Applying For Jobs

Dear Import/Export Compliance Manager,

You have been writing lately about job interviewing, but what about getting an interview in the first place?  I have been having trouble even getting to that step.  Do you have any tips for success in getting an import/export compliance job?

Sheepish in Charlottesville

Dear Sheepish,

Something Import/Export Compliance Manager should have specified more in his two previous posts was that the tactics you use are not guaranteed for every interviewer.  Interviewers are people, with our own experiences and hang-ups, and thus tactics that work well on one interviewer may not work so well on the next one.

At least with interviews, you can adapt your strategy as the interview progresses.  Not so with a job application.  One shot and, boom, that’s pretty much it...unless you have taken steps to make yourself known to the prospective employer beforehand.  The Import/Export Compliance Manager wrote about this in a previous post (back in 2015, which feels like one hundred years ago) here.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/breaking-trade-compliance-field-matt-beck/

Let’s start with the most difficult scenario: applying for a job with a company you have never heard of which is located in a city nowhere near where you live now.  That takes away the usual ‘take someone who works at the company but you don’t know out to lunch’ tactic.  There may be other creative ways to try to get an ‘in’ there, but let’s say you don’t have those.  So then, it’s down to your job application, resumé and...a cover letter.

The Import/Export Compliance Manager is going to go on a mini-rant here.  Write...a...cover...letter.  It gives you a good opportunity to show several things:

1.      That you care enough about getting the position that you took the time to write a personalized-for-the-job cover letter. 

2.      That you can write, or at least that you’re competent enough to get help in crafting a good-looking letter.

3.      Some important points from your resumé that you want to highlight.

4.      That you know the ‘rules’ for applying for jobs and interviewing.

Cover letters are rare birds indeed, which makes them stand out even more when one accompanies a job application.  Unless you write a horrible cover letter with spelling errors or the wrong job title in it, it should be an advantage for you.  Look up how to write one online.  The Import/Export Compliance Manager recommends sticking to four paragraphs and no more than one page.  Also, if you can, get a professional to look at it, such as someone in a management position or, if you have access, to a career services professional at a college.

OK, so you have a cover letter.  What about the resumé?  The Import/Export Compliance Manager may be an outdated stick-in-the-mud here, but his opinion is that it doesn’t matter what the latest fancy format for resumés is.  It doesn’t matter if you submit it in-person written on pink paper.  It doesn’t matter about using certain keywords optimized for human resource computer algorithms to find your resumé.  This is import/export compliance, a specialized field with relatively few people employed in it; accountants probably outnumber us ten million to one.  The Import/Export Compliance Manager would not worry about those things and instead write a resumé that tells a story about you.  Here’s how the Import/Export Compliance Manager structures his story:

1. Name, address and contact information.  The name is the only one of these that is mandatory.  Everything else adds a nice personal and professional touch. 

   
   

2. One sentence with the key points about you.  Here is an example: 

   Creative, personable and effective analyst with proven record of maintaining

   and improving the import/export compliance programs of companies in multiple industries seeking position to utilize compliance talents and skills.

   Obviously writing this gets easier the more experience you have.

   
   

3. Compliance Experience.  This would include any compliance-specific positions you have had in the past, compliance-specific responsibilities you have had in non-compliance positions and compliance projects worked on and completed.

   
   

4. _____ Experience, with the blank being your experience in whatever other non-compliance area it was.  This could be Sales, Finance, Customer Service, or anything, really.  Have multiple sections if you like or just call it ‘Additional Experience’.  Being well-rounded is good; be proud of it. 

   
   

5. Education.  List your latest educational attainment and definitely everything after high school, even if it doesn’t fit.  As the Import/Export Compliance Manager has stated before, one of the top import/export compliance people he knows is an Art History major.

   
   

6. Certifications.  Any class you have attended or certification/certificate you have earned goes here.  A million bonus points if you passed the U.S. Customs Broker’s Exam (or your local country equivalent) and half that number of points if you have at least taken it or took it and didn’t pass.  That is still important for a hiring manager or human resources person to know, as it shows dedication and will set you apart from most of the other job applicants.

   
   

7. Professional Affiliations, such as membership in the International Compliance Professionals Association.  Quite often, they make membership free for new members.  https://www.icpainc.org/join/

   
   

8. Recent Public Presentations.  If your area has a import/export compliance roundtable, you should volunteer to give a presentation.  Any topic they’ll let you speak on will do.

   
   

9. Skills.  Anything goes here, from what you can use on a computer (Microsoft Office, etc.) to public speaking to a foreign language.  Even things like playing basketball or stamp collecting can go in here, though those are optional.  Anything that can make you a more helpful and well-rounded (and interesting) employee helps and also serves the purpose of giving the interviewer something easy and interesting to ask about (“So, what’s your favorite stamp in your collection and why?”).

   
   

The Import/Export Compliance Manager doesn’t go for having 16 key words about yourself at the beginning of the resumé or whatever the new trend is in resumés these days.  As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding.  Show what you have done and are capable of doing in the rest of the resumé.  When reviewing resumés from prospective applicants, the Import/Export Compliance Manager actually prefers to start from the bottom of the resumé and work upwards, in order to view and understand the applicant’s career progression.  Bullet points are much easier to read and process than a paragraph about your experience. 

Again, the resumé is about selling yourself.  Therefore, do not limit yourself to one page.  If you have a good story to tell about yourself, by all means, tell it!!  Maybe the Import/Export Compliance Manager is a narcissist, but the last resumé he wrote ran three and a half pages.  Just make sure the content is relevant.  If you take twenty bullet points to describe your restaurant job in high school, those bullet points had better all emphasize skills and talents used that will make you a great fit for the position for which you are applying.

What about if you have zero import/export compliance experience whatsoever, such as being a new college graduate or having a career in an entirely different field?  You have a tougher row to hoe, to be sure, but it is not insurmountable.  Remember that a hiring manager or human resource person wants evidence that you are committed to being in import/export compliance.  We’re in a niche field and it can be a concern that someone who has no experience in it may not like it.  Therefore, areas to emphasize on a resumé are anything that shows a commitment to compliance.  These can include:

• Passing, failed or studying for the Customs Brokers’ exam (or local non-U.S. equivalent)

  
  

• Other compliance certifications, such as CUSECO

  
  

• Having reached out and met with import/export compliance contacts at other companies

  
  

• Participating in a local import/export compliance roundtable

  
  

• Compliance-related books or internet sites that you read regularly or have read (such as this blog)

  
  

• Having to comply with or, even better, designing rules for a previous job (ex. writing a safety manual for the laboratory in which you worked)

  
  

• Training others

  
  

• Auditing others

  
  

• Improvement programs such as Lean or Six Sigma

It’s even more important for someone with no import/export compliance experience to write a cover letter.  Again, this will be a sign that you are really very interested in the position and being in import/export compliance.

One last little thing to do: look up the import/export compliance personnel at the company on LinkedIn.  View their profiles.  That will give you some additional information about who is there and their backgrounds.  It also does something else: it shows them you are interested enough in the job to look them up, provided their profile is set up such that they can see who has viewed it.  You want your name to stand out; that’s one way to do it.

There’s also the job application itself.  Import/Export Compliance Manager has no advice on that.  You’re on your own.

So anyway, that’s the advice that Import/Export Compliance Manager can share about applying for jobs.  Again, your mileage may vary depending on who is looking at the resumés (hopefully not an algorithm).  It may be that this advice is outmoded.  The Import/Export Compliance Manager is willing to bet there are still enough of us hiring managers out there who don’t trust such measures and want to review all the applicants ourselves.  So take this advice along with all of the other sources of advice you have and see what can come of it.  Good luck!