How to: Become a Successful Contracts & Compliance Manager
How to: Become a Successful Contracts & Compliance Manager
One of the most common question which junior Contracts & Compliance staff within the recruitment sector ask is around how they can step-up into a leadership role. The best advice that I could give in answer to this question is to demonstrate leadership behaviour and potential prior to achieving that step-up.
We have found a significantly growing market for Contracts & Compliance staff in the industry over the past few years, most likely due to the increased level of regulation and statute. That being said, Contracts & Compliance is not a mere legislative necessity. With the right people, a company’s Contracts & Compliance function becomes a value-adding, commercial, profit-maximising component to a business.
Camino Partners work with a number of talented and high-achieving senior Contracts & Compliance candidates who have accomplished just this in their companies and they have given us their golden nuggets of advice for junior candidates looking to display the work ethic, skill and expertise of a successful Contracts and/or Compliance Manager.
1) Build strong relationships.
“If you want to be good at your role, you need to invest in building and maintaining relationships with people as you need to understand the interest of all the stakeholders involved in the deal-making process.” - Anon, Contracts Manager.
2) Appropriately push back with consultants.
“You must be able to say no sometimes. The Sales Team will want to make as much money as possible (that’s how business works) but can sometimes forget the importance of compliance. Having the ability to help steer the team towards excellent compliance is key, so excellent communication skills and a can-do attitude are a must.” - Anon, Compliance Manager.
3) Don't just highlight problems, come up with a solution.
"Contract management not only entails flagging legal risks but also challenges you to think of solutions that benefit the short, mid and long-term interests of the business.” Anon, Contracts Manager.
4) Be commercial and it will pay off.
"Through being commercially aware, process driven and technically sound, an organisation and its clients will trust a Contracts Manager with business partner status to help strike the right balance between removing/mitigating risks and making money. Simple as that." - Anon, Senior Contracts Manager.
5) Expect your company's standards to be as high as yours.
“I have been lucky enough to work with some great people in very reputable companies. I would advise anyone going into recruitment, especially within Compliance/Contracts to ensure that the company does things right. By this I mean adhering to laws and regulations strictly and not allowing bad practices.” - Anon, Compliance Manager.
Success in any role is largely based on your ability, work ethic, and willingness to learn and continue to develop your skillset. Hopefully these five top tips will give you a little insight into how to demonstrate the right attitude and capabilities to attain that success. However, I think that we can all agree that there is also an element of "luck" in one's career progression. Sometimes, a person can have excellent previous experience and be utterly assiduous in their work whilst also being painfully underpaid with no substantial likelihood of getting a decent promotion any time soon. If you find yourself in a situation such as this, it's usually a sign that you need to move to a company that is more favourable to your career. If this is the case for you, feel free to get in touch and I'll be happy to assist you in your job search! If you have any golden nuggets of advice that you would give to budding Contracts and Compliance Managers, feel free to write them in the comments below.
Thank you to the Contracts & Compliance Managers who took the time out of their day to send over their quotes for this article, you all know who you are and you're wonderful!
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