In this video, Mike Richards warns treasury professionals about recruiter scams, sharing two real‑world examples—a fake recruiter targeting a contact in New York and a fraudulent executive recruiter in France. He explains how the scams operate (scraped LinkedIn profiles, fabricated job descriptions, and identity theft) and demonstrates practical verification methods such as consulting one’s network and performing reverse‑image searches. Richards then pivots to promote the upcoming Treasury Career Corner Live event in London, detailing the round‑table sessions, the "Ask the Treasurer" panel featuring senior treasurers from Sky, Hastings, and Accrashaw, and the networking opportunities. He emphasizes the career‑building value of in‑person networking and urges viewers to register for the remaining spots.
Chapters
Sorry for the warning sound, but I think it's serious and you need to be aware. There are fake recruiters out there, scammers if you like. The reason I wrote this week's newsletter was inspired actually by a chap in New York, and we're good friends, get on well. I might actually— he might comment on this story if he does. He was approached by what looked like a legitimate recruiter. He had good profiles-ish on LinkedIn, a couple of gaps, but he had an exciting opportunity. Signature on it looked a little bit, yeah, lots of logos. And he started talking about this amazing opportunity, world's large, one of the world's largest beverage brands in New York. Now, fortunately for him, for the candidate that is, something didn't sit well with him. He said, hang on, before I send my CV, I'm just going to check in with Mike. Do you know this guy? Have you heard about him? And I said, do you know what, keep talking to him and we will discover the truth. Funny thing was, he eventually— when this guy said, oh yeah, I'm recruiting for this brand, this chap actually knew them. And he said, I know these guys, I— some of my friends work there. So he approached his contacts, they said, guys, are you recruiting? The answer was, no, we're not, it's a scam, watch out. In fact, one of the people he talked to said, I've looked at that job description, It looks like my job now, unless someone's not told me something. I know it was— he was fine. He said no. What they're doing is this guy had scraped a profile from someone off of LinkedIn, turned it into a job description, and then was going out to the market saying, I'm recruiting this pretend job, just to harvest CVs, resumes, information. You need to be careful, guys. So the good thing was he was asking his network, which is what you need to do. Another one, second story. I was approached a year or so ago in France, actually. There was a lady who was going out to everyone saying she was an executive treasury recruiter, and I thought, crumbs, I've never heard of this. And very attractive lady, great profile, went to the saw barn, amazing. I thought, wow, why have I never heard of this lady? The reason was we did a reverse Google image search. You just save the photo, and then chuck into Google, say, who is this person? Do you recognize it? It was amazing. So as well as being an executive recruiter, she was a travel blogger, she happened to be a model for a well-known clothing brand, and she was on about 15 other websites. Yes, she was a scam. Things started to unravel. I had to contact the associations over there. A couple of people I saw that were quite high-profile treasurers said, by the way, do you know this lady is a scammer? They're like, what? And this was actually before it all kicked off. So what I'm saying is Not every recruiter is fake, far from it, but there are some out there and they don't do us any favors for us, the real recruiters. So if someone approaches you with an opportunity that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So reach out and connect. Now, one of the other things I want to say is we've got our Treasury Career Corner Live happening next week in London. We've still got places there because the room holds about 150. And I think we're at 135, so we're up 15 places. That's fantastic. You need, you guys need to build your networks. Being in that room, there's nothing like it. We've got our Treasury Round Tables, so we've got 32 treasurers coming and joining us in the afternoon from 3 till 6 PM. There's still space there. We can fit in a few more. We've then got our Ask the Treasurer, because I noticed at the end of each session, sometimes the badges that were left over were from analysts, managers who are wrapped up in their day-to-day work. And I was like, guys, you need to be in this room, you need to network. So we do our Ask the Treasurer session. And what that is, I've got 3 amazing treasurers, Stuart from Sky, Louise from Hastings, Tanya from Accrashaw, and they're going to answer your questions. So you're going to go around the room, or they're going to go around the room rather. And if you're an analyst or a manager, they'll tell you about what to do, how to enhance your career. And some of the stumbles they've had along the way and how they got over them. So it's going to be an amazing session. And then we've got our main panel session, which is 6:30, 7:30 onwards, networking. Let's talk about networking briefly. That is what happens when you're in the room. It's easier, I know, for you guys not to bother, and you might have a busy day next Thursday, and you might— I might be talking to you and you'll be one of the people coming thinking, oh, 'Can I really be bothered?' Make the effort because it's going to help you. It's not— we don't know for us, it's because you can build your careers through these relationships, through these conversations. You meet other people. Sometimes that next person you meet in that evening, they could be your next boss, they could be your next employee, they could be your next mentor. But if you sit in your corner office, none of that's going to happen. You need to actually go and actually meet those people. Maybe even they just tell you about an opportunity you never knew existed. That's the key thing. It's about stories shared, and that's the key thing. It's free. Come along. We've got still spare places for our round tables. We've got some more room for, if you're Ask the Treasurer, so analyst, manager, let me know. We'll send you the details. Look on our website, treasuryrecruitment.com/events. Register there. And then we do the panel, and then you do networking. So looking forward to seeing you next week. And other than that, I'll be back next week and tell you more about our events from October onwards. Thanks very much.
