In this blog post, we will introduce effective ways to incorporate your insurance product management and practical experience into your cover letter.
Background
“Don’t focus on the 2 that you lack, but become a person who sees the remaining 98.”
My father told me to always be a positive person. I took my father’s words at face value because they were so commonplace and ordinary. I thought my father was just saying what he always said because it was something you hear everywhere. However, when I became a high school student and started to have many worries and thoughts, my father sat me down and tried to have a serious conversation with me. My father told me about the truths of life.
My father was self-employed. He worked as a technician and always had worries, and he was the type of person who thought a lot about the direction of his business. After living like that for over 20 years, my father said that he had learned a lot from his experiences. He told me about those experiences and said that he hoped I wouldn’t go through the same trials and errors. My father said, “When you start worrying about things, everything seems like a worry.” That was true. When I think about what I am worried about, it is difficult to find a day when I am not worried about something.
Everything seems difficult and hard, and I start to feel like these worries are unique to me. However, when I look at it objectively, most of the time, the difficulties I face are nothing compared to the worries of others. But when I get caught up in my own subjective logic, I mistakenly think that I am special, and I start to think pessimistically. That is why my father told me not to overinterpret the 2% that I lack, but to become a person who can see the 98% that is good about myself. He told me to always keep this logic in mind and become a person who finds positivity in life. So, I recognized this and decided to live according to my father’s wishes.
College
“An attitude that pursues innovation without fear of change”
During college, I was active in a club. At the time, I was studying finance and economics while also studying my major, but I was also involved in a webzine club, where I created content. As a webzine club, we often compiled magazines and conducted interviews to fill them with content. However, the club was still relatively new, and we were not yet experienced enough to handle our assigned tasks properly. If the club had been around for more than five years, we would have been able to establish standard procedures for producing and printing the webzine, but that was not the case at the time.
So, I worked with the other members to fill in the gaps in our club, which had only been around for about two years. We created a manual on how to write articles. It was a guide to help people who were covering stories and writing articles for the first time to quickly adapt. At the same time, I tried to reedit the structure of the webzine and reorganize the publication process and the characteristics of the content. These efforts required a highly innovative mindset, and it was only possible because all the members were on the same page.
An attitude of not being afraid of change and pursuing innovation is something I learned through my club activities during college. Until then, I tended to passively do the work assigned to me and stick to the rules. However, while at university, I realized the importance of innovation through conducting interviews, planning content, and reorganizing the structure of the magazine. It was a valuable experience, especially because I was able to feel the joy and satisfaction that comes from creating something from scratch. Even after joining your company, I will strive to be an employee who actively proposes improvements when necessary in order to improve work processes.
Work experience
“Managing insurance products in the financial industry.”
Your company is a life insurance company, but I previously worked at a bank, not an insurance company. I worked as a temporary employee at a local post office bank and served as an intern. Working as a temporary intern meant that the work itself was often uncertain and unstable. I was not yet a regular employee, and my duties were not standardized, so it was a time when I needed to learn and work hard in many different areas. Therefore, even though I majored in finance, I felt that I had a lot to learn, so I worked with the intention of learning one thing at a time.
Specifically, I did mostly clerical work managing insurance products. Insurance products are not a core business at post office banks, but they have been emphasized recently. With the privatization of banks becoming more prevalent, post office banks also found it difficult to escape the insurance and financial product sales market. Therefore, one of the roles of office workers was to carry out promotional activities to secure customers in this area. Although I had studied finance, I had not learned specifically about promotion and marketing, so I worked diligently, referring to manuals and reference materials to efficiently handle these tasks.
In fact, new interns were not required to sell insurance products or acquire customers. However, as I was doing basic office work, I gained knowledge about insurance and financial products, and I wanted to not only know about them but also use that knowledge in practice. So, I wanted to expand my role by taking on work that was not mandatory. I held numerous meetings with my colleagues in product management and my peers to discuss ways to improve work efficiency, and applied the resulting ideas to develop new processes. Even if our efforts did not immediately lead to innovation, I felt a great sense of satisfaction just knowing that they were being taken into consideration.
Aspirations after joining the company
“To become an expert who appears in searches for relevant keywords”
I am a very cautious person. Once I set a goal, I don’t just rush toward it, but rather I make a plan to achieve it. When making a plan, I set the ultimate goal, realistic goals to achieve that goal, and practical goals to achieve the realistic goals. My sincere side is that I move forward by achieving those goals one by one. Because I am sincere, I am ready to take on more responsibility at work.
In that regard, my dreams, ideals, and goals are as follows. My ultimate goal is to join an insurance company, grow into a top financial expert, and become an external expert. And to achieve that ideal goal, my realistic goal is to join an insurance company like yours and grow step by step. Growing step by step means starting with insurance administration, insurance sales, and development, and then gradually acquiring the skills of an expert. And to achieve that realistic goal, I am working to improve my skills one by one. Therefore, I am continuing my efforts to obtain an insurance actuary license and develop my office work-related OA skills. If your company gives me the opportunity to achieve realistic goals, I will show you my enterprising spirit as I strive toward my ideal goal.
