RCJ Careers

Interview Research – The Essentials

March 14th, 2011 in Interviews

This article gives you our opinion on the most important information you should prepare before your first interview. Not only can preparation for an interview send you into a panic it can also distract you and lead you down routes of research that won’t matter. Let us help you make the right choices.

So… you’ve applied for a job in the compliance or risk space, and after following our CV advice you’ve received a call from the recruiter asking you for further info. After a conversation over the phone or in person the recruiter has put your CV forward to their client and low-and-behold a first interview has been offered. Now of course we would probably advise you to do your research on a company before you apply to a job with them but we’ll assume that you are working through a recruitment consultant and therefore you don’t know who the client is yet. Now I’m sure the recruiter in question will offer you lots of advice about what you should focus on during the interview and provide you with a job description. However, it’s rare they have the time to actually take you through the company, it’s culture and it’s recent performance. There is such a vast amount of information available about any potential employer that the recruiter needs you to do your own research. So what is really important? What sort of research will maximise your chances of landing that second/final interview/job offer

As a minimum you should research the:

Annual statement and quarterly reports to get an idea of the financial performance – This could be particularly telling given the recent economic difficulties. You may either come away with a better-than-expected view of the company or the reverse may happen also. The important thing is to come away with 3 strong facts about their business that you can integrate into your interview answers.

Marketing literature – Use it mainly for broad perspective on how they approach their clients. There may also be some useful cultural information in there about the philosophy of their business. If the material is generic then we recommend placing a lower emphasis on it as a source of useful research.

Industry press that relates to the financial institution – Most industry press relates to the sector (i.e. investment banking or asset management) but there are publications for most specialisms. Risk.net is a great source of industry info for many of the risk and regulatory disciplines.

Employer’s nearest competitors marketing literature and website – Managers working at the highest levels are always interested in their competition and what they are planning. If a rival has created and designed a new system for tracking compliance issues then you can use this information in interview to impress your interviewer about your overall knowledge of the industry.

Employer’s website – This is of course the easiest resource to use for research but we would suggest it is also the poorest source of quality information because it will only give you very superficial information on the company.

Research that really impresses:

Attending a networking event relating to the job – Perhaps you can smuggle your way into a PRMIA event?

Up-to-date knowledge of the Financial Services Authority regulations – What are the potential future impacts that the regulatory bodies might have on the employers business?

So far we have only been skimming the surface of the useful information. If you really want to get the job then you need to talk with:

The hiring manager – do not be afraid to call them beforehand and ask about what sort of interview it will be along with the types of questions they will run through, not only is it a great icebreaker but it will impress good hiring managers. If they are helpful or unhelpful then perhaps you have a better handle on how you might work with that person.

Anyone on the manager’s team – If you don’t get through to the manager (they are in a meeting for example) then whoever answers the phone is likely to be a member of the team. Be polite and explain that you are coming for interview and you wondered if they could help you find out a bit more about the team and the business. You will be surprised at how receptive people can be.

A competitor – The chances are that someone in a competitor will know about the company you are going to interview with. Explain that you are going to interview with this competitor – what do they advise? Naturally, they may be overly dismissive about a competitor but could this call potentially turn into another interview for you?

It might seem like a lot of work for one interview but really it shouldn’t take you longer that a couple of hours. If you don’t have the time or inclination to research this thoroughly then we’d suggest you don’t really want the job.

The best advice is research the hardest, most useful information first. Often this comes from the hiring manager or their team directly.

Good luck with your next interview!

Positive Ways To Use Body Language In An Interview

March 14th, 2011 in Interviews

No Comments →

We’re sure you’ve heard the research from 1971 by Albert Mehrabian about the different forms of communication and how important they are:

- Visual, or body and facial expressions, accounting for 55%
- Vocal, or tone of voice, accounting for 38%
- Verbal, or words, accounting for 7%

With this in mind it should be important for you to practice your body language so that in an interview you come across well. If you look at the figures, 93% of communication is non-verbal and importantly all three forms of communication must ‘match’ each other in order for your interview answers to be credible.

This is why lying is so fruitless in an interview situation. Despite all your best efforts to ‘extend the truth’ the chances are you are giving off non-verbal cues which are alerting the sub-conscious of your interviewers that you might not be telling the truth. This will almost certainly be weighed up by the interviewer and will come across negatively. So the first easy rule is: tell the truth. This will ensure all your forms of communication are aligned and will add power to your answers.

We’ll take a look at some of the common non-verbal methods of communication starting with the most used ones at the beginning of an interview to the end of the interview.

Some of the most important parts of your interview begin before you’ve said your first word:

Eye Contact

Perhaps it has been said to you before that more is better, but we would recommend that you try to achieve a balance between eye contact and looking away. If more than one person is interviewing you, then you have an excellent opportunity to split up your eye contact making the process more natural.

The most important thing to remember is being natural. Try not to ‘stare’ into the interviewers soul. The key to good eye contact is to look into your interviewers eyes enough to maintain their interest and to show them that you are being genuine about your responses. Unfortunately, there is no pre-defined seconds per minute that can give you good eye contact; you will have to get a feel for that, either through friends, family or a career consultant.

Handshake

For initial impressions this certainly comes high on the list of things to get right. This first physical human contact can have a huge impact on your chances in an interview. The handshake doesn’t determine whether or not you get a job, but a poorly delivered handshake means you will have to work that bit harder during an interview to make up the ground you lost on your initial impression.

Ok, some technical things: A good handshake is where the both people’s hands meet web-to-web. The web of the hand is the taught skin that goes from the thumb to the forefinger.
Keep your fingers together with the thumb up and open. Squeeze firmly but don’t do a ‘bone-crusher’. The easiest way to determine if you are being too firm with you handshake is if you are applying effort to the extent you are aware of it then you are probably squeezing the hand too hard. Handshakes that give a proper connection between two people last at least 3 seconds. If the handshake is too short then it’s being performed as a pleasantry, which makes it almost useless in creating a lasting impression. Your hand should be dry and warm. If you have been outside in the cold before your interview, then go to the toilets and use the hand dryer to warm your hands up properly.

And, of course, you must ensure that when you do shake someone’s hand you make eye contact at the same time. It’s no use getting the handshake right then letting yourself down by looking away at the same time. Maximise the opportunity to make a great impression. Often people say something when shaking someone’s hand and this is commonly ‘pleased to meet you’ or ‘hi’. Maybe you could make a bit of a more interesting statement which will engage the interviewers attention, such as ‘thanks for the interview’.

Smiling

Smiling should feel natural too, but we all know that some people smile more than others, and this has nothing to do with being happy or sad. We would say more smiling is better overall as a strategy to win the attention of your interviewer(s) because people like to look at others smiling, it’s programmed into us. Unnatural smiling can be easily identified: often people say that smiling is done with the eyes and not the mouth. If your mouth has formed a lovely wide grin, but your eyes stay the same, then it looks fake. Equally, if you smile too much you may give off the impression that you are not a serious person, and the chances are you are going for a serious job, especially in compliance (although maybe not in op risk – wait for the flood of emails!). The easiest thing to take away from this is: whatever you do, don’t go into an interview and spend the whole of it not having smiled at all. If you are genuinely enjoying meeting new people, even in an interview situation, then we expect you will want to smile.

Posture

This is very simple indeed. Slouching is banned from all interview situations. Sit up and be attentive. You may be surprised at the number of candidates we have met in our previous recruiting lives that think the best thing is to come across as relaxed. We would not recommend this approach at any level of seniority. Those that impress the most tend to be upright and attentive/interested in having the interview.

Pace of speech

There is a large certainty that you will speed up your pace of speech when under pressure. You should make a conscious effort to slow down your interview answers and think through what you are saying, because you don’t get the chance to erase any mistakes you make. The best technique is to concentrate on pronouncing each word individually. This will make your speech about right in terms of speed. Talking more quickly than normal can also give the impression that your are very nervous, and if the position requires a steady pair of hands that can remain calm under pressure, then you will need to demonstrate that skill live in front of your interviewer, and not the opposite.

Again, friends, family or a career consultant can tell you how well you are doing in terms of pacing your speech. Getting that objective opinion will help you to find a balance.

Use of hands

We recommend gesturing if this is what you naturally do. It can be quite disconcerting when interviewing someone who obviously wants to use their hands, but has been given the advice not to. Again, this leads to a mismatch between the person you hear and the person you see, which on a sub-conscious can give you that gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right about them. If you are a very large gesturer (perhaps you used to direct traffic?) then you will need to tone it down a bit, because whilst you might believe you are maintaining the interviewers attention, you are actually distracting them from taking in your answers. Again its that balance you need to achieve. If the interviewer starts watching your hands, then you know its time to relax your gesturing.

When are not using your hands sit them on your lap in a clasped position. Don’t be tempted to fidget with a pen, your hair or have a mini thumb war with yourself. These movements are distracting and again display a large degree of nerves. It’s ok to be nervous, but if you are so nervous, that your interviewer cannot follow you, then you need to go and get coaching or learn a breathing technique to calm yourself.

In Conclusion

Following all of the advice above may be a little daunting so perhaps a good approach would be to focus on one area you feel you are particularly weak in. For most individuals we’d say a lack of smiling sits top of the list. Many candidates approach the interview with such a large degree of nervousness they forget that actually it’s a chance to shine and at the end of the day, the worst thing that can possibly happen is that you don’t get the job.

Top 5 Mistakes On CVs / Resumes

March 14th, 2011 in CVs / Resumes

No Comments →

1. Opinions not facts

Imagine the following in a profile statement on a compliance CV:

“A highly experienced Head of Compliance with strong leadership skills and the ability to influence policy decisions.”

It seems like a strong statement but this sentence is an opinion the jobseeker has about their abilities. When a jobseeker states an opinion it will often be the interviewer’s prerogative to get the hard facts about the statement a jobseeker has put forward. This line of interviewing is what we have all come to know and love as competency-based interviewing.

A much more powerful and direct way to communicate suitability on a CV is to use facts. This allows a recruiter or hiring manager to fully understand the level of comprehension a jobseeker has for the job they have applied for and also puts that persons abilities firmly into their mind. The main reason for this is that a hiring manager like any other person comprehends and remembers facts much better than an opinion. It is very difficult for a hiring manager or recruiter to hold onto an opinion particularly when that opinion is generic and not very specific to that individual jobseeker. The classic (and terribly droll) opinion being, “Works well individually or in a team.” Quite honestly, if you can’t do both you really don’t have a place in the modern working world unless you work in quant finance and all they want you to do its lock you in a dark room to crunch numbers.

May we suggest an improvement on our original opinion and turn it into some facts:

* 10 years experience as Head of Compliance in investment banking
* Managed teams of between 5 and 15 from Compliance Assistant to Vice President of Compliance
* Lead on 3 global compliance policy documents which affected over 15,000 employees work

Better? We think so.

2. Poor structure

A typical CV consists of the following structure:

1. Name
2. Address
3. Phone Number
4. Email address
5. Personal Profile (typically around 10 sentences long)
6. Education
7. Career Background

Now, we don’t mean to grumble but we’d like you to think about the reader of your CV for just a moment. In most cases the most relevant info is in number 7 (Career Background) on the list, unless you are a graduate, in which case number 6 (Education) may be more appropriate.

The hiring manager/recruiter has advertised for a Compliance Manager. Rightly, you decide to submit your CV. The recruiter may have time to sift through your CV and pick out the relevant parts of your experience that apply directly to the job (assuming you have actually tailored your CV). This would assume you have a very patient recruiter at the receiving end of your CV. However, a hiring manager is much less likely to be so forgiving. Recruiting people may only be 5% of their day, so they won’t spend a great deal of time sifting through the info. They need relevant info as soon as possible. If you use the rule that a hiring manager or recruiter needs to see at least 80% of the job description answered within the first 30 seconds of reading your CV or at least on the first ¾ of a page then you won’t go far wrong.

Get tough with yourself:

a) Don’t write ‘Curriculum Vitae’ at the top of your CV it’s more than obvious what the document pertains to.

b) Write your name, the city/town you live in, an email address and your telephone number only.

c) Exclude a personal profile unless it contains facts supporting the specific job application you are going for.

d) Place your education after your career history unless you are a graduate.

e) Tailor your most recent job experience to make sure it relates directly to the job description advertised.

3. Where is the evidence?

This might seem like a straight-forward point but it is another of the top 5 mistakes on CV’s. Not only are most CV’s full of opinions and not facts, they are poorly structured and they often have very little evidence of how the jobseeker can perform the job advertised.

Assume that a job is advertised for a Compliance Monitoring Manager. It is likely that the employer or recruiter is looking for an individual with compliance monitoring experience. Perhaps you would like to apply but don’t have the relevant monitoring experience, although you work with other compliance monitoring assistants and you think you are perfectly capable of performing the job (if not a little better than them!).

Taking the specific role of compliance monitoring you should be able to deduce that it requires an investigative approach. Good compliance monitoring has a lot to do with a person’s ability to decipher the numbers and determine, for example, whether market abuse has occurred.

Knowing this, a jobseeker needs to write in black and white their ability to investigate problems and find resolutions. Also, if the jobseeker is aware that this is the most important aspect of the job they are applying for then they need to put this evidence first. When writing their CV the first line of their most recent career experience should have something along the lines of:

* Currently investigating 30 concurrent compliance issues across all product lines for a US Investment Bank
* This experience lends itself well to compliance monitoring work

Note: it might also be good to include the specific products that you are currently knowledgeable on. This helps recruiters and employers to find you if they use keyword searching on a CV database.

I’m sure you understand the gist of what we’re saying. The important point to take away is that providing facts, in the right order that match the job requirements, is essential in progressing your career. A CV is a sales tool and should be utilised as such. Always think of the reader.

4. Spelling mistakes / poor grammar

Ok… I know you’ve heard it before. So we are not going to flog a dead horse on this issue. HOWEVER, it still amazes us that (as a collective of ex-compliance recruiters) the frequency of spelling and grammar mistakes is so high, PARTICULARLY, at a senior level. We think you can get by with perhaps one or two spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes on your CV, but we have seen dozens on some CV’s from Head’s of Compliance!

Spelling and grammar mistakes have three simple remedies:

1. Use spell check on your Word Processor (i.e. Word or Open Office Writer), ensuring it is set to the correct language for your country.

2. Get a friend you trust implicitly to check and re-check your CV. If that friend works as an analyst or in a reporting role requiring lots of writing then they might spot mistakes. Even better, get two or three friends to check and then you have really made sure there is nothing wrong.

3. As you check your CV read it out loud slowly. This technique will help you focus on what you have written and it will give you a good idea as to the flow of your writing.

Please, please, please try to avoid spelling and grammar mistakes. For spelling use the spell check facility and look up a reputable dictionary if in doubt. For grammar a good book you can buy to help is The Economists’ Style Guide. If you prefer their free version it’s online.

5. Generic Eric

This might seem like it covers old ground as it relates closely to point 1 (Opinions not facts) but it does have its own subtle place here. Generic Eric is a troublesome soul. His writing style is simple: write to ensure I cover all aspects of what others want to hear. An excellent example would be a sentence in a profile statement such as:

“A good communicator who can work with a wide variety of people”

The rationale behind Generic Eric’s sentence is to make sure he writes something about ‘communication’ because you have to. Eric wants to show he is a good communicator which is what all hiring managers want in the heady world of compliance. Unfortunately, Generic Eric has filled the first half of his CV with this bland, meaningless drivel. The hiring manager or recruiter finds Eric’s CV and gets so bored of reading it that it goes to the Recycle Bin.

Our advice is to completely remove these pointless sentences and keep your CV as punchy and relevant as possible. If it sounds generic then leave it out. If you want to emphasise your ability to communicate then state a fact that might help you such as:

“Presented on complex compliance issues to rooms of between 10 and 50 people with no knowledge of compliance”

Here you have demonstrated a clear ability to communicate without using your own opinion or providing nonspecific information.

One of the key requirements of a CV is to make you stand out in a positive way. Bear in mind that Henry Ford invented the division of labour that we now all love/hate today. As a society of specialists it should be easy to make our experience unique and for us to create CV’s that SELL those all important distinctive characteristics.

Good luck.

Writing Achievements On Your CV / Resume

March 14th, 2011 in CVs / Resumes

No Comments →

In this short article we cover why writing an achievement is a good idea, how to write one and where to put it.

Why write an achievement?

One of the key indicators that separate the great CV’s from the OK CV’s is achievement. In our experience we strongly advise that you include achievements on your CV. This doesn’t just apply to compliance as a profession, achievements are important in any industry. Perhaps the reason we feel so strongly about including achievements on your CV is because they provide an immediate indicator of the quality of an applicant. An achievement can make dividing who you want to shortlist for interview and who you will reject an easier task for any given compliance job. Logically if there are five or six applicants that have taken the time to include at least one impressive achievement on their CV, and ten to twelve CV’s that provide a simple description of their duties, any recruiter or hiring manager is going to be drawn towards the high achievers first (provided they have a relevant background).

We do appreciate that typically it’s the Heads of Compliance that boast the larger number of achievements or opportunities to present themselves in a good light i.e. “Over a 10 month period integrated a new Charles River Compliance system which improved the capture and resolution of trade errors by 32%.” As a Compliance Assistant/Associate at the start of your career you need time to build up your achievements that are specifically work-related, but fear not, achievements don’t have to be purely work-related. I know there may be people screaming at the screen right now saying “but it’s all about showing achievements that can demonstrate how someone has increased profit or reduced cost for their employer”. We agree this is important, but if you can’t demonstrate this at the moment, you can still write something that will differentiate you from the other applicants going for the same job.

How do I write an achievement?

Let’s clarify how to write an achievement. It’s not:

“Can work well in a team or individually”
“Worked from 9am to 5pm every weekday over a 2 year period at Global Bank”
“Reduced toilet visits to 1 per day to increase time spent compliance monitoring”

An achievement needs to:

1. Solve a problem
2. Demonstrate a specific skill
3. Be measureable

An example for a non-work/University related achievement could be:

“During University I noticed that fellow students were not drinking enough beer. In 2008 I founded the Beer Society and grew the membership from a base of zero to 300 in a 12 month period. Beer sales in the local area jumped 100% from £1m per annum to £2m per annum. I achieved this using guerrilla marketing techniques such as people stamping and beer drinking contests in the local student union.”

Forgive us for this particular analogy but it highlights some important aspects of writing a good achievement. What’s good about it?

• It highlights a problem
• It contains specific facts and figures
• It shows the result of your work
• It demonstrates how the person achieved a positive outcome

Now this is tough to do. We can’t hide the obvious difficulty in making achievements stand out. If you are struggling to write to this detail then you can make your achievements shorter:

“Created and grew the Beer Society from zero members to 300 members over a 12 month period.”

This shorter version does leave you open to further questioning such as, “What was the reason for founding the Beer Society” and “How did you achieve this growth in your membership?” Although it’s scant on details this is still a good achievement because it allows you highlight your positive traits in an interview. Just make sure you have further detail in an interview situation so that you can speak confidently about what you have achieved.

Achievements that are going to aid your application for a compliance job includes those related to (in no particular order):

• Managing conflict
• Communication with a very wide range of people
• Working with detail and large volumes of data or information
• Strong IT skills
• Strong numerical ability
• Honesty in your work

These certainly seem to be qualities required in all compliance assistants, compliance managers and heads of compliance.

Where should an achievement go?

We only think there is one answer to this: At the start of every job you have ever had. Don’t write achievements into a separate section, don’t highlight them by dividing your CV with duties, then achievements, integrate them into your duties and responsibilities and make sure the achievements appear first.

Be proud of what you have done. Whether you work in compliance or not, it’s important to make your CV stand out from your fellow competitors in the job market.

We hope this article has been useful and that you will act on our advice. Trust us, we’re ex-compliance recruiters (mwah, ha, ha ‘evil laugh’).

A Useful Compliance CV Template

March 14th, 2011 in CVs / Resumes

No Comments →

This template is based on many years of collective experience. It is designed to be easy to read and to the point:

Name (followed by any designations after your name such as MBA or MSc)
Town/City of residence (no need to include your full address)
Home Telephone Number (only if you are easy to reach on that number)
Mobile Number
Email address

Do:
· Check and re-check the numbers and email address you have listed. Nothing says unreliable like a mobile number that doesn’t work.

Don’t:
· Write ‘Curriculum Vitae’ or ‘Mobile Number:’ to alert people as what each piece of information is. A number starting 07 is quite clearly for a mobile phone.

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

5 bullet points or less on your experience relating directly to the job description

For more information on this read our article on ” Targeting your Compliance CV for better interview results”

Do:
· Make sure you spend some time on this section and make each sentence short and specific by including numbers and timeframes (e.g. 800 transactions over a 3 month period)

Don’t:
· Write more than 4 or 5 bullet points – the list will lose its strength as an introduction to you

CAREER BACKGROUND

Position (e.g. Compliance Manager) Dates of Employment (e.g. Sep 07 – Present)
Employer (e.g. Citigroup), Employer Location (Canary Wharf, London)

· Achievement on recent project or piece of work goes first
· List responsibilities
· Include any knowledge you gained on financial products or sourcebooks
· Include any technological knowledge you gained on different IT systems
· How many people did you work with? Or how many people reported to you? – Include this as it’s often used to determine your fit into another organisation.

Repeat above format for each separate job from the most recent job to the least recent job in reverse chronological order.

Do:
· Make sentences short and specific by including numbers and dates

Don’t:
· Write large chunks of text in a story format. Busy people just don’t have the time to read this type of CV. Interviews are the right forum for more lengthy explanations.

EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS

Course Result (e.g. 2:1), Course Name (e.g. Economics), University/Institution (e.g. London School of Economics and Political Science)

Do:
· Include all relevant training courses that have lasted 1 day or more

Don’t:
· List training that is irrelevant to the position you are going for. The Elementary Food Hygiene Certificate isn’t going to be useful in investment banking.

MEMBERSHIPS

Membership Level (e.g. Fellowship – FCSI), Institution (e.g. Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment)

Do:
· Ensure that if there is nothing for you to fill out here, you should consider joining a reputable professional organisation that proves your commitment to career development.

Don’t:
· Include your membership of non-professional, non-work related organisations unless you think it will greatly improve your chances of getting an interview.

REFERENCES

Available on request

Do:
· At least include that referee details are available on request.

Don’t:
· Write your referees contact details or name in here unless you have their position. Generally we wouldn’t recommend you include names and contact details for referees because their information can then become easily available in a CV database, and therefore be used for marketing purposes.

OTHER INFO

· Do you have the right to work in the country you are applying to work in?
· You can include hobbies and personal interests but generally it’s not that important to a hiring manager or recruiter if you collect stamps or bungee jump from bridges.

General Do’s:
· Explain gaps in your CV – recruiters and hiring managers will ask
· Keep your CV to 2 pages if possible, but no more than 3 pages under any circumstance – if you can’t sell yourself within 3 pages, then you are disobeying a golden rule of marketing (you know the rule – keep it punchy!)
· Use at least a typeface of 11 points with a recognised font such as Arial or Times New Roman. Jazzy fonts don’t help make you ‘different’ from other CVs they just irritate readers.
· Explain any acronyms or TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) you use
· Get a friend to read your CV for mistakes or grammatical errors. Then get another friend to check your CV afterwards, and just for really good measure get someone else to read it and check it. Ask them to be brutally honest with you on the quality of your CV too; a very good technique which can increase the success rate of your job applications.

General Don’ts:
· Don’t include your date of birth, martial status or your health status – protect your identity here. Employers don’t need to know your date of birth at this stage, marital status is irrelevant to how you perform your job and no-one is going to write ‘health: poor’ on their CV so don’t include ‘health: good’ because it’s an opinion and won’t be account for when offering you an interview.
· Don’t take all of this advice then wonder why your job applications aren’t being successful. Sometimes getting another job takes a long time and if you applying to jobs that are outside of your general realm of experience then it might take quite a number of applications before you are invited to interview.

Using a Recruitment Consultant – Pros and Cons

March 14th, 2011 in Job Hunting

No Comments →

Recruitment Consultant Pros

If you are already in a job and want to make a career move, a recruitment consultant can do your job hunting for you. They can offer you tailored advice on your CV and put your CV forward to suitable jobs. Quite often the recruitment consultant will know which jobs are the most suitable for you and in many ways they can save you time by only putting you forward to jobs that you are likely to get interviews for.

Often the better recruitment consultants will have good relationships with the clients they have. If you too can build a good relationship with the recruitment consultant then you may be able to get interviews through their promotion of your stronger points to hiring managers. It can be common for recruitment consultants to get you interviews where you may not have got them previously through applying directly. However, this all depends on how well the hiring manager respects the recruitment consultant.

Recruitment Consultant Cons

If the recruitment consultant is poor at matching your CV to relevant jobs then they may end up wasting your time. You should create your own checklist of what a good recruitment consultant would be. We would suggest that specialists in your field are the best to approach who have been in the business for at least 12 months.

Also, maintain control of your information and your CV. Create a verbal or written contract with the recruitment consultant to ensure they do not send your CV to companies/managers without your permission. Compliance is a small community and word can get around quickly that you are looking for a new job. Don’t let sloppiness spoil your chances with your current employer. Another key point is that if a recruitment consultant is very liberal with sharing your CV and you decide to use another recruitment consultant in the future they may not be able to represent you because your CV has already been put forward to many companies (this creates a problem if you are not aware of this because a good recruitment consultant is unlikely to continue to apply effort on your behalf if they suspect you are lying or that you have no loyalty to them because they do not wish to ruin their relationships with their clients).

Using a Compliance Job Board – Pros and Cons

March 14th, 2011 in Job Hunting

No Comments →

Online Job Board Pros

Keeping up-to-date with an online job board gives you easy access to jobs as they become live. As each job is put up on the job board you can start to see trends in which jobs are most required in the compliance sector. Equally you will get a feel for how rare some jobs are. Also, you might spot jobs that have been posted and re-posted for longer than a month. From this you can deduce that there is a skills shortage in that particular area and that it may be a successful path for you to choose.

This information is powerful to you when deciding which compliance path to take. For example, you may currently be providing more support in the middle office of an investment bank but want to move into the more advisory/front office role. A job board such as MyComplianceJobs.com can help you identify which skills most other investment banks require to perform this role. Once you have identified these skills you can set about learning the rulebook or investing in education via a learning provider.

Apart from these more convoluted benefits there are, of course, obvious benefits. These include the ease of applying online, being able to track your applications and having new job opportunities sent to you as they arise (on this site we call it ‘Jobmail’). Most of the features of online job boards are designed to make applying for jobs simple and to enable you to keep a track of how you are doing.

Another clear benefit is that you can build up a picture of the more successful employers and recruitment companies (collectively referred to as Recruiters on this site).

Online Job Board Cons

One major downside of using a job board is the level of competition you will face as a jobseeker when applying to enticing jobs. If the job board is published widely and used by your professional community you will naturally face competition from more people with similar backgrounds and skill sets. It would be reasonable to assume that the best person for the job would get it, but hiring managers are highly variable in their criteria for choosing a new recruit, at all levels of seniority.

Also bear in mind that the job boards need to be technically good in order to work. Ensure that your CV has been received by contacting the recruiter two to three days after you send your CV. This will make sure you don’t miss out on an opportunity due a website error. Also, it gives you a great opportunity to build a relationship with the recruiter and put yourself front of mind when they decided who gets the job.

If you elect to be put onto a CV database then you must be very vigilant with your CV information. Often this information will not expire and your details are likely to have been downloaded by many recruiters. This of course is no bad thing as long as the people that have your private data do not send it out without your permission in order to win jobs from potential clients. Or in the case of direct recruiter from a company they may store your information on their system and subsequently lose it or let it fall into the wrong hands. In order to fully protect yourself, provide only the first initial of your last name, your town or area of the city you live in not your full address, exclude your most recent employer and replace their name with ‘Global Investment Bank’ and remove any highly distinguishing facts about you from your CV. This will still give recruiters enough knowledge to make a decision on whether or not they will arrange an interview and will also safeguard your privacy against let scrupulous individuals.

Is Now The Time To Join Regulatory Compliance

March 14th, 2011 in Job Hunting

No Comments →

The US Labor Department has predicted that job opportunities for Compliance Officers

will increase 31 percent to a total of 341,000 by 2018. This can only be mirrored if not
magnified in the UK.

So should you consider a job in compliance?

Before you begin your job search you need to decide if a job in compliance is right for you. We will approach this subject considering the pressures that compliance professional face from the regulator. After all, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has a very large part to play in the way the compliance profession conducts its day-to-day business.

Compliance professionals within financial organisations have a very challenging time ahead of them. These challenges include interpreting the regulatory rules in an ever-changing financial landscape, particularly after the financial downturn in late 2008. This downturn has provoked a strong regulatory response from the FSA; and understandably so. The financial system must maintain its integrity.

What does that mean? Put simply, the rules set out by the FSA appear to cycle between a principles-based approach and a prescribed approach. The distinct difference between the two approaches is that the principles-based approach allows Compliance Officers to decide on the best method of complying with FSA rules. Compliance Officers are given a broad set of principles that they can fit around their business objectives. These 11 principles are outlined below:

1. A firm must conduct its business with integrity.
2. A firm must conduct its business with due skill, care and diligence.
3. A firm must take reasonable care to organise and control its affairs responsibly and effectively, with adequate risk management systems.
4. A firm must maintain adequate financial resources.
5. A firm must observe proper standards of market conduct.
6. A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly.
7. A firm must pay due regard to the information needs of its clients, and communicate information to them in a way which is clear, fair and not misleading.
8. A firm must manage conflicts of interest fairly, both between itself and its customers and between a customer and another client.
9. A firm must take reasonable care to ensure the suitability of its advice and discretionary decisions for any customer who is entitled to rely upon its judgement.
10. A firm must arrange adequate protection for clients’ assets when it is responsible for them.
11. A firm must deal with its regulators in an open co-operative way, and must disclose to the FSA appropriately anything relating to the firm of which the FSA would reasonably expect notice.
(From ‘Principles-based regulation’, April 2007, published by the FSA)

The purpose of this approach was to facilitate a more innovative and competitive financial system by allowing each organisation to apply the principles in an effective way for their own unique business. Unfortunately, this approach only works when those within the financial system have principles themselves. It has been argued that this form of ‘light-touch’ regulation could have led to the financial downturn and could be evidence of the principles-based approach failing. Indeed the first of the 11 principles states, “1. A firm must conduct its business with integrity.” This is a very noble principle but in practice, in a system driven by profit-maximisation, it may not always be adhered to.

The prescribed approach offers more detailed rules and supervisory actions that are ‘dictated’ to each financial organisation. We say ‘dictated’ but the process is still somewhat consultative. A fair and tailored approach must be taken with each financial organisation. The FSA does not want to enact a set of rules that is going to harm the overall competitiveness of the UK financial system. Although many Compliance Officers may argue that despite their best attempts, the FSA, can and do issue rules that damage overall competitiveness… a topic for another time. Under a prescribed approach Compliance Officers will face great scrutiny and perhaps more severe penalties for non-compliance. This could make the job far more stressful, however it may also be the case that Compliance Officers will know what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong in more detail. So in this respect it will depend on the severity of scrutiny and the assistance offered by the FSA should a financial organisation not be achieving the rules set out.

We have only really scratched the surface of this debate. An excellent approach to deciding on whether or not to enter the profession of regulatory compliance would be to speak to the Compliance Officer in your own organisation. If you do not already work in banking or finance then seek advice from someone like the International Compliance Association (http://www.int-comp.org). They may be able to put you in contact with someone relevant.

So if you are pondering over the decision to enter compliance as a career, you have the broad outline of the challenges you could face. Remember, you are effectively policing your own organisation. This does not always make you popular.

On the very positive side, the decisions you make will help to protect the clients you serve and create a fairer financial system, and that is a just cause.

Targeting Your Compliance CV For Better Interview Results

March 14th, 2011 in CVs / Resumes

No Comments →

In this short article we cover the dark art of tailoring your CV in order to increase your likelihood of getting an interview for your next compliance job.

Before we cover this subject you might ask, ‘Is targeting your CV that important? Don’t hiring managers just make their own minds up about my experience despite me tailoring my CV?’ The answer: it depends. In our experience some hiring managers will have a certain CV/person they are looking for. If you don’t fit the bill, no amount of CV re-jigging will help. The percentage of these types of hiring managers is difficult to estimate, but be assured CV targeting will increase your chances overall of getting an interview. We’ve had many situations (as compliance recruiters) where we’ve sent a particularly good CV only to find the hiring manager has rejected it. After a quick conversation we have discovered that the hiring manager was particularly busy and hasn’t had to an opportunity to read the whole CV thoroughly, thereby missing the relevant and very good experience that particular candidate possessed. Do not underestimate how busy a hiring manager can be. Recruitment is probably 5% of their job. Many of these ‘busy manager’ situations have been turned around resulting in interviews and successful hires.

If you are not using a recruitment consultant and are applying to jobs directly on mycompliancejobs.com then you don’t have someone checking up on your CV’s progress and persisting on your behalf. Our guess is that your CV will land in the inbox of a very busy internal recruiter or hiring manager who is going to spend 20 seconds on your CV maximum. If they don’t see what they want in those 20 seconds then you’re in the reject folder with the click of a button.

Have we sold you on the idea of targeting your CV yet? We hope so.

Here is how to do it:

1. Dissect the job description

The job description will probably contain at least one major piece of technological wizardry you need to know e.g. Charles River Compliance. There is also likely to be the requirement to understand relevant financial products like derivatives, but perhaps more importantly to understand the sourcebooks that relate to them. The FSA has its handbook (which I’m sure you know is vast) and within the handbook there are various sourcebooks that are contained within blocks. So for example under the Prudential Standards block you will have up to 11 sourcebooks e.g.

a. General Prudential sourcebook (GENPRU)
b. Prudential Sourcebook for Banks, Building Societies and Investment Firms
(BIPRU)
c. Prudential sourcebook for Insurers (INSPRU)
d. Prudential sourcebook for Mortgage and Home Finance Firms, and Insurance Intermediaries (MIPRU) etc…

You may see some of these individual sourcebooks referenced in the job description. If you don’t know these individual sourcebooks its important to at least demonstrate you can either learn them quickly or that some of your other sourcebook knowledge can overlap with the sourcebooks asked for.

You need to gather what you think are the five most important requirements in the job description. This will largely have to be based on your own judgement. It’s certainly not an easy task. Once you have the top five requirements from the job description you are ready for the next step.

2. Writing a powerful and targeted CV

To give the process of targeting your CV balance, you should not spend too much time making it unique to each job application. By making the process relatively quick you are still investing time in applying for each job properly but not investing so much time whereby you become disillusioned by the work it entails and start sending out one generic CV in frustration.

The method we recommend is to include 5 bullet points at the very start of your CV that answer the most important requirements you identified in the job description. If you feel this method is adding somewhat to the length of your CV and you have a profile statement, get rid of the profile statement. Typically, profile statements are littered with sentences like ‘works well in a team and individually’. This says nothing about you so if your profile statement sounds a bit generic and you wrote one because ‘everyone else has one’ then delete it and replace it with our targeted list.

Firstly, the targeted bullet point method ensures that your most relevant information is first, which is one of our CV writing rules. Secondly, it will greatly increase your chances of making an internal recruiter or hiring manager read on past the initial 20-second glance. A well-targeted list creates attention, next your most recent experience will create interest, by the time the reader has read your whole CV there should be the desire to act and invite you for interview. A targeted list should start off that chain of events leading to the invite for an interview. It’s that initial glance where most CV’s fall down. That’s where your CV is most vulnerable.

We’ll end with a quick example. This example is going to be blindly obvious and would only work where you can demonstrate a clean fit the job description. In future articles we will write more about how to write a targeted bullet point list when you are not a neat fit for the job on offer. The following text is from a job description for a Compliance Officer working in an Investment Bank in the fixed income division. We’ve highlighted the most tangible and key knowledge requirements in green:

“Responsibilities

Proactively provide compliance and regulatory advisory services to fixed income business lines and the relevant support/operational functions covering fixed income, credit, interest rate and currency activities, ensuring that the advice provided is suited to the needs of the business lines.

Advising on compliance and regulatory aspects of new products and participate in New Products Committee

Proactively maintain relationships and open communication with, and actively promote Compliance in front of, business lines and other control functions, providing support where necessary to address compliance requirements at earliest opportunity.

Active participation in the process of maintaining the risk cartography, ensuring that the inherent regulatory risks posed by business activity are determined, the mitigating factors assessed to determine the residual risk and the actions required to further mitigate, or reduce, the regulatory risk.

Active engagement and liaison with the Monitoring Unit responsible for day-to-day transaction monitoring and periodic desk reviews of the fixed income, interest rate and forex derivatives Business Lines, ensuring appropriate support and guidance in the development of product knowledge within the Monitoring Unit

Liase with Policy and Training Compliance Officer in respect of any new regulation and their impact on the business line.

Develop and deliver appropriate regulatory training for the business line using one-to-one and classroom methodologies…”

Immediately we should be able to draw out some relevant bullet points:

* 4 years compliance experience in fixed income, credit, interest rate and currency activities.
* During the first month in my existing role key relationships were formed resulting in a measurable reduction in regulatory risk.
* Enacted a quarterly program of compliance reviews design to engage with new departments to overcome potential residual risk.
* 4 years experience working with the monitoring function in current role
* Responsible for creating and teaching new regulatory guidelines issued by the FSA, where there was previously little or no training.

The above list isn’t going to suit everyone’s taste but the purpose is to highlight the usefulness of targeting your CV. By dissecting the job description, even on a superficial level, and writing relevant bullet points you are giving the hiring manager/internal recruiter the most appropriate information to make a decision to interview. Make the bullet points tangible using timelines and numbers. It’s not always possible to make every point tangible but you should at least be thinking about how to incorporate this. Often it’s the requirements around communication skills that are the most difficult to make specific because communication skills are subjective in nature.

Targeting your CV is not going to be very easy at first. It can be difficult to keep your list to 5 bullet points, but don’t be tempted to write more. Less is more in this case. Be kind to the reader by offering tangible numbers and timelines, and by keeping it short. This should significantly improve your chances of an interview.

Get An Interview In This Economy

March 14th, 2011 in Interviews

No Comments →

The BBC published a story on 20 October where the Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned of a ‘sober’ decade ahead.

Mr King explained that the recovery would not be speedy and ‘re-balancing of the economy would take some time’. Whether or not you believe him isn’t massively important. Even if Mr King is half-right the job market is going to remain competitive. To some extent compliance and risk buck this trend as there is a high demand for good people, but they are still difficult professions to break into. So how do you get those jobs in this competitive job market?

What we can’t do is list out all the various jobs within risk and compliance and how to position yourself correctly in order to appeal to the hiring manager or recruiter. You need to do your own research on the types of people that work in the various facets of the risk and compliance financial services world. Wikipedia is a great source of information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_compliance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_risk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_risk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_risk

Once you’ve decided on the types of position you are going for you then need to get your CV straight, so…

First things first; getting a new job is about selling yourself properly. You need to understand that as an individual with a certain skill set you are a commodity that needs to be promoted. The main method of promotion in the job market is through your CV. And, if your CV does a bad job of selling you then you won’t get very far in the current job market.

The trick is to differentiate yourself from the other applicants. For example, good selling is about providing unique selling points that offer something better to the market than the current offering. Writing such death-defying statements as ‘works well in a team and individually’ isn’t a unique selling point. If we had £1 for every time we’ve seen that written on a CV we’d be gazillionaires. This opinion really doesn’t say much about you. In fact it’s just padding.

So the very first thing to do when looking for a job in a difficult job market is to discover your own unique selling points and get them on your CV. Often these unique selling points are referred to as achievements. These achievements must be specific to you and made up of tangible facts. So, ‘I am really great and better than others at my job as a Money Laundering Reporting Officer’ isn’t really going to cut it. It’s an opinion. You may have heard us talk about opinions before. We think (in out opinion!) that they have no place on a CV. A CV should be a document of fact.

A better construction of the previous example might be, ‘In my 3 years as a Money Laundering Reporting Officer at X bank I reduced overall spend by 11% whilst improving operational efficiency by 28% through the introduction of in-house technology and a new training program for 47 staff’.

This offers tangible facts that stand out. The key point is that this achievement can help you make it into the ‘mental shortlist’ of either a recruiter or hiring manager vetting your CV. A well-written achievement can sometimes be the singular reason for inviting you for an interview. So few people actually write achievements on their CV that whenever a decision-maker sees one we are positive they take note. It also gives them something to ask you about in an interview which can help them to figure out if you are a good fit for their business. In fact, by writing an achievement on your CV you are doing the interviewer a favour and making it easier for them to interview you – trust us – they like that.

Where would you write an achievement? As early as possible on your CV. Ideally your CV starts with your name and contact details then moves straight into you career experience. On the first line of your career experience, under your current employer, you need to have your achievement written as one of the first things read by a decision-maker. Don’t ask them to dig for the best information.

Writing at least one strong achievement on your CV should be your next goal when you apply to a job. Naturally, it would be great if we could speak to the hiring manager or recruiter on the phone and understand a bit more about what they are looking for, but in today’s economy with lots of jobs hanging in the balance and 20 applicants for every job you probably won’t get to speak the decision-maker. That’s why getting a fantastic CV with tangible achievements on it is one of the keys to improving your chances of getting an interview in this ongoing recession.

Best of luck folks.