out of our house. At the very least, so close to June 11th that we are concerned that we wouldn't have time to find a place to which we can move before we have to be out. So we're looking for a 3 bedroom place with the best accomodations for moving out when I get a job. Our first choice is here on the south side of Sheboygan, so our kids stay in the same school in the very unhappy chance that I still don't have a job in September. Second choice is to move to somewhere else in the Sheboygan area, still close to our support network of friends.

It's also become a critical juncture in my job search itself. That's three places now that have told me some variation of, "We're looking for someone with job skills more closely aligned with the projects we're working on." That's not an answer I expected to get when I started my job search back in January. I've got more than 10 years experience working on IBM mainframes with COBOL and DB2 and the whole suite of acronyms that goes with that. However, pretty much everything we did at ACUITY was home grown. I guess there enough unemployed mainframe programmers who do have experience with specific software packages that companies can look for candidates who know the packages used at the company.

We kind of figured we wanted to find a job within a day of Becky's parents, and not any further from mine, so I've been looking in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa. It didn't feel like we were limiting the search too much, but given the market, maybe we are. So I'm going to expand the search to anywhere. I'm also going to expand the type of work to any developer position as opposed to just positions for experienced developers, i.e. I'm open to taking entry level jobs despite the lower salary. Lower salary is certainly better than no salary. That also opens the possiblity to being a java developer. I took those online programming courses and had enough personal experience with website development that I'd feel comfortable with an entry level position doing it.

Related to that, as long as I'm looking at entry level work, I'm going to go ahead and look at a career change. Law school is still a consideration. I'm going to take a practice LSAT tomorrow. More promising, though, I'm going to see what's involved in retaking Calc II and III, Stats and Probability to prepare for the first two actuarial exams. That would take less time, only about two part time semesters of school, and be less expensive than law school, and just as satisfying. Maybe even more. Math was fun.

Gray Day

It's raining. The kind of nice steady, slow drizzle that I really love. The only problem with it is that I'm going out camping with Jack and Ben tonight. There was a brief, "what if it's still raining?" thing that Becky brought up . . . but we'll still go out. It's just over night and the forecast says just drizzly all day, clearing up late.

The big downer of the day was hearing a "no" back from Great Lakes. Becky and I had a long, more serious conversation about applying to law school, or what other options are available if I change careers. Take some refresher math courses and the actuarial exams? I'll look at that.

I mean, I'm still looking for a mainframe developer job until some other plan is finalized, but if that is continuing to go nowhere . . .

The waiting game?

Well no. I'm not actually just waiting. Since, you know, I'm not actually employed. I'm still checking job listings, still checking in at LinkedIn, still sending out resumes. But I am waiting for a call. I interviewed with Great Lakes Higher Education last Wednesday and they said they'd make their decision "in the next week or two". Between them getting back to me so quickly about an interview, the professionalism of the interview itself and the paperwork they had me fill out afterwords, they seem to really be on the ball. So I'm letting myself hope for a call sooner rather than later. And sooner starts today.

The waiting part of job hunting is driving Becky absolutely batty. She just wants to hear SOMETHING DANGIT AND SOMETHING NOW!!!! Even if it's "no", at least that's an answer we can solidify plans around. When she's at home she is practically sitting on the phone. She's trying to get out and do things to take her mind of it. This morning, for example, she took Tabby to Plymouth to go with some friends to the Plymouth Library story time.

So as part of the continued job hunt, I've got my resume posted on Dice.com. Recruiters see it and can call me. This morning for example, I've gotten two calls. One for a position at Lands End and another for an unspecified six month contract position.

That's fantastic, but here's a question it raises. I've been working with a Tami Sailing from Stratagem on positions in the Madison area. I've really enjoyed working with Tami, she's been very communicative and helpful. But she's not the one who called me this time. So the question, which I ask in general not just specific to this situation, is do I work with the recruiter who called me? The first one? Or the one who calls 5 minutes later? Or the one who sent an e-mail last night? Or do I wait for Tami to call? Or do I call her?

I went with "call her". I think that's only fair given the work she's done to try and find me positions in the area. I'd feel really bad to let some other recruiter submit me for a position only to have Tami call and ask if she can. But is that fair to the recruiters who called me? I'm not totally sure what the right answer is, just trying to be fair first to people I know, I guess.

Anyway, I'm waiting on a call back from Tami.

Hello World

I've kind of done this before. Not exactly the blog thing, but I had a website. It was more of an html exercise. I did some fun things setting up whole sets of pages where I could display pictures of the family, talk about hobbies, post news. So here I go again, but this time I'll let e-blogger take care of the site maintenance details while I handle post updates.

What motivated me to get back into it? Well, I went to a job fair last week in Green Bay. While there I attended a forum on using social media in your job search presented by Lisa Cruz of Red Shoes PR, Inc. She emphasized that a modern job search really needs to include LinkedIn, Twitter and a blog. So here I am.

I wish I'd gotten the advice back in January. I've been using LinkedIn the whole time. At least, I've been listed on LinkedIn, posted a resume and have contacted others and been contacted by them through LinkedIn. But that and Dice.com (my Dad's advice) has been about the limit of my online activity.

I'm actually waiting to hear back from Great Lakes Higher Education whom I interviewed with last Wednesday. The interview seemed to go well. They seemed to be highering for positions that do exactly what I've got 12 years experience doing. I should find out how well the interview went this week.