Compliance Officer Overview

When it comes to the most important skills required to be a compliance officer, we found that a lot of resumes listed 12.2% of compliance officers included regulatory agencies, while 5.7% of resumes included oversight, and 5.6% of resumes included ensure compliance. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.

When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the compliance officer job title. But what industry to start with? Most compliance officers actually find jobs in the finance and health care industries.

If you're interested in becoming a compliance officer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 41.8% of compliance officers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 23.5% of compliance officers have master's degrees. Even though most compliance officers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a compliance officer. When we researched the most common majors for a compliance officer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on compliance officer resumes include associate degree degrees or doctoral degree degrees.

You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a compliance officer. In fact, many compliance officer jobs require experience in a role such as customer service representative. Meanwhile, many compliance officers also have previous career experience in roles such as administrative assistant or internship.