Insurance Adjuster Resume Examples

Your resume for an adjuster position needs to grab the potential employer’s attention by highlighting your skills, experience, and qualifications. It also needs to reflect the employer’s needs, which will convince them you’re the right person for the job and increase your chances of winning an interview. You can get a feel for what employers are looking for by reviewing multiple job postings that provide insight into the skills desired throughout the industry.

While a good first step is to look at adjuster resume samples, it’s important not to view them as fill-in-the-blank templates. Use the format suggestions as a framework, but the information needs to be specific to you. Below you’ll find an in-depth look at every section of an adjuster resume and the best way to present your talents. As you write your resume, use action words instead of adjectives. It’s what you can do that counts.

As you compose your adjuster resume, you first need to identify which of the many sub-categories you identify with. All adjusters go into action when an event causes harm to the insured, but there are many specialties in the field, like property damage, medical claims, workers’ compensation, and auto accidents. If you have experience in one area and hope to take advantage of your skills to crossover to another, your adjuster resume will differ from the medical claims adjuster who wants to move up but remain in the medical realm. If you’re open to either possibility, your resume will include facets of both. An additional consideration is whether your experience is as a company, independent, or public adjuster. All of these factors will impact how you format your resume. Adjuster resume samples that are specific to your experience can be very helpful.

Before you begin to write, give some thought to what you’ll include in each of the following resume sections:

• Summary statement
• Work experience
• Skills
• Education
• References

Another reason why you should review adjuster resume samples is to determine whether the chronological or functional type best suits your goal. The chronological format, which lists your job history from the most recent position to the least, is the most common and therefore the most familiar to potential employers; it also works well for those who have progressed regularly in their field and who have no gaps in employment.

A functional resume is formatted very differently and is often used by those with significant gaps in employment or those who are looking to transition into a new career. It usually opens with a summary or profile, and where the chronological resume then lists dates, jobs, and employers, the functional resume’s headings include skills, accomplishments, and quantifiable achievements, giving the applicant an opportunity to demonstrate how they can meet the job requirements even if they don’t have a traditional job history.

The aim of a resume summary is to state clearly and concisely, at the beginning of your resume, your skills and experience as they apply to the open position. A well-written summary will paint a picture of you as the ideal employee for the job and will give a hiring manager a pointed idea of how you will add value to their company. That means you’d better study the job requirements before you write your summary. It’s best to be brief but make every word count. As you review adjuster resume samples that include a summary, you’ll notice the summaries are usually kept to three or four targeted sentences that carefully match the applicant’s qualifications and competencies to the job requirements. Including quantifiable achievements says you understand how your performance is judged, and it makes it clear that you measure up.

Keep in mind that a hiring manager may have a stack of resumes to go through, and often, they skim first and set aside the resumes they want to revisit. Identify your top selling points. You want to make yourself interesting to a potential employer with that first paragraph. It’s your first chance to impress.

Here are two examples of well-written adjuster resume summaries:

• Medical claims adjuster with eight years of experience conducting investigations, analyzing data, and determining insurance company liability. Skilled at corresponding with medical specialists, agents, and claimants to collect all pertinent information. Conducted numerous negotiated settlements with medical providers that reduced the company’s liability by a minimum of 20 percent in each case. Approved payment of claims within appropriate level of authority.
• Claims adjuster with primary experience and focus on bodily injury cases. Works hand-in-hand with property and automotive adjusters when the insured’s injury occurs in the home or on the road. Extensive command of medical terminology and coding procedures. Able to transcribe interviews with providers, witnesses, and claimants, and in over 60 percent of assigned cases, achieved settlements without legal proceedings.

Certain basic pieces of information should be included for each position held: Name of the company, city and state, job title, and employment dates. This information should be considered the heading for each job. The formatting of this section is a matter of personal taste, and there are a variety of options in the many adjuster resume samples available.

Beneath each job heading, rather than focusing on your duties and responsibilities, examine the job description of the position you’re seeking and list your accomplishments that support your ability to do the job. These accomplishments are best listed as concise bullet points. Generally, a list should have a minimum of three bulleted items, each using the active voice, and the list should show formatting consistency. When creating your list of accomplishments, include the ones that are quantifiable and most relevant to the adjuster position you’re seeking.

If you have a long work history that might cause subtle age discrimination, keep in mind that it’s not necessary to list every job you’ve ever held. Include the recent experience relevant to the insurance industry and drop off the older, unrelated jobs.

This section is critical to getting the interview, and while it’s important that it be well crafted and impressive to the potential employer, it also has to be true. If you get an interview as a result of your impressive resume, you’ll have to be able to back it up with the facts. Honesty is always a good policy.

While it’s true that potential employers read your resume to discover who you are, their primary focus is on what you can do. The following action words are critical to the success of an adjuster resume and will create interest in a potential employer:

• Analyze
• Communicate
• Examine
• Interview
• Investigate
• Assess
• Inspect
• Calculate
• Compile
• Recommend
• Evaluate
• Verify
• Search
• Negotiate

A careful review of adjuster resume samples will provide additional, applicable action words.

If you’re consulting adjuster resume samples as you write your own, you’ve already discovered that EVERY section is important. If a potential employer is giving your resume a quick scan, and the resume summary is unimpressive or poorly written, they may not read further. If you’ve done a good job on the summary, and the reader moves on to your work experience, they’re looking for a good fit and someone who’s accomplished quantifiable successes. If you merely list responsibilities or duties, you’ve done yourself a disservice. If they move on to your skills section, they want to see skills specific to an adjuster’s position, like technical knowledge including experience with claims estimating programs, ongoing insurance course work, and an understanding of how to read and apply policy information. If the reader is still engaged by the time they get to your education section, you’ll have crafted a good resume that leads the reader step-by-step to learn more about you.

• When identifying specific storms or disasters you’ve worked on, it’s fine to mention the carrier and to identify the incident (Northridge Earthquake 1994; Hurricane Katrina 2005), but it’s not advisable to mention competing adjusting vendors.
• Avoid using first-person pronouns (“I”, “me”, “we”, “us”, etc.). A resume is a formal document representing your qualifications to a prospective employer. The first-person pronouns belong in your cover letter, not your resume.
• Whether you’re constructing a bullet point list or a list in sentence form, ignoring parallel construction rules can actually be irritating to the reader. Parallel construction means that each item must be grammatically formatted the same. Since written communication with peers, claimants, and sometimes legal representatives is required, a potential employer sees your resume construction not only as informative but representative of your communication skills.
• If you’re including an email address in your contact information, make sure it’s professional. “GettinGiggy@…” may work for your friends, but not in your job search. It’s easy and free to create a new account that’s professional.

Certain basic pieces of information should be included for each position held: Name of the company, city and state, job title, and employment dates. This information should be considered the heading for each job. The formatting of this section is a matter of personal taste, and there are a variety of options in the many adjuster resume samples available.

Beneath each job heading, rather than focusing on your duties and responsibilities, examine the job description of the position you’re seeking and list your accomplishments that support your ability to do the job. These accomplishments are best listed as concise bullet points. Generally, a list should have a minimum of three bulleted items, each using the active voice, and the list should show formatting consistency. When creating your list of accomplishments, include the ones that are quantifiable and most relevant to the adjuster position you’re seeking.

If you have a long work history that might cause subtle age discrimination, keep in mind that it’s not necessary to list every job you’ve ever held. Include the recent experience relevant to the insurance industry and drop off the older, unrelated jobs.

This section is critical to getting the interview, and while it’s important that it be well crafted and impressive to the potential employer, it also has to be true. If you get an interview as a result of your impressive resume, you’ll have to be able to back it up with the facts. Honesty is always a good policy.

As has been the case throughout the process of writing an adjuster resume, before you simply list your skills, consult available adjuster resume samples and claims adjuster job postings to get an idea of the skills that are most valued. Adjusters should have both soft and hard skills.

Soft skills include the ability to develop and maintain positive internal and external relationships, the capacity to work independently, and the willingness to provide guidance and training to less experienced adjusters.

Hard skills include knowledge and experience with various computer software, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and industry-specific programs. Also included in this category are the ability to navigate and process data and an understanding of policy language and how to apply it to allowable coverage.

As a general rule, it’s best to offer references upon request and to submit these as a separate document. For one thing, if your list of references isn’t taking up valuable space on your resume, you’ll have more room for your resume summary, accomplishments, skills, and education sections.

Before you offer your references, make sure you’ve actually gotten approval from everyone on your list that they’re willing to be a reference. Don’t use your mother or your high school coach. The best references are industry-related professionals, and ideally should be peers with whom you’ve worked, and hopefully at least one supervisor or manager from a previous job.

Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate the job growth from 2012 to 2022 is expected to be about 4 percent for adjusters, which is slower than the average of 11 percent for all occupations. There are two segments of anticipated growth for insurance adjusters. The first will affect medical claims adjusters and is impacted by the Affordable Care Act, which mandates individual coverage, resulting in a likely increase in the number of health insurance claims. The second is a probable increase in demand for property and casualty adjusters, which is a segment that is influenced by natural disasters like floods and fires. If the trend of increasing numbers of natural disasters as noted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues, then so will the demand for claims adjusters. Areas most affected by this increase are the Gulf Coast, due to vulnerability to hurricanes, and the West Coast, which is susceptible to wildfires.

Sectors likely to experience lower demand include simple claims that can often be processed automatically because of recent advances in technology, requiring fewer adjusters per claim. In addition, as automobiles have become safer and, relative to the population, the number of automobile accidents has declined, the demand for auto damage adjusters will decrease.