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Starting a career as a trainee: “Insurance sounds like old men to many”

2022-04-28T06:05:02.342Z


Semret Haile actually wanted to be a doctor, but then she ended up with an insurance company for a trainee program. Here she tells what she likes about the industry - and what her job has to do with hacker attacks.


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Trainee Semret Haile in the London office: "Always meeting new people and moving house"

Photo: private

The start of working life is exciting, exhausting - and often completely different than planned.

In the series "My first year on the job", young professionals tell how they experienced this time.

This time: Semret Haile, 28, is doing a traineeship at an insurance company.

“If I'm asked about my job at a party, I never say that I work for an insurance company.

Otherwise my counterpart will think I have the most boring job in the world!

Insurance, that sounds like paperwork and old men to many.

I too had these prejudices.

Today I know that if something happens in the world, a natural disaster for example, it will affect the insurance industry, where nothing is 100% predictable.

That makes it an exciting place to work.

Since September 2020 I have been a trainee at a global specialist insurer.

We insure everything possible: classic cars for private individuals, for example, IT systems for companies or even the transport of a whale.

At least that's what my colleagues told me.

I used to always want to be a doctor.

My father works as a nurse and often talked about everyday life in the clinic.

I did an internship there in ninth grade and it was awful.

I couldn't handle seeing people with open wounds.

Suddenly my dream job was gone and I didn't know what to do.

Nobody else in my family went to university, I didn't have any role models.

To this day, one thing is particularly important to my parents: that I have a job.

Job offer thanks to LinkedIn profile

Instead of medicine, I studied industrial engineering.

The subject combines technical and economic content, which sounded like many career opportunities.

I owe the fact that I ended up in the insurance industry to my LinkedIn profile.

I had just finished my Masters when a headhunter wrote to me about it.

She advertised a trainee program with my current employer, with a station in London.

I was lured abroad, but not so much by insurance.

Nevertheless, I applied.

And at the end of the application process I was so enthusiastic that I turned down another position at a chemical company.

As a trainee, I work in various departments of the company and can decide for myself which areas I want to get a taste of.

I spent the first nine months in sales underwriting, my main area.

There we take care of the risk assessment for insurance contracts.

Later I was in strategy for three months, learning how the company works and which topics are strategically interesting for it.

I then worked in what is known as technical underwriting, where the focus is on the rules of risk assessment, among other things.

Insurance against hacker attacks

With ordinary insurance, for example for a car, as an insurer you know how expensive it can be and how often damage occurs.

This is different with special insurance.

You have to reevaluate every insurance policy.

I find cyber insurance, i.e. insurance against hacker attacks, particularly exciting.

As an underwriter, I have to assess how much damage such an attack could cause to a company - and then calculate the costs for the appropriate insurance.

If the hacker paralyzes the company's entire production, it will be expensive.

At the beginning of the trainee program I didn't expect to have so much responsibility.

In some cases, insurance amounts are in the millions.

In my calculations, I base my calculations on similar cases and check, for example, how well the company's data is secured.

Sometimes I also interview the company's IT managers and try to find out if the employees are trained in IT security.

So I can work analytically and with people at the same time - for me it's the perfect mix.

It's a great advantage that I get a taste of so many departments during my traineeship.

I get to know the whole company, can build up a network and grow with every new task.

But the constant changes are also exhausting: always meeting new people and moving.

In every department I start again from scratch.

That's why I'm looking forward to returning to my hometown of Frankfurt am Main after my traineeship.

I was offered a job there.«

Have you just started your career yourself and would like to tell us about it?

Then write to us at SPIEGEL-Start@spiegel.de.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-04-28

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