To stand out in the Milliman hiring process, you must demonstrate a balanced profile of technical expertise and consulting capability. Your preparation should focus on showing that you can handle rigorous quantitative work while remaining client-ready.

Domain & Actuarial Knowledge – You must have a clear, realistic understanding of what actuarial consulting entails and, if applicable to your practice area, a concrete plan for passing professional exams. Interviewers will look for candidates who understand the dedication required to balance client work with rigorous self-study.

Analytical & Technical Proficiency – Expect to prove your analytical capabilities. This includes demonstrating advanced proficiency in Excel, as well as any relevant programming languages or statistical software. You must show that you can manipulate large datasets accurately and draw logical, business-oriented conclusions from them.

Consulting & Communication Presence – As a Consultant, you will represent Milliman to external clients. Interviewers evaluate your verbal clarity, your active listening skills, and your ability to project confidence under pressure. You should be able to articulate your thoughts structured and concisely.

Culture Fit & Entrepreneurial Drive – Milliman operates with a highly decentralized structure. They look for self-starters who can work independently without constant supervision, manage their own career progression, and thrive in a quiet, highly focused office environment.

The interview process for a Consultant at Milliman is thorough and designed to evaluate both your technical competence and your interpersonal fit across multiple departments. While the exact steps can vary slightly depending on the specific office and practice group (such as Health, Life, or Property & Casualty), the overall structure remains highly consistent.

The process typically begins with an initial screening phase. This may involve a recorded video interview where you answer pre-recorded prompts, or a standard phone conversation with a hiring manager or recruiter. This initial step focuses on your background, career goals, and your high-level interest in Milliman. If you pass this stage, you will be invited to a comprehensive final round, which can be conducted in-person at a local office or virtually.

The final round is highly intensive and usually lasts between three to four hours. During this phase, you should expect to meet with four to six different individuals or groups from various departments. This series of thirty-minute interviews will range from peer-level actuarial students to senior equity principals. Additionally, this stage often incorporates formal evaluations, such as a timed Excel proficiency test, a structured case study, or a StrengthsFinder analysis to assess your cognitive and behavioral alignment with the team.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical progression from your initial application to the final decision. Candidates should use this structure to pace their preparation, ensuring they are fully ready for both the technical testing and the multi-round panel conversations in the later stages. Note that some local offices may consolidate these steps or add specific practice-area case studies.

To pass the Milliman interview panels, you must perform exceptionally well across several distinct evaluation areas. Understanding what "strong performance" looks like in each area will help you focus your preparation effectively.

Actuarial & Domain Expertise

This area evaluates your foundational understanding of risk management, financial modeling, and the specific insurance or consulting sector you are joining. Strong performance means demonstrating that you understand how insurance products are priced, how reserving works, and how economic factors influence client portfolios.

Be ready to go over:

• Actuarial Exam Progression – Your current exam status, your study strategy, and your long-term commitment to achieving your credentials.
• Practice Area Dynamics – Specific industry knowledge related to the practice group you are interviewing with (e.g., P&C, Life, Health, or Employee Benefits).
• Consulting Business Model – How billable hours work, the relationship between consultants and clients, and the commercial goals of the firm.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Predictive analytics in underwriting, stochastic modeling principles, and the impact of evolving international regulatory frameworks (such as IFRS 17 or Solvency II).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Why did you choose Property & Casualty over other actuarial specialties, and what do you know about our current market offerings?"
• "How would you explain the concept of 'IBNR' (Incurred But Not Reported) reserves to a corporate client who has no background in actuarial science?"

Quantitative & Technical Assessment

Milliman relies on precise, error-free modeling. This evaluation area tests your hands-on ability to manipulate data, construct financial formulas, and draw accurate conclusions under time constraints. You will likely face a practical Excel test during your interview process.

Be ready to go over:

• Advanced Excel Functions – Mastery of lookups (XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH), logical tests, nested formulas, data tables, and PivotTables.
• Data Auditing – Identifying and correcting errors in a pre-built spreadsheet model quickly and efficiently.
• Financial Mathematics – Key financial concepts including present value, compound interest, discounting, and probability distributions.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Building VBA macros to automate repetitive modeling tasks, or using statistical languages like R or Python for large-scale data manipulation.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "You have 45 minutes to clean this raw client dataset in Excel, build a summary model, and write a brief memo detailing your key findings."
• "Walk us through how you would audit a complex financial model that is returning an unexpected error in its output."

Consulting Presence & Behavioral Fit

Technical skills alone are not enough to succeed at Milliman. You must also demonstrate the behavioral maturity, communication skills, and resilience required to work directly with clients and manage internal stakeholder relationships across multiple departments.

Be ready to go over:

• The STAR Method – Structuring your behavioral answers by clearly defining the Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
• Client Relationship Management – Handling difficult clients, managing scope creep, and presenting technical results clearly.
• StrengthsFinder Alignment – Understanding your personal cognitive strengths and how you apply them to team environments and individual problem-solving.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time when you had to deliver bad news to a client or senior manager regarding a project timeline or modeling error."
• "How do you handle repeating your background and answering similar questions across multiple back-to-back interview rounds with different principals?"

As a Consultant at Milliman, your daily responsibilities will span technical modeling, client communication, and project management. Because of the firm's decentralized structure, you will have the opportunity to take on significant responsibility early in your career.

You will spend a significant portion of your time analyzing complex datasets, building and refining sophisticated financial and actuarial models, and ensuring the absolute accuracy of your calculations. You will be responsible for drafting detailed client reports, preparing slide decks for executive presentations, and translating quantitative findings into actionable business strategies.

Collaboration is central to this role. You will work closely with administrative staff, actuarial students, and senior equity principals within your office. On any given project, you may act as the primary liaison between the technical modeling team and the client, ensuring that deliverables are completed on time and meet Milliman's rigorous quality standards. Additionally, you will be expected to actively manage your own professional development, which includes self-studying for actuarial exams and staying ahead of industry and regulatory trends.