Category: Career Advice

Navigating a career in the Legal Risk & Compliance industry can be a complex task. To help you get started, I spoke to Charlotte Miner, the Director of Risk and Compliance at Accelalpha, on Episode 14 of The UNCOVER Pod about her experiences of moving through the sector. Read on to hear her insights from the beginning of her Legal Risk & Compliance journey to more senior specialities. 

Is there a piece of advice you wish someone had shared with you early on in your career?

I wish that somebody had told me that it’s okay if you don’t know all the answers. I remember being much more junior in my career and being terrified. It’s more important that you have the confidence to say ‘I don’t know the answer, but I’d like to. I’m going to try and work it out by doing you know, X, Y, and Z.’ What is more important is having those interpersonal skills that enable you to build relationships and work through problems under pressure. That’s much more important than what you know because that can be learned. 

Especially as I moved into managerial roles and began to interview people, I would much rather offer someone a role who was honest about their experience. Tell me about the softer skill sets that you have and how you’ve developed. That will set you apart as a candidate much more than saying ‘I know how to do absolutely everything on this side of business intake’. That’s a really important point to get across for candidates – your soft skills and personality are far more important than your knowledge base. 

Is there anything that you would advise our candidates to do more proactively?

It’s tricky for candidates now, because in my early days, if there were a tricky situation, I would go and sit down with somebody and go through it with them. The likelihood is that they’re not in the office anymore so that physical relationship has been removed. It’s so important to utilise things like Zoom to get that face-to-face contact as much as you can and have those conversations. Firing emails back and forth doesn’t often solve the problem and doesn’t necessarily build the relationship. 

Just calling somebody on Teams helps you find out what’s going on, and then you can ask ‘Can I come along to the departmental meetings? Can I listen to what you guys are up to? Can I introduce myself?’. It’s a combination of building on those individual relationships and then doing more ancillary stuff around the edges that will build your profile within the company and give you exposure. If the senior people in those meetings and briefings see you as available to help them, you’ll move away from that old attitude of risk and compliance being the ‘Business Prevention Unit’ that’s there to make life difficult. You have to take a proactive, two-pronged approach. 

What advice would you give to candidates who are considering a transition, particularly if they’re moving away from a specialist Legal Risk & Compliance role?

I think you have to understand where you’re going and what you are going to be doing. Being honest about what you can and can’t do will help you too. I had a number of interviews where I explained what I had done and what I could do, but I was also very honest about the things that I couldn’t do, the things that I hadn’t had experience with, and where I needed to grow. In the interview, you should try to get an understanding of the support you’re going to have too. So that was a big thing for me because I was willing to throw myself in and get involved in whatever they needed me to do, but who was going to help me build my experience and expertise? During the interview process, I got that feeling straightaway of whether this is a firm that’s going to look after me, invest in me, and give me opportunities to develop my career. Making sure that that all matches up is really important. 

To hear more from Charlotte about her experience of moving through and out of the sector, tune into Episode 14 of The UNCOVER Pod here.

As a compliance specialist, even from a relatively junior position, you will be uniquely influential in your firm. On Episode 13 of The UNCOVER Pod I was joined by Amy Bell, the Chief Executive Officer at Teal Compliance, to talk about how you can manage your interactions with senior partners and effectively manage up in your role. Read on to find out what she said.

“The first thing for a candidate in that situation is to establish if the firm understands the implications of their risks. Often, the firm doesn’t understand the consequences. I’ll give you I’ll give you an example. There’s a lady that I used to work with who was a member of support staff. When she went to work at a new firm, she said ‘Oh, Amy, all of the support staff were invited out on the staff strategy away day. That’s never happened to me before. No one’s ever been interested in what I think about the strategy of the business. We talked about the strategy, did workshops, and went on a treasure hunt and to the pub afterwards – it was great fun.’ 

I said ‘That’s great! It’s forward-thinking and I can see the inclusivity. Make sure to get your input into that because you’re at the coalface, you’re the one trying to make these things work. It’s tough to get compliant working.’ 

It was great until they got their pay rises. A week later, she said, ‘Well, the lawyers got 7%. And we got 1%. He told me I was valuable and that my opinions mattered. Then he gave me a 1% pay raise, and he got 7%. So I’m right back where I thought I was, being unappreciated.’ 

I’m sure the firm didn’t mean to make her feel like that – in fact, they were deliberately trying to make sure she felt included and valued. However, they didn’t see the risks in how they distributed pay raises. When you start picking up on some of this cultural stuff, you’ll find that it’s not intentional. The business isn’t saying that compliance or regulatory fines are just a cost of doing business because you’re always going to get the odd one. Don’t worry, we’ll just save up for the fine. Most lawyers are not in the compliance space. 

Most managing partners or leaders of law firms are working on loads of competing things, and they often don’t know what’s happening to the compliance programme as a result of that. You need to get people to tell you where they are with compliance, and if you think that they’re not going to tell you the truth, you need to figure out how to get that from them. 

I’m interested in what everyone thinks at Teal. If you’ve got 100 employees, that is a lot to manage. But if you’re not doing that, you’re running the risk of having dissatisfied employees, winding each other up and getting upset. That is a recipe for disaster in compliance. People have to care about compliance to be safe because that’s what compliance is for. And if they’re grumpy, they aren’t caring about you.”

To hear more from Amy, tune into Episode 13 of The UNCOVER Pod here. 

The Legal Risk & Compliance space has grown rapidly in recent years, with new roles emerging to handle a range of new legislations and increasing pressure on firms to comply with them. On Episode 12 of The UNCOVER Pod I was joined by Matthew Sturgeon, the General Risk Counsel at Foot Anstey LLP, to discuss the evolving regulatory landscape and its impact on law firms and compliance professionals. We also touched on the best way to balance risk management and business success. Read on for his insights. 

How has the regulatory landscape evolved in recent years, and what impact has it had on both law firms and compliance professionals?

“In my view, there isn’t too much that is new. The basic principles still apply and the basic expectations apply. I’ve been doing this for 13 years, and what I’ve noticed is a higher expectation, and more to deal with. Sanctions are now impacting areas like Anti-Money Laundering (AML). The war between Russia and Ukraine has created more issues and amplified them. It’s touching on the SRA, which is impacting compliance. That has an amplified role in diversity, preventing harassment and bullying and an appropriate supervision structure. Essentially I think I found that the tentacles of risk have grown. 

When I started out in risk management, neither I nor my team were involved in areas like procurement at all. In fact, back then there wasn’t a procurement team to speak to. Now, it’s a very big part of what we do in supply chain management. What’s the impact that that has had on law firms? There has been a change in manning or staffing requirements, and there’s some cultural shifts needed, because you need more people to deal with it, and your team is growing as a result. Where you used to have one partner who would do bits of different things like complaints or money laundering, now you have entire teams. It’s an expectation. 

On a practice level, there’s just more things to think about than there were before. Different firms do it in different ways. The approach to risk management and management reporting is much more sophisticated than where it was before. Those are big changes, and therefore compliance professionals have to be engaging with them. Compliance for me is a subset of risk management, but there’s more to be thought about. There is a big role for a risk management and compliance professional now because there is more that needs to be done.”

What are the common challenges that organisations face in adopting new regulations, and how can compliance teams address them effectively?

“The challenge is winning hearts and minds. Compliance professionals are busy people, so finding the time to do that, to explain what it is that they need to do and why they need to do it is a challenge. In a firm with an appropriate culture, you’re not going to get pushback as if it’s the risk team’s fault, or they generated the rules, but what you are going to get is ‘No, we’d rather we didn’t have to comply.’ And I agree, I’d rather you didn’t have to be doing this as well. But given that we do have to comply, we need to accept that. Then the question is, ‘How do I do that? How does this work? How can it be simplified and streamlined?’ There’s some thought about automation and using whatever tech is available to make this as simple as possible for the business. We need to keep our noses clean and do the right thing while continuing to run our business, because we don’t want to wrap ourselves up in cotton wool. 

It’s about profit and the success of a business. I see it as a coin; on one side is performance management and fee earning, but another side of it is seeing the money and keeping things safe and avoiding spending. That is a large chunk of what a risk management professional can do on the strategic side. They go hand in hand. Risk management doesn’t exist as a silo, it’s part and parcel of a business. Going back to the first question about the changing regulatory landscape, I’m increasingly seeing that risk management does walk hand in hand with the business. It isn’t just compliance, it isn’t just the SRA’s rules. Particularly on the strategic side there’s a greater role there to help with decisions, and to keep them on the right side of the line and avoid loss.”

As everything is becoming more specialised, do candidates still need the same range of knowledge to be successful?

“If you’re setting off in the risk management profession, that increasing specialisation lends itself to a word of advice, which is ‘you can’t know everything’. I’m not looking for you to know everything, but you should know a good deal about some things, and certainly have a passion to learn more and take a holistic view of risk management. It’s more important to understand that if you poke a balloon here, it can have an impact over there. 

If you are saying, ‘I’m really interested in everything and I know everything’, that’s not possible nowadays. Issue spotting is key, and there are times that you get a question about x, but what you’ve detected is that there’s another issue there, and being able to explore that and answer the question at the same time is part of the risk manager’s skill. You’re never going to be bored if you set off as a risk manager. You may frequently be pressured, so it’s not an easy option, but it’s never dull. There is always something new and there’s always a challenge to respond to, because firms are growing and doing new work. “

To hear more about the changes happening in the Legal Risk & Compliance field, tune into Episode 12 of The UNCOVER Pod here. 

In the Legal Risk & Compliance sector, there are plenty of ways for junior candidates to get ahead. On Episode 10 of The UNCOVER Pod I spoke with Sanchia Wheeler, the Head of Compliance at Gowling WLG, about what makes junior candidates stand out from their colleagues or competitors at interviews. Read on to learn how you can set yourself apart in the Legal Risk & Compliance industry. 

What, in your opinion, is the most important attribute candidates need to demonstrate and why?

“Versatility. You can see that from the breadth of experience someone has at a more junior age, rather than the depth of experience. It’s about being exposed to lots of different areas, because typically speaking, risk and compliance isn’t something you study when you’re doing your degree or attending law school. People find their way into compliance based on the work that they have done. Having varied work experience in different areas of law really helps junior people to understand their role in a different way. They’ll understand that dealing with a complaint actually impacts another matter, because they’ll have a much broader perspective and see how things interlink. 

It’s not just about the work that you do day-to-day in the office. It’s about getting that experience outside of work too. It’s always good to have your hand in other pies, because there’s so much experience that you can get. Even if it’s not specifically legal, sitting on a board, doing school governor work, sitting on the Diversity Committee or whatever else it may be, you can gain skills, experiences and knowledge from all kinds of activities. It shows your ability to be in different areas and do different things. For a Risk & Compliance lawyer that is the day to day of the job. One minute you’re looking at complaints, the next you’re dealing with a sanction related query, an anti money laundering related query, onboarding a complex client, or handling a massive data breach in the firm. You need to be able to make that switch in your mind. 

The range of different laws you need to understand to advise your firm or organisation is huge. You also need to have an operational mindset that understands how to apply those laws to your organisation. How are you going to deal with a breach on the ground? How does that law apply to my organisation? My advice for junior members of staff who are working towards that position is to get stuck in, ask lots of questions, put your hand up for projects, get involved in stuff, and get to know your organisation better. Legal Risk & Compliance is one of the teams within any organisation who has so much exposure to everybody across the business. By putting your hand up for projects and sitting in different meetings you get insights into how officers interact in those meetings or how they think, and that’s where you get all of that breadth of experience from.”

What should candidates be doing on a day to day basis to separate themselves from the rest of the pack?

“It’s all about that personal brand. That’s what really sets people apart from the pack right at the beginning. Something I was told a long time ago is that people are human, and you’re allowed to make a mistake. People do recognise – especially when you’re a junior person – that it’s a very different world when you’re on the ground when you are actually practising law from when you were at university with your head in your book. Making that theory work within your firm’s commercial and strategic objectives is difficult as well. So in terms of your personal brand, networking and getting yourself out there is a key skill. There are so many different forums that you can attend, even within the risk and compliance space. It’s helpful to learn from other people who are also grappling with an issue. LinkedIn is absolutely amazing in terms of Information in one place, and from so many people across the world. There’s always one little gem you can get from somebody else that you might not have thought of before. 

Curiosity is also important. I think that’s a perfect word, because the more curious you are, the more you learn. If you can learn and then share that information, that’s something sets people apart at the junior stage as well. They’re not only doing it for themselves and learning because they’re curious, but they’re coming back to their team and improving the people around them too.  It just shows that you can take your knowledge forward and bring new ideas to your team. I like to call it ‘leadership thought’, which is not just thinking about today in my own job and my own little bubble, but what I can do to improve the firm, whether it’s our processes, individual teams or ways of thinking. That’s what I really like to see from juniors.”

To learn more from Sanchia, tune into Episode 10 of The UNCOVER Pod here. 

If you’re looking for a new area of law to develop your career within, look no further. On Episode 9 of The UNCOVER Pod I sat down with Hinesh Mistry, the Head of Risk and Compliance UKIME at Dentons, to talk about the opportunities that exist in the Legal Risk & Compliance field. He shared his experiences in the sector, including the responsibilities he’s had and the steps that you can take to advance your own career in the industry. Read on to learn more about developing a career in the Legal Risk & Compliance field. 

Key Challenges & Responsibilities

There are plenty of varied roles in the Legal Risk & Compliance sector. Hinesh said that “the ability to make decisions that are commercially sound within a very short timeframe” is key to success in the sector. It is also a fast-moving space, as firms will be eager to win business and therefore keen to deliver a rapid turnaround. There is an increasing need to be commercial-minded, which means understanding the level of risk that is acceptable for your firm and your clients, and making business decisions as a result. 

Whether you’re working with conflicts, due diligence or in analysis, you will be under pressure to deliver from all areas of the business. While this level of responsibility comes with a lot of privilege, Hinesh shared that it can also be “quite a pressured situation, where you have to make decisions based on limited information, exposure or knowledge. You have to use your wits and your resources to try and gather as much information as you can to make a sound decision.” So, while there are a wealth of opportunities in the sector, it is important to choose a path or firm that you are comfortable with. 

New Opportunities

One of the best things about a risk and compliance role is the ability to see the inner workings of your firm from a different perspective. Hinesh stated that “in the compliance field you get to see how firms operate as businesses, but you also see how firms operate as lawyers.” This makes a Legal Risk & Compliance role an ideal stepping stone for people who aren’t sure which side of the business they are most interested or capable of working in, as well as ideal position for individuals who enjoy more diversity in their role. 

Within the Legal Risk & Compliance sector there are plenty of opportunities to engage with strategy, innovation and technology, alongside more typical legal work. When you’re working in risk and compliance, you will have the opportunity to assess clients’ companies, potential investments and external partners, which gives you exposure to a plethora of other industries and skills. This can also improve your visibility in the industry, as you will have the chance to build connections with a wide range of contacts. 

Hinesh also noted that “there’s so much that goes on within compliance, and it’s so fruitful in terms of opportunity. It is what you make of it, but there’s loads of opportunity, and the sector is growing because it’s relatively new and more firms are seeing the value of compliance than ever before.” That means that there will be a variety of roles opening up in the coming months and years as firms receive building pressure from governments to comply with new legislation across all levels of the business. 

Advice for Junior Candidates

When it comes to landing your first role in the Legal Risk & Compliance sector, Hinesh’s advice is to “be open minded. It’s a very fast paced environment, so an opportunity may present itself when you least expect it.” He also recommended tapping into as many networks and communities as possible so that you can regularly engage with any changes in the space. As innovation happens in the sector, Hinesh’s parting words of wisdom are to  “remain dynamic” so that you can fit into roles across the sector.

To learn more about a career in the Legal Risk & Compliance sector, listen to The UNCOVER Pod here. 

When you’re interviewing for a new role in the Legal Risk & Compliance space, there are several key attributes that hiring managers will be looking for. If you can demonstrate them during your application and interview, you’ll have a better chance of securing your preferred position. On Episode 8 of The UNCOVER Pod I was joined by Rebecca Atkinson, the General Counsel at Howard Kennedy LLP in London, who shared her views on what those key attributes are. She also shared her advice for professionals who are joining the industry from other areas or at the entry level. 

What are the most important attributes that you will look for when hiring candidates into your team?

For me, what’s really important is that you’ve got a can-do attitude and a willingness to do things outside of your regular job. Sometimes we all have to muck in. For example, I’ve been helping onboarding clients and picking up risk advice queries, and I’m really enjoying it. We’re all going to help each other in my team. Some aspects of risk and compliance are really tough so we have to work together. 

One of the other things that’s really important is commerciality. At the end of the day, a law firm is there to service clients and make money. It is a business at the end of the day. My job is to get people where they need to get to, in the most compliant and risk averse way. That doesn’t mean that risks can’t be taken, they’ve just got to be understood and calculated properly so that people can do things with their eyes open. My team and I need to be able to do that commercially. We have to be able to justify not doing this transaction or whatever it might be. 

Sometimes you’ve got to get people to do things they just don’t want to do, so you have to approach things with a level of positivity. But, at the same time, you have to be able to catastrophise and show people the worst case scenario. You have to be creative enough to find solutions to their problems, which are commercially viable and mitigate as much risk as possible. 

So overall, in every candidate, from very junior to the senior level, I look for commercial mindedness, creative thinking abilities, can-do attitudes and a willingness and ability to learn.” 

What would your advice be to risk and compliance professionals who are just starting out in the industry?

“It’s up to you in terms of which track to go down. So you might say, ‘I want to be an AML person’, ‘I want to be a risk advice type person or compliance advice person’, ‘I want to be a sanctions lawyer’… you can choose to be quite focused, or you can choose to be more general than that. Generally, the larger the firms you go to, the more focussed you’ll end up being. 

Secondly I would say to learn as much as you can. You can’t over-learn in this sector, and the more you know, the more things will connect to each other. If you’ve learned about different aspects of the industry, you might have a sanctions issue, but you can see it from a money laundering perspective as well because you understand the code of conduct. There are tons of resources out there, and the vast majority of the time they’re completely free. Hook up to those publications’ newsletters, attend free webinars, download applications which will read text to you so that you can listen to things like SRA sanctions guidance when it comes out. 

Finally, network as much as you can and get yourself on LinkedIn. Post as much as you feel comfortable with, and get to know people in your network as much as you can. Get yourself into a group of people who are doing a similar role to you or in roles you want to be in, and try to build your brand as much as possible. Then you’ll get to be known in the industry, and then you will be approached for opportunities like podcasts, conferences, training etc. Having a brand can’t hurt, but networking is the most important thing.”

To learn more about getting into the Legal Risk & Compliance industry, tune into The UNCOVER Pod here. 

The Legal Risk & Compliance sector is a rapidly growing space with a host of different roles within it. As a candidate or professional it’s important that you understand the different areas of law that you can practise within the sector when applying for new positions. Even if you’re currently employed and not thinking about your next step yet, gaining exposure to different areas can greatly improve your career. 

On Episode 6 of The Uncover Pod I sat down with Sakina Chenot, the Partner and Global Head of Risk, Compliance and Conflicts at HFW, to talk about how you can gain more exposure throughout your professional life. Sakina’s own broad range of work has given her access to a number of experiences within the sector, giving her a wealth of knowledge on the topic. 

Here are her insights and tips:

Setting Yourself Up For Success

If you want to put yourself forward for new opportunities, demonstrating key transferable skills will put you in a good stead. Sakina said that “intellectual curiosity is very important” when it comes to making lateral moves within a company. She also mentioned that the other key skills she looks for in her team are “the willingness to collaborate, good organisation and time management skills”, as these allow you to make transitions smoothly. 

When asking for exposure in a different area of your company, demonstrating these traits will bolster your chances of being approved. 

Requesting a Change

If you feel that you’ve hit a plateau in your role and aren’t learning anything new from your position, Sakina recommended “just being honest with your line manager”. The best way to present your case is to explain how you’re feeling and have an open conversation about your development. Asking if there are any available avenues for growth in a different team will demonstrate your commitment to the company and a dedication to your work – both of which are big positives. 

You may be surprised how willing managers are to make changes like this, as happy, motivated employees do better work than frustrated or stagnant ones. Having these conversations will not only improve your chances of getting more exposure within your role, but will also help your manager understand your personal goals and aspirations, making them better able to support you in them. 

Extracurricular Exposure

If you’re not able to make a formal transition into a different role, making yourself available to key players in those teams will help you to gain exposure in a more informal way. You can also pick up on what’s happening in each sector and learn outside of your working hours through a variety of courses and accreditations that will improve your credentials, should you decide that moving out of your firm entirely is the best way to gain new experiences. 

If you’re not sure which area you would like to move into, Sakina also suggested “researching the areas that genuinely interest you”. Building relationships with people in those teams will also help you to transition into them, as well as give you some insights into the daily work you could be taking on. Learning more about each area will also help you to identify which skills you could bring to your new team, as well as what you could potentially learn from them. 

In Summary

Ultimately, the key to gaining additional exposure within the Legal Risk & Compliance industry is to seek it out, whether that’s within your current firm or in a new role. If you would like to speak to a member of the UNCOVER team about your next move, get in touch here. 

When you’re searching for a new role it’s easy to focus on the potential salary that you could take home. However, when considering a career move, the paycheck is only one of a number of factors that make a role suitable for you. In fact, prioritising your new salary over things like professional development and culture fit could actually be detrimental to your career. Read on to find out what you should be considering when you interview for a new position.

Job Satisfaction & Engagement

Being bored is just as frustrating as being stressed. It’s important to find a healthy middle ground because being mentally engaged at work actually plays into your success. You should be driven by a genuine desire to succeed rather than the salary attached to the role. People who are naturally engaged with their work tend to have higher job satisfaction than unmotivated colleagues, leading them to perform better, receive more promotions and attract pay-rises as a result. Prioritising a salary over your job satisfaction will ultimately damage your career by keeping you in lower-level jobs for longer.

Professional Growth & Development

Particularly at the junior end of the market, you have a lot of options when it comes to choosing a new role. However, if you’re relatively early on in your career, a key thing to focus on is whether your role will allow you to grow and develop your technical skills. It’s all very well moving into a role that’s paying you £5-10k more, but if you’re not getting the experience that goes along with that, the uplift is usually very short lived.

Specialist roles tend to pay more money in the short term, but for junior candidates this can limit your career potential by not giving you experience in a range of disciplines and skills at an early stage. Particularly when you’re first entering the market, it’s best to choose a role that’s as broad as possible. Don’t pigeonhole yourself immediately by going for a role that limits your potential but has a slightly higher salary.

Company Culture & Values

You’ll need to consider culture when you’re in the job market. A lot of firms will offer roles that are fairly similar in terms of structure, but their environments will be incredibly varied. You should prioritise finding a culture that encourages engagement, upskilling and progression. Equally, you’ll do best in a company where you’re aligned with their values. If you feel comfortable, appreciated and respected, you will naturally give your best self at work. That translates into exposure, responsibility and progression.

Contact & Exposure

As firms begin to offer more remote roles, junior candidates in particular are seeing a negative impact on their careers. Because you are not working in close quarters with your senior colleagues, you often miss the opportunity to learn from them and build your profile within the company. That’s often fine if you’re a senior person yourself, but if you’re a junior professional you should carefully consider the impact of a remote working environment on your career. While remote roles tend to pay comparatively well, they can also limit your opportunities by isolating you from the wider company.

Employer Reputation & Employee Retention

When firms have a high turnover rate or they’re struggling to hire people, their salaries will often be a bit above the market average. While salary is an important consideration, you should think about whether you will be joining a stable environment and whether the higher salary will be worth the additional stress of an understaffed or overworked team.

Consequences of Salary Prioritisation

If you frequently move jobs to gain a higher salary, you run the risk of not allowing your skill set to develop properly. For example, if you’ve been an analyst for three years, you should have three years’ worth of experience. However, if you have moved three times during that period that won’t be the case. Each time you move it takes three or four months to embed yourself in the firm and begin to work at the same capacity that you did in the previous firm. Over the course of three years, if you’ve made three moves, you’re actually nine months short of your three years worth of experience. Sometimes moving for a salary will be right, but doing it consistently will do a disservice to your career.

 

To speak to a specialist recruiter in the Legal Risk & Compliance industry, speak to a member of our team today. 

You can get in touch here. 

The Legal sphere is a lucrative area for junior candidates. There are lots of opportunities to develop your career through a variety of pathways, including a role in the Legal Risk & Compliance sector. On Episode 5 of The Uncover Pod I spoke to Sebastien McGinty, the Head of Client Content & Financial Data at Floww, about his experiences of working in and learning from the space. Read on for his advice for other junior candidates. 

What advice would you give to junior candidates aspiring to build a career in the Risk and Compliance field?

Figure out early what you want from these roles. In my experience, these are jobs where your personal investment of energy correlates directly to what you take away from them and also how happy you are in them. There is a spectrum of attitudes in this industry, which goes from people who really want this to be their career and want to strive in this one industry for a long time, to people on the other end who are just looking for something that pays the bills and allows them to do what they want to in their spare time. There’s nothing wrong with either of those attitudes, or anything in between, but it’s important to know where you are on that spectrum and what you want from your job. 

The other advice I’d give to junior candidates is to be a team player. I don’t mean sacrificing yourself for the good of the firm – I mean finding a space where you’re reliable and you can rely on the people around you. That’s not a given, you have to forge that in any new setting. 

The most valuable thing that these jobs can (and will) give you is knowledge and experience.  They will contribute more to your professional life than just the take-home pay and day-to-day experience. I like to hire people who’ve worked in the service industry before because it teaches you to admit that you’re wrong or you don’t know something rather than pretend you do and get it wrong. It takes self confidence to ask a question again, but it’s an invaluable skill. I would counsel anyone who’s starting out to be open to that experience, to take those answers and learn as much as they can.

What are the top skills that junior candidates should focus on developing in the Risk & Compliance space?

The first quality you should cultivate is steadfastness. I don’t mean stubbornness – I mean being able to justify your decisions or opinions based on evidence and experience. You should be able to present yourself as an authoritative subject matter expert. You’re not always going to be right because we’re fallible and there are going to be new pieces of evidence that either circumvent or change your opinion. What you need to be able to do is have a discussion and either stick your ground or think ‘Is this actually right or does my ground need to move? And if so, should I change my opinion and the advice I’m giving?’ Too often I see young colleagues who are either too scared of losing face to change their mind or crumple as soon as a senior person criticises their opinion. That’s not something you can do if you want to build that trusted stakeholder position. 

Secondly, you should follow your curiosity. The most impressive thing I see junior people in my team do is admit when they don’t know something. Lying and providing incorrect information just to save face does the team a huge disservice. Admitting you don’t know and having the willingness to learn demonstrates a huge amount of integrity. 

Often people are unhappy in more junior roles because they don’t ask for things. Now, it’s your managers’ role to tell you what they expect of you, and if they don’t they’re letting you down. Equally, if you don’t explain to them what your ambitions are and what you want out of the role, they can’t give it to you. 

My final skill would be sharing information and bouncing ideas off your colleagues. That’s why we work in teams. It helps you hone stuff and throw out what doesn’t work. It provides you contradictory opinions that help you find the right course of action. It really is important to cultivate positive relationships with your colleagues and people working within the wider field.

How can junior candidates stay up to date with evolving regulations and best practices in the Risk & Compliance space?

 Any individual dictates their personal engagement in their professional life. Whether you’re reading around your subject. pushing for personal professional development opportunities, watching YouTube videos or TED Talks or listening to podcasts, consuming everything you can will be helpful. Unfortunately that will be unpaid work, but it will make you more capable and ultimately build that trusted stakeholder and advisor relationship. 

It all depends how engaged you want to be. If you want to stand out as a candidate, learning everything you can will be immeasurably helpful. But, at the same time, you can’t be a master of every field. You’ll often work across different functions within a law firm or practice group. If you have a personal connection to something that transcends your professional world it is so valuable to your team to engage with material from it and go that extra mile. Find the heads of those practice groups and get into the meetings where they talk about sector strategy. That will provide many benefits to candidates in this field.

To hear the full conversation, tune into The Uncover Pod here. 

Interviewing for a new position can be a nerve-wracking process. There are several ways that you can prepare for an interview, from researching the company to preparing insightful questions for the hiring panel. On Episode 3 of The UNCOVER Pod I was joined by Amasis Saba, the Head of Business Intake for Simmons & Simmons, to discuss the biggest mistakes that candidates make in interviews and what steps they can take to perform better. Read on to learn more about interviewing in the Legal Risk & Compliance industry. 

What is the most important attribute that a candidate needs to demonstrate and why?

I’ll take enthusiasm and willingness to learn over nearly everything. They need to demonstrate recognition of what they do and don’t know, as well as a willingness to be honest about that. That’s something that I’ve seen make or break interviews. Candidates should be demonstrating a willingness to throw themselves into the role and ask ‘What am I going to learn today? How can I do better today?’ 

There aren’t many roles in compliance where you can do a straight nine to five type job with no thinking. To get the most out of the role, there has to be a willingness to push yourself and learn. There are some unrealistic expectations that when you have been somewhere for a year you automatically deserve a promotion. Leaders should be managing those expectations by asking ‘What does that look like? Do you just mean more money? Or do you mean a different role? And if so, how is that role different to what you’re doing at the moment?’ Promotions aren’t all about money, they’re about increasing your skills and knowledge. 

What are the key mistakes you see candidates make during interviews?

Some things are universal, no matter what level the candidate is at. People often overestimate their abilities on their applications, so I want details. If you tell me you’ve been involved in something I’m going to want to know what you did. It comes across more obviously than people might expect when they overstate what they did. I’d take honesty in a response every time. That’s an absolutely critical mistake. 

An important skill in this industry is the ability to communicate. We expect our writing and delivery to be succinct and to the point, but we often get candidates who try to impress us by talking for as long as possible. Don’t waffle – just get to the point, explain it and give a relevant example. That’s how you show confidence in your abilities and your skills. 

Here are some other pointers: 

• Being too general in your answer is also a mistake. Give a specific example. Tell me what you learned from it, why you did it and what was useful. Data is a brilliant example. 
• Don’t give the answer you think we want to hear. Particularly when we’ve been interviewing for a while, we can tell when candidates do this. 
• ‘I don’t know’ is always an acceptable answer. If we ask you technical questions, give us your best guess, but it’s okay to say you don’t know. Just be honest. 

Should candidates be honest about what they’re looking for from a job?

Absolutely. When I ask about what you’re looking for, is it a title? Is it the money? Is it the opportunity to learn? For candidates who really want to learn, the progression might be slower on paper, because you’re not going to jump through four or five different levels in a short space of time, but the level of learning that you will get instead is massive. That’s an important point for many people – the expectation of quick progression might mean that you haven’t actually had the chance to build the thorough understanding that you would have if you’d stayed somewhere and absorbed information from senior people. Being honest in an interview helps us assess if we’re going to be able to meet your expectations, as well as the other way around. 

What questions should candidates ask in interviews?

One of the questions I look forward to is ‘What does the training look like?’ Any firm whose training expectations finish at the end of the induction should be a bit of a worry for candidates. You need to ask ‘What does the ongoing, weekly, monthly or yearly training programme for the function look like, both in terms of professional skills and technical skills?’ This is a huge differentiation for the firm to offer people, and I think it’s a really important one. 

To learn more about preparing for an interview, you can read this blog or listen to the full episode of The UNCOVER Pod here.