Technical capability gets candidates on the shortlist, but their soft skills are what determine the final hiring decision.

Stakeholder management, influence, resilience, adaptability - they’re hard to see on a CV, and harder still to assess in an interview.

Over the past few months, Broadgate have been engaged in plenty of hiring meetings where cultural fit has been the core focus, and for some firms, that’s translating to a talent bottleneck.

Here’s why soft skills are shaping up to be more important than ever in the highly regulated, technically demanding compliance market.

What Soft Skills Mean for Today’s Compliance Roles

Between the FCA’s focus on Consumer Duty and the pressure to run leaner operations, compliance teams are being asked to play a more active role in how the business performs.

When compliance roles are more commercially exposed, soft skills typically become a stronger focus for hiring managers.

Our LinkedIn Talent Insights tell a similar story: Internal & External Investigations is now the fastest-growing skill for UK compliance managers, up 902% in the last 12 months.

What Hiring Managers are Prioritising:

  • Stakeholder challenge - confidence to push back and hold position without damaging relationships

  • Judgement - particularly in grey areas where rules need interpretation, not repetition

  • Clear communication - explaining risk and decisions to non-technical audiences

  • Advisory mindset - contributing to decisions earlier rather than reviewing them after the fact

  • Resilience - staying effective under scrutiny and regulatory pressure

The Interview Gap

Technically capable candidates can still struggle at interview, particularly when they’re expected to challenge stakeholders or demonstrate a more analytical, advisory mindset.

This can result in a disconnect, where strong candidates undersell their ability, and hiring managers are left uncertain whether someone can operate confidently in a more exposed role.

From our recent work with hiring teams, we’ve found a few approaches that work well:

  • Pressure-testing judgement - using real scenarios that reflect stakeholder tension, not just regulatory knowledge

  • Creating space for challenge - encouraging candidates to explain how they’d push back, not only sticking to what the rule says.

  • Assessing advisory capability explicitly - rather than assuming it will show up through a technical answer.

Across live UK processes, interviews are stretching beyond technical validation. Hiring teams are adding stakeholder panels, written exercises, and scenario-based discussions to understand how candidates advise, challenge, and operate under pressure.

Decisions are being made based on how candidates handle ambiguity, disagreement, and pace, rather than gaps in technical content. Cultural fit, once a vague concept, is now more defined, with hiring managers focusing on how someone raises issues, works with the first line, and contributes to leaner compliance teams.

Training for Soft Skills

There’s still a tendency to treat soft skills as fixed traits. You either have them, or you don’t.

We’ve found it’s quite the opposite. These skills develop through experience, feedback, and deliberate practice, and they’re certainly not set in stone at the point of hiring.

Soft skills need to be invested in and given room to grow as expectations continue to change.

  • We’re already seeing this reflected in how firms approach development, with more focus on coaching, scenario-based training, and exposure to stakeholder decision-making.

Finding the Right Talent Partner

At Broadgate, we spend time understanding how compliance functions operate, how teams make decisions, where challenge shows up, and what good looks like in practice.

That context helps us look past technical checklists and surface candidates who can operate credibly in more exposed, commercially engaged roles.

In a market where judgment and advisory capability define success, transactional hiring models often fall short.

Strong outcomes come from long-term relationships, honest conversations, accountability, and a clear view of how the compliance market is evolving.

If you’re thinking about upcoming hires or you want a clearer picture of how the compliance talent market is shaping up, we’re always happy to have a confidential conversation. Contact me directly to learn more: Georgia.mason@broadgatesearch.com