Its values, its interview process and the questions it asks, in short episodes. Listen on a walk, then practice.
10 episodes1 free to try
No subscription needed
This is the final module — the practical synthesis. It pulls real reported behavioral questions from Cigna interviews and maps each one to the leadership competency or commitment it's testing. The candidate leaves with a five-story preparation checklist tailored to Cigna's specific evaluation framework, plus the language patterns that work in this company's culture. Cigna explicitly uses the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) — there's no surprise framework here, but the way you talk about customers, transparency, and complexity matters.
Cigna's interview process is not a mystery, but it varies meaningfully by role type. The standard pattern is recruiter screen → behavioral round → role-specific round, often capped with a panel or case study. Leadership Development Program (LDP) candidates face a more intense funnel ending in a day-long case study. Cigna evaluates against five named leadership competencies — Strategic Mindset, Manages Complexity, Financial Acumen, Tech Savvy, and Action Oriented — that function as the company's de facto leadership principles. This module gives candidates the structure and the language to navigate the process confidently.
"Why Cigna and not UnitedHealth?" is one of the most common — and most poorly answered — questions in healthcare insurance interviews. The Big 4 commercial insurers (UnitedHealth, Elevance, CVS/Aetna, Cigna) each have distinct strategies: UnitedHealth is platformizing through Optum, CVS is building a retail-led super-app via Aetna, Elevance is the Blue Cross franchise consolidator, and Cigna is the open-architecture integrator. This module gives candidates the substance to compare and contrast — and to land a "Why Cigna specifically" answer that doesn't sound like a coin-flip.
Cigna's culture is structured around the "Four Healthy Pillars": Healthy Society, Healthy Workforce, Healthy Environment, Healthy Company. Underneath that ESG framework sits a more complicated reality — a 3.5/5 Glassdoor rating, a 2024 in-office mandate, multiple rounds of layoffs, and a leadership development program tradition (TECDP, ALDP, OLDP, HRLDP, MLDP) that produces a deeply tenured "Cigna for life" cohort. This module helps candidates navigate the culture conversation honestly: speaking the company's official language while acknowledging what employees actually report.
Cigna does not run a public engineering blog the way Stripe or Anthropic does, but the company has been busy: Global CIO Noelle Eder's role expanded to include data and analytics, Cigna Healthcare unveiled an industry-first generative AI virtual assistant in June 2025, predictive analytics models can now forecast certain surgeries up to a year out at 93% accuracy, and Brian Evanko has publicly named "data, technology, and AI" as the centerpiece of his incoming-CEO agenda. This module gives candidates the language to talk about Cigna's tech strategy with substance — including the unavoidable conversation about AI ethics in claims processing.
When CEO David Cordani and CEO-elect Brian Evanko talk about Cigna's growth, three innovation areas keep coming up: the Evernorth Behavioral Care Group expansion, GLP-1 weight-loss drug management through EncircleRx, and specialty pharmacy growth via Accredo. This module gives candidates the substance to discuss each, including specific provider counts, patient outcomes, and the competitive logic behind each bet — material that distinguishes a thoughtful candidate from one who just read the careers page.
The single biggest strategic story at Cigna in 2025-2026 is the wholesale reset of the Express Scripts business model. Triggered by years of regulatory scrutiny and finalized by the February 2026 FTC settlement, Express Scripts is moving from a rebate-heavy PBM to a cost-plus, transparent model — with $7 billion in projected patient cost relief over 10 years. This module gives candidates the substance to discuss the PBM business intelligently, distinguish Cigna's approach from CVS Caremark and OptumRx, and engage with the policy environment that surrounds every PBM-adjacent role.
On December 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed in Manhattan, and the public response — anger over claim denials, prior authorization delays, and PBM practices — forced the entire health insurance industry into a transparency reckoning. Cigna's response was concrete: the Five Commitments framework (Easier Access, Better Support, Better Value, Accountability, Transparency), the public Customer Transparency Report, the elimination of prior authorization on 345 services, and the linking of leader compensation to customer satisfaction. This module gives candidates the language to talk about Cigna's commitments knowledgeably — and to answer "Why Cigna?" with substance instead of platitudes.
David Cordani has run Cigna since 2009 and is stepping down as CEO on July 1, 2026, becoming Executive Chair while COO Brian Evanko takes over. This is the biggest leadership transition in modern Cigna history, and any candidate who walks in not knowing it is signaling they didn't read the news. This module unpacks what Cordani built (the Express Scripts merger, the Evernorth brand, the Medicare divestiture, the FTC settlement) and what Evanko's actuarial-CFO background signals about where Cigna is going next: data, technology, AI, and disciplined capital allocation.
Cigna is not just a health insurer — it's a two-engine company built around Cigna Healthcare (commercial benefits) and Evernorth Health Services (pharmacy, specialty, behavioral, care services). This module explains what each segment actually does, why the 2025 Medicare divestiture to HCSC was a deliberate sharpening of the portfolio, and how candidates should frame "what Cigna does" when interviewers ask. Walking in knowing the structure beats walking in calling Cigna "an insurance company."