Margaret Milkint.

When it comes to IT employment in the insurance industry, the past year has been something of a roller coaster, says Margaret Resce Milkint, a partner in Jacobson Executive Search, a Chicago-based insurance staffing firm. At the end of 2001 and into early 2002, “We were alarmed at the number of unemployed IT professionals,” she says.

“Then, coming into the second quarter, we saw the beginnings of a turnaround. Now I would say the turnaround is here. We’ve seen needs for CIOs at the director and VP levels and for project managers.”

Although insurance companies, like many others, were quick to scale back hiring with the economic downturn, they soon realized that “The need for the sophisticated IT professional is here to stay,” says Milkint.

“They realize that without those folks, actuaries, underwriters and claims people are at a significant disadvantage. Their competitors are going to kill them if they aren’t able to keep up the with the pace of IT sophistication and complexity.”

In fact, Milkint is advising her clients to seize the hiring opportunity right now, “because talent is available now that probably won’t be available in six months.”

Hot skills and niche skills
Although insurance company recruiters are not yet scrambling for talent, many are quite interested in finding IT people with specific niche skills. These tend to vary by company (see chart), but almost everyone prefers a well-rounded candidate with interpersonal and project management abilities – someone who can see the big picture and integrate systems.

Dave Rosewall.

Dave Rosewall, senior recruitment consultant for the St Paul Companies (St Paul, MN), notes that he’s brought in several people at the architect level. “They need to have the ability to take an enterprise-wide view of things, help with technology introduction and look ahead five to ten years.”

Matthew Hintz.

Matthew Hintz, VP for human resources at Cigna Systems (Hartford, CT), says the company is “seeing the need for people who really understand the discipline and methodology of project management.” He adds that “All the skills related to portal technologies are very hot, and Java is a hot language from a developer standpoint. We look for tools like WebX and also collaboration tools which give us the ability to facilitate across sites.”

Lori Cunningham.

Lori Cunningham, human resource director for IT at Liberty Mutual (Portsmouth, NH), says “Our success as a technology shop often centers on our ability to quickly integrate new technology into a complex, multi-platform environment. That includes Web-enabling our applications and architecting our systems to maximize performance.”

The move to wireless connectivity on a broader scale, coupled with devices like PDAs and intelligent cell phones, is an area of significant growth and change, she adds. “Web-based, customer-centric applications, self-service applications and related ways of doing business are going to drive significant technology change. This includes vigilance against improper use, identity theft, online attacks and denial of services.”

Soft skills count, too
You’re likely to find that insurance companies are interested in your soft skills as well as your tech savvy. The insurance business tends to see IT as very much a support function with a “customer” focus, although customers and clients for the IT group are, of course, the internal departments that depend on fast and reliable data.

“Our folks need to conduct meetings and communicate with our clients,” says Andy Baker, human resources staff manager for the technical recruiting team at Allstate (Northbrook, IL). “You can’t stress enough how important soft skills are, and oral and written communication skills are probably at the top of the list.”

Cigna’s Hintz agrees. “We’re really looking for leadership and people management skills and a focus on collaboration.”

Liberty Mutual’s Cunningham lists advanced analytical and problem-solving skills, excellent communication, the ability to negotiate and influence, and a commitment to learning. “Needless to say, integrity is critical as well.”

It helps to know the business
Although not absolutely essential, an understanding of the insurance industry is always a plus, recruiters say. A knowledge of state privacy requirements, for example, can be very useful to an IT developer working on a customer database. Familiarity with other state regulations can help, too.

Rama Prasad, VP of the IT solutions design group at CNA, offers an example of how such regulations can provide challenges for IT staffs. “State departments of motor vehicles require insurance companies to send them particular sets of information,” he says.

“But not all of them are asking for the same information, or for information in the same format, or at the same time. It’s our job to come up with a solution that lets us meet all these requirements efficiently.”

Chris Wilson.

Training provided
Most insurance companies are willing to train their IT people in the basics of the insurance business, in addition to providing technical training and continuing education opportunities. “Especially in jobs like business systems analyst, understanding the insurance business is becoming more and more critical for us,” says Chris Wilson, a recruiter at Fireman’s. “Anyone in the company can take our insurance-based training, and we recommend it.”

Many companies offer a huge variety of online courses in both technical and business subjects. Cigna, for example, has an “Early Career Leadership” training program.

“We started it a couple of years ago,” Hintz says. “We’re taking employees at the three- to five-year level, who are just beginning to manage teams, and we’re putting them through a multi-year rotational program.”

The trainees spend time in infrastructure, application development and architecture rotations throughout Cigna’s businesses, take a core curriculum of leadership development courses and are given management experience.

The company also sponsors the Cigna Technology Institute, a mix of classroom and online training.

Diversity at work
Like most major industries today, insurance seeks a diverse workforce. “In the five years I’ve been recruiting, we’ve always brought in about 40 percent women, so we’ve got a good balance here,” says the St Paul’s Rosewall. “In Minnesota we don’t have quite the diversity that there is in other parts of the U.S., but that has changed a lot in recent years.”

Female and minority IT folks are finding exhilarating and profitable jobs in this large industry. Here’s how some diverse IT professionals are building their careers in insurance.

“Our job is to take care of business needs,” says Rama Prasad, VP for a CNA IT solutions group.

Rama Prasad is VP of CNA’s solutions design group
“When the business decides what to do, we figure out how to do it,” says Rama Prasad, VP for the solutions design group within the IT department at CNA. On average, his group handles over fifty projects a month.

One of his projects is the data sets required by various state departments of motor vehicles. “We’re designing a system and a process under which the states can change their minds about the data they want, and we can address that very easily.

“Our job is to take care of our business needs today and tomorrow as well. We design systems in such a way that it lowers the cost of total ownership and the cost of maintenance.”

Prasad grew up in India. He received his BSME in 1982, just before he moved to the U.S. and began an MSCS program at the University of Missouri-Rolla. Armed with his 1985 MS, he worked for companies in several fields: Sprint, Ameritech, a dot-com, and then Sears. In 1995 he completed an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). A year ago he joined CNA.

Working in IT for an insurance company isn’t too far removed from the telecom and retail work he had done before, Prasad finds. “The terminology is different and a lot of the systems applications are different, but the issues you deal with as an IT manager are pretty much the same. It’s a very process-oriented job. If you’ve got a good process mind, you can learn any part of this business very quickly.

“The rest, of course, is people and technology. And you’ve got to be good in both those areas to succeed in any IT job. I’ve been in four different industries now, and I didn’t find insurance a very difficult business to learn.

“My simple advice to people starting off is, first and foremost, to get a solid educational foundation,” Prasad says. “Then identify a niche that you really enjoy – data warehousing, Cobol programming or whatever it is. And grow continuously after that, in terms of team playing, leadership and communication skills. Grow in all dimensions, not just technology.”

Mahalingam Kamalahasan of the Hartford: “You have to learn the business.”

Mahalingam Kamalahasan supports enterprise apps at the Hartford
Mahalingam Kamalahasan is an IT specialist supporting enterprise apps in the enterprise technologies services division of the Hartford. One of his apps is used by independent agents to submit quotes to the company. Another is a “rule engine” that lets business people use business logic instead of computer logic when constructing or changing rules for underwriting. “It’s very user friendly,” he says.

Kamalahasan has been with the Hartford for more than two years. Before that he was with a consulting firm and other companies, including two dot-coms. His specialty was coding and assembly language programming on mainframes.

Along with stability, the seamless integration between business and technology is a major advantage of working in insurance, Kamalahasan thinks. “With an insurance company the products are already available,” he notes. “We use the technology to ensure that the products reach the customer more efficiently.”

After completing his BSEE at the PSG College of Technology in Tamil Nadu, India, Kamalahasan moved to the U.S. and began his consulting career. The Hartford sponsored his MSCIT at Central Connecticut State University, and he’s now working on an MBA there, again sponsored by the Hartford.

“My director expects me to know the business very clearly, so I can architect my apps to meet the customers’ needs very flexibly,” he says. “He thinks it’s logical for me to do an MBA, and that’s why the company approved it.”

IT people interested in the insurance field should begin by doing consulting work for an insurance company, Kamalahasan suggests. “That would help them to learn both the technology and business,” he says. “In insurance you have to learn the business to be successful.”

D/C

– Michael Gates is a freelance writer and editor based in Jersey City, NJ.