Early career opportunities

Our culture empowers everyone to be themselves so they can do their best work and thrive.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a key focus for us, and though we have set ourselves some challenging targets within these areas, we're proud to say we're making progress against each – including reducing our gender pay gap. We use contextualised recruitment tools to help widen our pool of early careers candidates and partner with key charities and organisations to help us engage with under-represented groups across our four pillars of diversity and inclusion.

We also have several staff-led community groups across Hymans (LBGTQ+, Neurodiversity, Race, Faith, Disability and Gender) that meet regularly to discuss topical issues and develop ideas for improving our approaches. 

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Whether you're involved in helping our clients and customers build more secure financial futures or using your three annual volunteering days, we believe that each of our employees can make a positive difference and contribute towards achieving our purpose – together, building better futures.

We also care about the world around us, and have recently been certified as a B Corp. In addition to offering our employees matched personal carbon offsetting as part of our flexible benefits package, we're constantly investing in our Corporate Social Responsibility to support our communities and the environment. Our skills also mean we are uniquely placed to help address financial education and social inclusion via the Hymans Robertson Foundation, which 2% of our profits are invested into every year.

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We invest heavily in our people, ideas and technology, enabling you to have a long and fulfilling career with us.

In addition to a generous study support package, we also offer more informal methods of professional and personal development. Our award-winning online learning platform, Aspire, makes learning more accessible – meaning you can develop how and when you want to.

While a significant number of our senior colleagues started their early career journeys with us, we celebrate the variety of career opportunities available to you within Hymans and believe that there isn't always a linear path to success. Many of our staff have benefitted from our flexible approach, having had the opportunity to gain exposure to different teams across the firm and follow their passions into new and exciting opportunities.

We also offer annual salary reviews and a profit-share scheme, so when the business does well, we all benefit.

If you are considering applying for one of our Early Career Programmes, we'd suggest doing a little bit of research first into the actuarial field – this is a great way to build your knowledge about the profession and stand out throughout our application process. A few good places to start are the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries website, the online and print resources from Inside Careers and the online publication 'The Actuary'. 

Our actuarial intake covers a number of our different Consulting Business Units including:

• Actuarial Public
• Actuarial Private
• Defined Contribution Consulting
• Investment DB; and 
• Insurance and Financial Services.

Actuarial Public: Our Actuarial Public team are the largest and most experienced LGPS-specific actuarial practice in the marketplace. Based in Glasgow, they help public sector pension funds to effectively manage risks while also meeting their long-term funding and investment objectives. You can find out more about the huge variety of work they do on their section of our website. Those that join this team will have the opportunity to be supported through their IFoA qualification, while gaining experience from a range of exciting projects across the Business Unit and developing their career in a way that suits them.

Actuarial Private: The largest of our Business Units, which comprises of both technical and client-facing teams. Graduates and interns joining the Actuarial Private Business Unit will be given an opportunity to spend time working across both specialisms as they build their skills in both mathematical modelling and client consulting, to help them decide which direction they would like their career to progress in. In both, you’ll have the opportunity to work on exciting projects to support private sector employers and scheme trustees to predict the financial risks affecting their defined benefit pensions, and you’ll work towards completing your IFoA qualification.

Defined Contribution Consulting: This is an exciting and growing area of our business, with DC now being the predominant main source of future pension contributions. Our team offers strategic, investment, governance, at-retirement and communications advice to a wide range of trustee and corporate clients. Similarly, the work you’ll be involved in as a graduate and intern is equally wide ranging, and we’d particularly encourage applications from people who are enthused by the stakeholder engagement element that this programme offers. Within this Business Unit, you’ll have the opportunity to study for either the IFoA of CFA exams, depending on how you’d like your career to progress. You can find out more about this team on their section of our website. 

Investment DB: The Investment DB Business Unit advises a diverse range of clients from large pension schemes and endowment funds to charities, other businesses and insurance companies. The team works closely with clients to design and monitor strategies that meet their objectives and liabilities whilst balancing their risk and return requirements – and are constantly thinking of new ideas to improve their portfolios. In this role, you’ll be involved in a breadth of projects that involve completing detailed technical analysis using our in-house models and providing tailored strategic consulting advice. You’ll also work towards either your IFoA or CFA qualification and will have the opportunity to work closely with colleagues across the business, including our specialist investment research and responsible investment teams.

Insurance and Financial Services: A relatively new addition to Hymans, our IFS team supports insurers and reinsurers to find intelligent solutions to tricky problems, ensuring better futures for their customers and shareholders. You’ll work towards your IFoA qualification as you get involved with a variety of projects – supporting our expert consultants across areas such as Insurance Investment and ALM, General Insurance, Longevity Consulting, Risk and capital and Product Development.

Our application windows open in autumn, and you can apply on our website using the links in the sections above.

If you’d like to discuss this confidentially beforehand, then please do reach out to us via chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk and a member of the Recruitment Team will be in touch with you directly. 

Diversity, equity and inclusion are important to our hiring practices and overall firm culture. Therefore, we are proud to recruit for our graduate and summer internship opportunities on the basis of your potential rather than your academic grades.

We don’t have any set minimum requirements in terms of academic achievement other than a confirmed ‘pass’ at undergraduate level for your academic degree. We also recognise that a degree from any university (and within any subject grouping) gives you an opportunity to gain valuable transferable skills that will be of great use to any employer – so we actively encourage applications from students from out with the traditional actuarial or mathematics fields often seen in our industry, and from students who have attended non-Russell group universities.

You may notice that part of our application asks you to share if you identify as coming from a lower socioeconomic background (if you are comfortable doing so). The information you provide within this section cannot put you at a disadvantage, but it may provide a positive uplift on your recorded academic achievements and application form to give us a fairer indication of your future potential.

We aim to keep the recruitment process for each of our programmes as straightforward and enjoyable as possible.

We won't just spend time assessing you as a candidate - each stage of our process is designed to help you to better your understanding of us as a business, our company culture and what you can expect throughout your time with us. For our graduate and internship programmes, you'll complete a short application form, psychometric tests and a two-stage interview – firstly with a member of our Human Resources team and then with the relevant business area.

We'd always suggest doing a bit of preparation ahead of each stage of our process to give you the best possible chance of progressing through and to help build your confidence in this area. We'd recommend the following resources:

• Application forms: Ahead of submitting your application, it's worth taking some time to think about what key information we’re looking for from you at this stage and how you can structure your answers to show this. We'll be assessing that you have the relevant skills and experience to carry out the job, that you’re enthusiastic about both the job and us as an employer and that you have potential to contribute to our organisation. Take a look at this short guide to filling out an application form on Prospects for more info.
• Psychometric tests: We use SHL as a provider for our psychometric assessments. They’re not an indicator of intelligence however they assess your reasoning and cognitive abilities to help us determine whether you have the skills required to do the job on offer. Though these can often seem daunting the great news is that you can increase your confidence with a bit of practice.
• Our numerical reasoning tests let us see how you deal with numbers. The test itself will offer you a few practice questions but you can also find some examples of these on sites such as Assessment Day. Our Job Focused Assessment is similar to a Situational Judgement Test, where you'll be given a list of work-related scenarios and asked to pick how you would progress from a list of options as well as answering a few questions on your personal drivers. Again, sites such as Assessment Day can give you a good indicator of what types of questions to expect.
• Interviews: Our interviews include a mixture of motivations, strengths, and competency-based questions. Our interviewers will always do their best to put you at ease, however the best way to ensure you do well on the day is to take a good look at our website and advert and think about the types of questions you may be asked in line with this.

You can find out more about the different types of interviews from sites such as Prospects. Our interviews are currently being carried out via MS Teams.

We have offices in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. When filling out your application form, you'll be asked to let us know which of our office locations and Business Units you are interested in. While we can't always guarantee a space for you in each of them, we'll do our best throughout the process to keep you informed about what business area and office location we are considering you against and will always consider the preferences you've selected.

We have a flexible working approach to working that includes flexible hours and hybrid working, often with two days spent in your office location each week. 

At Hymans we celebrate lifelong learning, and aim to give you every opportunity possible to develop within your career. We’ll encourage and support you to gain relevant professional qualifications, with appropriate time off to study and financial support for course fees and awards for passing some exams, where applicable. As a Hymans graduate, you’ll become a student member of either the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries or the CFA Institute. Please reach out to our recruitment team if you have any questions about these exams or the support available to you.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are important to our hiring practices and overall firm culture. You’ll have the opportunity in your application form to let us know if you identify as having a physical or neurological condition. We’ll also ask at each stage of the process whether we can support you further with any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process.

If you’d like to discuss this confidentially beforehand, then please do reach out to us via chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk and a member of the recruitment team will be in touch.

As well as posting key services and updates on our website, we’re also active on social media. You can visit our corporate LinkedIn account to keep up with new developments across our firm, but for those interested in hearing about the people of Hymans we’d suggest following our ‘Life at Hymans’ LinkedIn page.

The world of pensions can sometimes appear shrouded in mystery. We want to change that! We have several different ‘Doors Open’ opportunities that secondary school students can get involved in!

Our work experience programmes run in each of our offices once a year and offer the opportunity for those in their final two years of secondary school to visit our offices and gain an insight into what we do. Spaces are dependent on availability within your chosen office location, but we will always try to accommodate requests where possible! If this is something you’re interested in, get in touch with us via chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk.

If you have any specific questions about these opportunities or working with us then please do reach out at chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk.