College Students, Ambivalent Or Excited, Apply For Insurance Jobs

Jan. 05--MetroHartford Alliance, which sponsored Wednesday's Insurance and Financial Services Career Fair, hopes that college students like Justin Schaffer end up settling in the Hartford region instead of choosing the major cities 100 miles down the road.

Schaffer, a marketing major at Eastern Connecticut State University, has interned at hedge funds during his college career.

A Fairfield County native, Schaffer said, "Personally, I don't know if I even want to live in Connecticut." But, he said, few Boston or New York companies were recruiting on his campus and there were a few promising options at the career fair including Lincoln Financial and Prudential.

Major insurers including Aetna, Travelers, Voya, Prudential, UnitedHealth, Swiss Re and ConnectiCare sponsored tables, as did a few insurance agencies, commission-only insurance sales firms and Webster and People's banks.

Most of the 500 students who attended the fair are from Connecticut, or at least going to school here. Students from UConn, Central, Southern and Eastern Connecticut State were most heavily represented, but schools as far away as Washington, D.C., New Orleans and Vermont were on name tags, too.

Many of the companies were recruiting for both internships and entry-level jobs.

Matt Spencer, who was hired in human resources at Aetna after graduating from Central Connecticut State University three years ago, said the insurer had about 160 intern slots and nearly as many full-time jobs.

"A lot of the early career jobs are filled by former interns," he said.

Emily DiMatteo, a sophomore at Villanova University from West Hartford, wants to try out the insurance field this summer. Her father owns his own construction insurance firm, and her mother is underwriting director at Travelers, she said. DiMatteo said, "There's so many great insurance companies in Hartford," and she wants to see what a career in the field would be like.

Former Aetna intern Alexandra Joel has been in Aetna's HR department for less than a year. "I couldn't have pictured a better place to start off. It's a great company, great culture."

Some of the MBA students were finding the internship slots a bit scarcer, however.

Billy Sedlmeier, a 28-year-old MBA candidate at Southern Connecticut State University, said his first job after graduating from ECSU was a commission-only insurance sales job. So Sedlmeier got a union construction job -- his father and grandfather were in the trades -- so that he could get a master's degree without borrowing. He said three companies were looking for interns like him.

Nishant Gupta, an MBA candidate at UConn in Hartford, worked for more than five years in India's business capital, including for multinational consulting firm Accenture. But, he said, Accenture would not hire him for an internship because it doesn't sponsor work visas for immigrants. Unlike most of the firms at the fair, Voya does.

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