My Compliance Jobs - Targeting Your Compliance Cv For Better Interview Results

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 with asterisks (*):

"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.