Senior Compliance Officer placed at a $30B European private wealth manager after an internal search had stalled.
7
Candidates submitted
88/100
Average submission score
6/7
Advanced to interview
1
Hire placed
Summary. A US-based RIA, the US arm of a European private wealth manager with $30B in AUM, needed to fill a senior compliance hire that had been open since early autumn. By mid-winter the search had stalled. Ophelos delivered seven qualified candidates against a fixed rubric over approximately four weeks. Six advanced to client interviews. Two received offers. One accepted.
A specialty search that called for a specialist approach.
The role required hands-on ownership of Form ADV drafting, 206(4)-7 annual review, SEC Marketing Rule administration, and Code of Ethics program management. Hiring for it called for a screen tied to those specific functions, scored against a rubric, and run before any candidate reached a stakeholder interview. Compliance hiring is a specialty practice.
Time-zone friction across NYC and Europe made scheduling fragile. Good candidates were lost when internal stakeholders were unavailable. The $180K base ceiling was a known friction point in the New York compliance market.
An unbundled engagement at a flat fee, with every candidate screened against a bespoke rubric.
Ophelos built a structured intake and a 21-criteria rubric. The rubric reflected the hiring manager's technical priorities, knockout criteria, and writing-ability emphasis. It used a 100-point scale with a minimum 80-point submission threshold.
Ophelos sourced beyond the client's reach. The search drew from a private database of 8,000+ compliance candidate records, targeted LinkedIn outreach, and organic inbound inquiries driven by Ophelos thought-leadership content.
Every candidate moved through two stages of screening. A pre-screen confirmed the knockout criteria. An in-depth structured interview then scored each candidate against the rubric. Both stages were video recorded and transcribed.
Ophelos delivered candidate packages built for asynchronous review. Each candidate's package included a written submission summary, a resume, and the recorded interview.
For firms hiring compliance talent, the gap is rarely sourcing volume or applicant tracking. The gap is technical screening capability and process management. Ophelos's unbundled model lets a client keep the parts of the process their internal team does well and add the parts they don't have the capacity or expertise for.
Pricing for this kind of engagement runs $2,500 to $5,000 depending on what options are included. A contingency engagement at 25% of base would have priced this hire at $45,000, and a retained search would have run higher with longer timelines.
“It was a very good experience overall. The way priorities were collected gave us transparency on what was really important. The non-negotiables were addressed before introductions, so there were no surprises, and it was very time effective.”
US Chief Compliance Officer at a $30B European Private Wealth Manager
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