Great Insurance Jobs’ Cofounder Roger Lear is here to help you and your family overcome obstacles to your career and job search. This month, he offers tips for helping spread the word about the job opportunities in insurance.
Q: My niece will graduate from college soon and I’d like her to consider a career in insurance claims. What would you say to pique her interest?
A: The insurance industry asks the same about themselves almost daily: How will one of the world’s largest industries get the word out that it has jobs and great, stable careers? The insurance industry finds itself at a crossroads with a retiring workforce (400,000 are ready to retire in the next two years) alongside billions being poured into insurtech startups, changing how the industry will evolve for years to come. With so much excitement and opportunity, why do the excellent career paths offered in our industry still fly under the “cool jobs” radar, going undiscovered by younger people?
The claims industry is not just about cars and homes anymore, as the Progressive and GEICO commercials may lead many to believe. It is about artificial intelligence, drones, mobile applications, telematics, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, document management systems, and so much more. Claims professionals today are technology experts learning how to settle claims using industry-changing tools. It is just the beginning of this technology revolution.
For your niece, I would also remind her that the insurance industry is recession-proof. The unemployment rate in this industry hovers around two percent. While COVID-19 has decimated so many industries over the last five months, most insurance companies saw very few layoffs. It is an industry that promotes from within, and as technology keeps advancing, so will claims jobs and opportunities. With so many insurance professionals leaving the industry, the vast gap created will also yield exciting career advancements. Anyone entering a claims job will be fast-tracked to future roles that may not even exist today. Talk about exciting!
The insurance industry is working very hard to get the word out about the excellent jobs. A great resource if you are in college is finding a chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma (gammaiotasigma.org). They exist to educate and build a college student talent pipeline exclusively for the insurance industry. This organization has been instrumental in placing hundreds of students with high-paying insurance industry jobs. GIS chapters are dedicated to educating students and are a powerful resource to help students gain valuable information about insurance jobs.
Another entry point for many is an internship with a claims department. For example,
@TravelersCareers has a great internship program that was recognized by WayUp as a top 100 internship program in the country out of all large companies. A claims internship on your resume is powerful and will open doors for your niece that she never imagined.
The future claims professional has a great, stable, and exciting future. Maybe one of the best-kept secrets about a job in claims is the opportunity to directly work with customers and settle their claims in a time of great need. The skillset needed to close claims and keep customers happy are tools that will drive your insurance claims career for a long time. The difference moving forward is the claims technology you will have in your toolbox that will allow you to do your job more efficiently, so you have the opportunity to service your clients. Claims jobs rock, and the future is bright.
Got a question for Roger? Email him at Roger@GreatInsuranceJobs.com.