Explaining Import/Export Compliance At Parties

Dear Import/Export Compliance Manager,

I love working in the import/export compliance field.  However, whenever I try to explain my job to people at parties, their eyes completely glaze over.  How do you explain import/export compliance to people unfamiliar with it?

Befuddled in Butte

Dear Befuddled,

Ah, to be someone in an easily-recognized job that requires little to no explanation!  The Import/Export Compliance Manager feels your pain, Befuddled, having the same trouble at parties when he was first starting out.  After a five-minute explanation of the wonders of import/export compliance to fellow partygoers, they would turn to the Import/Export Compliance Manager’s then-fiancee, hoping against hope that she was in a field that was easier to understand.  You could just see their eyes light up when she said she was a Kindergarten teacher.  Excellent, here’s something that we can relate to! 

The answer is that it depends on your audience.  You can stick with a short and sweet sentence along the lines of, “It’s my job to make sure all imports and exports of products and technology are done in full compliance with the law.”  If you want to go further, it helps to relate import/export compliance to their job and the rules they have to follow.  Are they in Human Resources or run a small company?  Relate import/export compliance to the rules on discrimination in hiring.  Are they in Manufacturing?  Relate import/export compliance to Quality Control or Environmental, Health & Safety.  A nurse?  Medical compliance.  A teacher?  Rules regarding what foods children can and cannot bring to school and how they can be disciplined.  Once you have made them think of compliance in their own lives, you can carefully explain that import/export compliance people are the ones who make sure that the rules regarding importing and export (i.e. when products or information crosses a border) are followed properly, thus keeping people out of jail (always a good visual), ensuring shipments get through customs and saving money in the process.  Then you can direct the conversation to a more interesting topic like root canals.

An easier way to go about it, but one that’s not as fun, is to specifically relate it to all of the interesting ways the United States assigns tariffs. 

(rolls eyes)

In the Import/Export Compliance Manager’s experience, usually the only people who want to actually know details are the ones who are slightly familiar with the import/export compliance function due to working at a company with an Import/Export Compliance Department.  This provides a good opportunity to ask about their experiences and what their thoughts are on the effectiveness of the program.  Maybe you’ll get an idea that will help you in your own job dealing with your own company’s employees.  At the very least, you’ve just helped out your import/export compliance peers at the other company by helping humanize the import/export compliance function just a little bit.  Or maybe not; the Import/Export Compliance Manager prefers to be an optimist.

Someday, import/export compliance professionals can aspire to the level of recognition afforded to construction workers, accountants and police officers, thus saving us all some unnecessary effort to explain our jobs.  Someday we will be expressly invited to Career Days at high schools, have children dress up as us for Halloween and have hit TV shows about us.  Actually, the hit TV show would probably have to come first.  Seriously, there has been a hit show about junk left in storage units but nothing about import/export?  Well, the Import/Export Compliance Manager’s wife once informed him that a Hawaii 5-0 episode had Steve McGarrett busting a guy for an improperly filled-out CF 7501.  Oh well, the longest journey begins with a single step.