Catlin Interview Process

Hi, yes, I have a telephone interview scheduled for early March for their Actuarial recruitment. Anyone else had this yet?

Do you know how many people they're recruiting?

Dreamer994, I have a telephone Interview around that time too. Any help would be really useful !!!

Thanks

I think it varies by vacancy type - they are recruiting for Finance, Claims, Underwriting, Actuarial and Catastrophe Aggregate Management. Anyone know any details?

How did everyone's telephone interview go? I have mine in a couple of days, any help on questions asked, especially tricky ones would be much appreciated!

BTW I was told recruitment is 12 in each department?

Haven't been able to get confirmation on numbers but it appears that there are four days of assesment centres next week. Anyone been called?

Anyone going for an A/C this week? Any fedback or advice really appreciated!

That really surprises me! I was offered after a/c (didn't accept as I chose an alternative offer) but found them really professional and helpful. The strategy of asking you the same questions is probably to test how robust your evidence is. If you don't have more than one example for each question on a competency based question then you demonstrating a lack of experience surely?

Well done on the offer!

I don't think I showed lack of experience, I think the HR dept showed a lack of efficiency. I referred to the assessment day and she actually got offended and deemed it inappropriate! Clearly we had polar opposite experiences in terms of telephone interviews, but from what I've heard off people your good experience was rare. What company did you end up going with in the end?

Catlin has outsourced the early stages of their recruitment process to Milkround this year (don't know if they did the same last time), so you would have spoken to an independent HR bod, not one of Catlin's.

I also had (and failled) a tele interview for them this week. I realise this will come across as sour grapes, but I'm not really sure whether these competency questions really help select the best candidate. The lady I spoke to made the point of asking for different scenarios than I'd written on the form (admittedly for different competencies) - which meant I had to fall back to examples that were perhaps less relevent than they should have been.

I guess a bit more preparation would have helped me, but there was no indication that they'd be asking more competency q's. I can't help but feel that doing these over the phone only really selects the candidates best at bullshitting in pressurised situations. Hell, maybe that's what Catlin are looking for. Bit annoyed though as I thought my skillset matched their published req's for the position quite well, and I didn't get the chance to demonstrate this.

Rant over. Back to the applications :)

LondonGraduate, out of interest, which stream did you get accepted for?

@hohoho:

My sentiment EXACTLY!! Thanks for summing it up for me :)

So were the questions exactly the same as the application form, word for word? that seems a bit strange.

Also, did they ask you to explain something technical assuming they have no prior knowledge? This question always catches me out as I don't know the level of complexity the subject matter they are expecting me to explain should be.
In this situation what should I choose?
BSE? Standard deviation? Calculating the mean? call/put option?

Even if they don't ask this someone give me a good one please since its bound to come up sooner or latter!

It was the same as the application form, for me anyway. More of your typical HR questions - they do like to make their department seem important!

They asked me no technical questions, purely "can you give me a time when...", and she never listened when I spoke, interjecting with "mhmm, yes, I see" at random times...at least I think she was - her keyboard sounded like a derailed train :)

Good luck...I hear it's a fantastic company to work for and their history is very interesting...just getting passed the typical HR BS is the hard part!

Hi people, was wondering if anyone had a telephone interview with Catlin recently? were the questions really the same as the application form? any technical questions? I'm applying for underwriting, the company seems really good

Hello everyone, Ive got a telephone interview with Catlin for there Underwriting programme and I would be very grateful if peopl can clarify what type of questions I can expect?

tano, its basically questions taken from your application form, has anyone been to next stage of the process? anyone know what they ask and what the tasks are? any help would be appreciated please

donell251088 , next stage is assessment centre. It consists of group excercise, interview, written excercise and role play.

Interview will be with someone in the department you applied. General competancy based.

Group exercise is with 8 people with 6 assessors sitting in the room. Its about some colleagues from foreign country and you as a group preparing some activities for them. Lots to read and a few calculation e.g hotel costs etc.

Written excercise is wrting a letter given some information they provide.

Role play is with a senior face to face. You are a manager of a construction site and must talk to a senior worker about their performance.

Generally, I found the tasks fairly tight for time.

Anyways, hope that helps.

has anyone heard back as to the result of their phone interview and whether they got through to the next round interview??

qwert57 cheers for the advice about the next stage that follows the telephone interview. does anyone know what they ask at the first face to face interview?

hey guys,

I have manged to make it past the telephone interview for underwriting and I am going to be having the face-2-face interview. Does anyone know what sort of questions I should expect? is it just the normal competencies and why underwriting? and why insurance? and why Catlin?

Also, i was told that i would have to sit some numerical and verbal reasoning tests. I know they are SHL, but from my experience there are two types of SHL numerical tests:

- the really hard ones, where you have to multiple calculations, and examples include: Lloyds of London, Deloitte, Centrica

- fairly easy ones, where you have to do a few calculations, and examples include: BAE, PWC, Barclays Capital, BDO, Zurich, UBS, HSBC, RBS.

Does anyone know which of the numerical tests they use??? CHEERS GUYS!!!!

Hi stevie, I'm applying for underwriting at Catlin as well. Could you tell me what your telephone interview was like?

uclgraduate10 - when is your telephone interview? I booked a slot for Tuesday 5th... underwriting for me too.

how did you go about answering the following question on the application form?

How do you see the Catlin Development Programme fitting with your future career plans??

Since I cannot differentiate it from the question:

Why do you want to specifically join the Catlin Development Programme?

Any hints or guidance would be greatly appreciated:)

how did you go about answering the following question on the application form?

How do you see the Catlin Development Programme fitting with your future career plans??

Since I cannot differentiate it from the question:

Why do you want to specifically join the Catlin Development Programme?

Any hints or guidance would be greatly appreciated:)

blake_89...

how did your tele-interview go? was it similar to the comments above from 2009 suggest? any help much appreciated!

Cheers

hey blake_89 and yepyepyep, how long after you sent your application, did you hear back about the telephone interview? thanks very much and good luck!!:) hopefully someone will be able to reply to your qu.

soap....

think it was around a week. I sent it off a week and a half before the deadline and heard back by email late last week. Got my telephone interview on Fri, but think they are running interviews all through Nov. good luck!

hey thanks for the quick reply:) hopefully should hear from them soon as I sent it off just a day before the deadline:O ....thanks for the luck! best of luck to you too:)

yepyepyep - Hey, yes it was just as expected - a number of the usual competency questions and why Catlin etc etc!

soap - I sent my application in a while ago and then invited for a telephone interview 4 days later.

I sent my application on the day of the deadline (2nd Nov) and received an invite today(4th Nov) for a phone interview for next week.

hope this helps

hi guys, thanks for all the info for the phone interview. I applied for the actuarial grad programme and just had a couple of questions:

1) do any of the questions test your commercial awareness (like stories from the news or legislation changes etc.)?

2) are any of the questions related to the growth of the firm, their weakness, describing the chosen stream of business applied for or other streams etc.?

if I could get a reply before next Monday (my interview day) that would be great!! Thanks!!

Hi FE10MD,

I had my telephone interview a month back.
They didn't ask me any question to test my commercial awareness.
They asked me questions around my interest in the division, my weakness, and usual questions like tell me about a situation when...
They did ask about how much I knew about the firm...it was supposedly my MISTAKE that I sounded very confident on that, as a result the interviewer started asking me about the history of the firm ... lol
I hope this helps you and best of luck with the interview...

Tendie, how did your interview go today? thanks

anyone been through the face to face interview yet?
any advice would be much appreciated!

Hi Unicode,
I passed the telephone interview round and the next stage was numerical and verbal tests, which I am always pathetic at and as usual failed. I think the next stage would have been face to face interview, which will be held sometime in late December.

hey guys,
I have my face-to-face interview in London tomorrow morning, will give details when it's done! I'm applying for Actuarial too tendie!

jobseeker, m sorry to hear that mate. the next stage is indeed face to face and its being held now..
hey joblease, good luck for tomorrow..m eager to hear abt it, thanks!

Hey guys, got a face to face interview with them in the next couple of days...what are the questions like? Email says competency based...but there will be a business partner in there too, any commercial awareness questions?? I hate the 'current issues affecting the company' questions!

Good luck everybody!

Had my interview today - its basically another competency style interview and I personally thought my interviewers were extremely pleasant and found the interview to be relaxing even though there were two of them.

To answer your question CaptainTrips, I'm pretty sure there were no commercial awareness questions, but I imagine there will be at the A/C if you get through.

hi biddeth
Thanks for posting your interview experience, its very helpful. what competencies did they ask if you dont mind me asking? thanks a lot

Considering that at this stage we are in competition against each other it would be foolish to share the exact questions and competencies as it will give people who haven't yet had the interviews an unfair advantage.

Good point - however there are around 6 different schemes so we are not in direct competition with each other. Personally, I'm applying for the finance and accountancy scheme.

Regarding the questions, I can't remember them exactly anyway, as they were pretty generic.

anyone through to the final round AC? or has been through it last year?
the email says that thrs 2 interviews, a group exercise, an in-tray excercise and a paper based ability test..not sure what the last one is!
any input wud b appreciated!
thanks

Has anyone heard back from AC?

Have you heard back from AC?

nope.. hvnt heard back! wen did u hav ur AC?

I had mine on Friday. She said she would call us at the beginning of the week ...

I have my telephone interview this Thursday (Underwriting stream) and I was wondering if any of you that have already completed this process and are past the AC stage could share some insight (Seeing as though we're not in direct competition)??
Obviously I have read that you are asked the same questions as in the application form and I was wondering if any of you had this same experience? Are there any commercial awareness or firm specific questions or is it just a straightforward competency type interview? It's my first telephone interview so any help would be much appreciated as I am pretty apprehensive! Thanks