Another Example of One of Our Top Career Choices

One of our top career choices in recent years has been compliance. When someone sends a relative or friend for advice on either finding or switching careers, they usually haven't thought about compliance, but it's been and will likely continue to be a a solid career track. Here's the latest evidence (albeit on a grand scale):
The FBI agent who oversaw the Bernard Madoff investigation and helped pioneer the use of wiretaps that yielded dozens of insider-trading convictions is now working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc...He is a vice president in Goldman Sachs’s compliance, surveillance and strategy group, part of a division overseen by Alan Cohen, global head of compliance.
Besides a background in law enforcement, companies welcome lawyers (as you might imagine) into the compliance fold.

Now, compliance may not be the most glamorous sort of endeavor. For an ambitious business-minded individual, it won't hold a candle to starting up a wildly successful business. Tech-types might prefer creating a hot new piece of software. And if you're the sort who prefers using your muscles to earn a living, compliance may not exactly fit the bill. But it pays well - sometimes extremely well - and those who qualify are in demand.

Just remember that the government's layers of regulation are hardly ever pared or in any way streamlined. Big governments like ours here in the good old US of A only and always want to get bigger. One way to do so is hire more people to create regulations and then to enforce them. Unfortunately, businesses subject to mushrooming regulations stand in the firing line of clever, grasping bureaucrats intent on building little pockets of power, mini-empires as it were, which not only oversee, but ultimately even control and inhibit the productive activity of those seeking to build businesses in our society. Even as excessive regulations suppress the growth hormones of businesses, those same businesses must hire compliance folks to defend themselves from the the government's armies of regulators.

Indeed, while businesses struggle to grow in the traditional manner, a dynamic job market has grown as government bureaucrats and corporate compliance employees swap positions, as regulators are courted by business, and compliance people take better-paying or more secure government jobs. It may not quite be a virtuous circle, but as one side feeds off the other, those who have chosen a career in compliance benefit handsomely.

And that's why compliance sits atop the list of career choices these days - along with the also robust security industry.

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