Everything Treasury Professionals Need to Know to Succeed in 2026

Foreign. Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast, where each and every week I normally talk to treasurers about their treasury careers, as I have done now for 410 episodes. And occasionally, yeah, just occasionally, we do an episode, a solo episode, usually. Actually, we don't. We do with a couple of members of the team, but I decided because Kevin Michael, my podcast coach, he said, you need to do more solo podcasts now. I don't. That's not me. I'd rather interview treasurers. But having done so many of these and. And I was in Amsterdam last week, people said, mike, we love you talking to people, but I need some advice. What are you actually hearing out there? So I thought rather than give it to you as like a LinkedIn post or quick coffee conversation, let's do it on the podcast. So, welcome to this week's podcast. Let's get on with the show. So, you know me, I'm not short on conversation. I send a newsletter every single Tuesday now, which lovely Deirdre Martin encouraged me to do, because then that also became into a video, which we shoot every week, and that has got bigger and bigger. I was recently approached by a podcast, a video coach, who said, oh, we can help you with your LinkedIn videos. I was like, I'm doing all right, actually. Obviously, there's a bit of blurring, as you can see here, but I said, no, I'm doing all right. Well, okay, well, how. How many video. How many impressions are you getting? I went quarter of a million. A quarter, I meant. Oh, okay. So, yeah, so actually, you guys are liking this advice, and if there's specific advice you want, let me know, drop me an email and I will. But I'm going to answer a lot of these because I. This year I've traveled across the us, uk, Europe, our Treasury Career corner, live events now. Well, the number over a thousand people a year that we sit down, come and join us. We've got two coming up in New York, we do two in London. Then we do it right the way across uk, us. Right across. Yeah, right across. Now do the events right the way across the us, the UK and Europe. And I also speak at a lot of the conferences. So spoken this year at Euro Finance, spoke this year and got one of the highest ratings, actually. Thank you very much for the guys at AFB Boston. There was obviously three amazing ladies that joined me, Summer, Sandra and Meredith. They were incredible panelists. So. But when I walked off stage, I get the same questions. Mike, can you give me some advice about my CV or resume? Yeah, no problem at all. LinkedIn. Mike, what's, you know, what do you think of that? The job market. Can you tell me what's happening? Salaries, what you know, what's happening in the uk? You know, how do they compare? And they don't a lot of the time compared to the us but taxes are different. I've done that in one of my, my things about how your coffee tastes. Well, costs different, you know, right the way across the Atlantic. So yeah, and the other one as well, the classic Mike, you got any roles for me? What should I be doing to make myself most attractive and stuff. So I'm going to give you some of the proper answers. So this also ties into something we're building on our website which you will start to have more and more access to the we put our blogs on there which are all very well but they're not very bite size some of them. We're trying to keep them short but we're building something new for you guys. We have built a candidate and what will become also a client content center on a website, proper one. So it's got frequently asked questions, videos, guides, answers the questions that sometimes some of you guys don't want to ask publicly. But it will be an amazing comprehensive treasury career resource. But I'm going to give you some of the answers questions today but you can think of that if you like, a download to the past to 2025 with lots of the questions and it will continue to develop it into 2026. Everything you need to know for 2026. So let's get in some of the big themes, shall we? So first one, CBS and resumes. That's what I get asked about all the time. Mike, can you have a look at my cv? What do you think about it? Look at my resume. Is it long enough? Is it too short? What should I do? So get asked about that now most treasury resumes, top question I get asked, what do you think of my CV or resume? Well I'm for the sake of it, I'm going to call it CVS as we go through this. Most CVS look identical and nothing really stands out. They often focus on responsibilities, not achievements. So that's something you hear me talking about a lot of it a lot of the time being their headache being there. No, if you're a candidate the top question I get asked by account, the top question I get asked by candidates is what do you think of my CV or resume? So sake of argument, I'll call the CVS from here people say what do you think, why is it not getting results? Because most of them look exactly the same, they're identical. Nothing stands out. Lots of list of responsibilities and all the things you've done, not the things you have achieved, not where you've made a difference, nor where you've gone to your employer and you've saved the money or you've de. Risked the risk profile of the company, not where you've made life a lot easier. The wording is too generic and could belong to anyone. So what do I usually suggest? Right. How do you solve that? Say, right, take some. Take the job description for a role you're applying for. Okay, yeah, Take that, look through it and ask Chat gbt. It's a great thing you can do now. You can actually just talk to it. It's great. And say, I see the top three issues on this resume on this job description, rather being this, this and this. Great. Look through my resume and tell me or summarize for me in three sentences, three bullet points where I've done that. So I remember doing this with Jim years ago and one of the key thing, key things Jim said to me was applying for all these roles, not getting anywhere. I said, you've run international teams, right? Yeah, yeah. And I've run them across four different Treasury Centers across the world and everything. I said, where does it say that on the resume? Oh, it's right down here on page two. I'm like, okay, now nobody gets to page two. No, certainly they don't, unless they're interested. I said, that needs to go top of page one. Why didn't they promote someone from within? He said, well, I see there's a bit of a gap between the number one person who's resigned and this role. And they should have been succession planning. Have you done that? Well, yeah, of course I've done that. I trained people great. Now, he then went ahead and did really well. He didn't actually get that job, he got the next one. But that was the great thing with it. So make, you know, give it, feed them if you like. So that's the thing. So what does it actually need? As I said, it needs a snapshot at the top. Also, it needs evidence. It needs numbers. You guys are great at numbers, right? You're treasurers. If you've released X amount of trap cash, you've cut your bank fees, you've reduced FX exposures, or you've used the systems that they might be about to use or implement and things. Tell them, it's really simple. Just tell them Length of cb, probably two pages, maybe three. Anything more than that, you can have a longer CV to use just to, to help you when you're structuring. A shorter resume. But no one gets paid. There's no four page cvs. Why bother? Should you tailor, you know, your CV for everyone? No, don't bother. Just send a generic CV and just see if you get the job. Yeah. It's not going to work, is it? No, you need to tailor yourself. It's like, I don't know, it's like, I don't know why I get asked that question. Yeah. Should I just send my generic cv? No, don't be silly. That's one word I'm thinking of. It's the difference between being rejected and interviewed. It's between being shortlisted and not shortlisted. Rejected. Lead with experience that matches the job. Remove any detail that people don't need. Also, you know, sometimes people put on references. Don't put. Get rid of them. You can have references or Testimonials on your LinkedIn profile. That's another thing we'll come to later. Thanks. So, next area, LinkedIn visibility. People ask, what do you think of my LinkedIn profile? Most profiles massively undersell you guys. I do this at all the conferences where it just says international Treasury Manager, International Cash Manager, Global Treasurer and tells me nothing. Your headlines do nothing for your visibility. Show me in there what you've achieved. Your sections are usually below that and far too corporate. Your achievements, I've just talked about some of your achievements you can get asked in New York about, actually. But one of the guys said, well, I don't want to give confidential information. I said, well, there's an easy thing. Don't. Oh, I said, yeah, just put on there that. Where you've made a difference in your job. You don't have to give specific numbers or, you know, specific details for it to be breaching confidentiality. You know, your activity, if you're consistent on there, just. And people said, oh, do we need to update it daily, weekly? And no, probably not. You can probably do it once a month. Just put a quick note in your diary and just saying about how you, you know, doing it once a month. And people have said to me, well, I don't really do my LinkedIn profile that much. I went, okay, so you're throwing your calling card, your business profile, but what if they, you know, you're not looking for a job? No, I'm not looking for a job. What if a job came looking for you? Oh, okay. Because I've Said this before to room fulls of treasury folk. And I said, right, how many people in this room are actively looking for a job? One in ten hands goes up. Okay, if I came to you with the perfect role in this room, would you, any of you people in this room, answer my phone call? Nine out of ten hands went up. Fantastic. And I said, look for the 1 in 10 of you that hasn't put the hand up. I know you're sitting next to your boss so you're not allowed to do it. I know, okay, but the fact is, when I then tell people about nine out of 10 would answer the phone call, you guys are open to it. We've done this in our salary survey. It's really blown me away this year that lots and lots of people are more open. I think that's also down to the fact they trust us. I don't underestimate that. So thank you for trusting us. But if you want to be more visible on your LinkedIn profile, do some posting, do some commenting, answer. If there are topics on there or someone's, you know, reaching out for advice about, they're going to look at that. Implementing this treasury management system, put it on there. If someone, one of your team members has done something for charity, if they've got a small win in their job, if they've got a promotion, comment on it. Congratulations. It's relevance that matters rather than just a deluge. How often do I post now? I post every week because I'm a recruiter and I try and give it. Not just, oh, look, we do really well, here are some jobs. No, what we're trying to do is give some advice about this. This is what I do. So I comment on things. Consistency. You don't need to be an all round thought leader, you just need to show up and be present. So actually get present there because it's doing your job for you. It's selling yourself, if you like. Okay, so this is a question I get asked all the time, what's the state of the treasury job market now? Why have I got this? Because you're going to love this gag. It's been a bit chilly, it's been a bit cold. 2025 has been a tough year and I will actually put this on because it is quite chilly where I'm sitting. Yes, there have been some recruitment needs, but they've been very specific a lot of the time. I was just talking to a couple of candidates recently. They, it's been, what's the word, a tough market. All the tariffs in 2025, all the unsettledness, what you want in recruitment is a sort of steady flow of activity. You want. You want people, you want the economies to not be all over the place, because that's when people don't move. Treasurers, as I've said before, are risk aware, not risk averse. They'll take a move if it's the right one, but actually people aren't moving. You know, they've been holding on. I think, though, 2026 will be a much better year because I'm seeing. We're seeing more operational stuff. Katie's been recruiting across Europe. We've been doing some stuff in the us, actually, that's been very busy. But when people are then clients, when they try and recruit direct, for instance, as well, they sometimes go on LinkedIn. They're allowed to, but then they've been coming back to me said, oh, we've got lots of people, but they're not the right people. They're the people that are looking for any job. They're not looking for a job with us. There you go. So, yeah, we are starting to see things and I think it's definitely an improving market. The events that we're doing, which I'll come back to in a minute, are really helping. So lots of people are getting to meet us. They know that we actually have roles, many of the roles as well. If I move on to the senior market, a lot of the roles we've had this year, we've not been able to advertise, so it's been very much more headhunting, been good for us because visibility, we know lots of you guys, again through, you know, doing all the events that we've done and everything else. Actually, for some of our rivals, I think they have suffered because they don't know treasurers like we know treasurers. We did a round table session just a week or so ago with our London audience. It was incredibly well attended. Through the roundtable, before we did our Treasure Career Corner live, we had 24 treasurers in the room. It was incredible sharing their stories and it was about sharing their problems. And we're going to repeat that for our next session in June, which would be fantastic. And then from there then did our Amsterdam event and things like that. But we're going to do more round tables with you guys. And then we did our main London event. It went brilliantly. And we did Amsterdam. We're going to do New York, we're going to be back in Texas. Come back to those events in a minute. Why has it been higher, Harder to get interviews? That's another question, Pete. I've actually said because you need to be the. Not the perfect one, if you like. I think there has been a pressure on clients, if you like, you know, if they've got someone in a role, had someone in a role and they're then replacing them and things like that. They're saying, look, I want the bar up there. They said, well, I've got someone who's here. They said, don't care, don't recruit. Keep looking. I think, you know, I've seen recruitment processes take that much longer, but when you have found the person, boom, they're straight in there. So you do know what makes a. A good hire, if you like. What has that then meant? Salaries. There's been a big downward pressure in previous years, actually. Salaries are starting to catch up. Certainly the UK market has really started to improve. I'm gonna do that up. Yeah, let's do that. So that's improved. It's funny, someone asked me the other day, they said, oh, I looked on this website and it was related to Glassdoor. And then they looked at one of our rivals salary surveys and they went, well, that's a load of. I said, I told you, it's a load of baloney. They just take a finger in the air and they look on LinkedIn sometimes. And I saw a job, treasurer in the US paying $200,000. Yes. To $450,000. That's not a range. If it is, you can't even see my arms. Just too crazy. Treasury is too niche for those guys. That's why you have our salary survey. 1600 people. We're about to rerun it actually. So go to treasurysalary.com if you haven't taken part. We benchmark all of the different levels of salaries right the way from treasury analyst to global treasurer. And it's real. Ours isn't made up, it's built and built. If you've already done it before, take part again. 30 seconds. You updated salary, two minutes, start to finish. And we don't give generic ranges, we give you ranges of salaries. Of which group. Of each of the groups we've done. But we don't actually just go, oh, we give you averages, we tell you how many people in the group. Oh, and yeah, and if you need individual. Individual advice. So we are going to hopefully do some more across Europe, do some, you know, regional surveys if you like, for Benelux and, you know, Switzerland and stuff. We don't do them yet because we haven't. We need to increase the numbers again. We used to do them, but that now we have a global focus and we have us, we do the UK and Europe. So, yeah, look on those. So take part. Another question that came from that is, Mike, I want the pay rise and we're coming into that season as well. How do I ask for one? Well, first thing is, don't just walk in the door. And you can actually find this out. If you sign up for our newsletter, it tells you how to sign, how to ask for a raise professionally. So focus your outcome. What have you delivered? When you're going in there, bring your data that shows where you've made a difference on saving bank fees, on, you know, aggregating risk, on whatever it might be that you've achieved. Link your contribution to those business results, how you've helped the profitability of you, your team, your company and relate it to the whole. So focus on the outcomes, not just, I've been here, I've been here another year that doesn't get your pay rise. Well done for showing up. That's called your job. And actually if you want to pay rise, you want a bonus, you show where you've made a difference. Also, time it now. If you don't know when your pay review is or for you, but if you're just into a new job or something like that, go in there calmly ask, when is the next pay review? What do I need to do in your mind to get myself up to that next level? Ask the question. If you don't ask a question, you're never going to get the answer. Also, knowing your expectations before you start, be open and honest and this helps both when you're in your role and also going for a new role. So I often do it where we've had this, where we've placed a couple of people this. Well, a couple of very senior people this year and they said to me, what do I do? I said, what do you mean, what do I do? What do I ask for? I said, well, what is your minimum? What would make you happy? What would exceed your expectation? And they've told me and then we've gone in there and I've done that. I've given that feedback to my client and in every case, thank goodness we've. They got them over the line. So I think it works as well. I could talk a bit more about right times to move on and stuff. Give me a call about that one. I'm not going to do that. Other themes, AI speaking up. Can we all summarize, is AI going to replace treasury jobs? No, AI and technology and data and things like that. They AI automates tasks, not treasury judgment, if you like. So it's get rid of the basic manual work. It gives you more time to do the strategy stuff, forecasting and data, better decision making. Treasury becomes enhanced in this value. Treasure becomes more valuable, not less. So the skills you need to develop are obviously keep working on your data. You guys have always done this. You've always been as treasurers, great translators if you like. So you, you know, you're able to work with power bi. With systems. You've able to. Been able to convert that for a lot of the time or translate that into a clear defined picture if you haven't. And that's a skill you're going to need to develop about scenarios, about curiosity. You don't need to be a coder all the time, but you need to understand the coding if you like. So. So yeah, again, one of the other things I did this year was one of my newsletters about you need to be a Python programmer. No, but I met a guy I met the other day was really good at it, but I said, okay, what does it tell you? He said, ah, that's it. I do this and it tells me this and then I'm able to go to my boss with it was that it's how you interpret the numbers, how you translate them. So that's enough from all of that stuff. I know it's a lot, sorry, but content have a. You go to the content center. That'll start to grow and grow and grow. 2026. Yeah, 2026. Strong demand for treasures continues. I think the market's getting back on its feet. AI and technology has already, you know, there's already blockchain before. Now it's, you know, stable coin. Now there's all AI. There's, you know, the fact is change is the norm. If you like. Change isn't, you know, just change for change sake. It's actually the norm. If you don't, you know, if you're not comfortable in that, I don't think treasury is right for you. But I think keep on working visibility and personal brand. We as a company. Oh well, yeah, we're going around the world again. We did an amazing tour this year down net for 2026. Some of the things that are happening, we're doing two New Yorks, two Londons and we're going to do round tables before those as well. So look out for those. Coming up March 19th New York. We're going to be heading across to Austin, Texas. Then we're going to do Texpo and Kyriba Live in April. Then we've got Dublin and then we got back to London. Then we're gonna do Chicago in New York in October. AFP will be over there in November, back to London, then another Amsterdam. Now we may also be looking at another Amsterdam sooner because we had such a successful event last week. Talking to the sponsors about maybe putting on one in the summer a bit earlier. Plus Eurofine this Barcelona Treasury 360 in Luxembourg. It's going to be a busy year. I love doing these things. So what do you need to do now? Check out our the new center. You'll be able to see some of it. The candidate center is already there, so you're starting to see some information. Do the salary survey treasurysalary.com Sign up for the newsletter Go into my LinkedIn profile. You'll find it in the Show Notes here as well. Listen to the latest podcast. We've got 410 of them and they continue to grow. We've got a load more of the live sessions coming up that we're just editing now. If you want some Advice, mike@treasurerecruitment.com and or if you want to come and meet us in person, there's nothing like it. So thanks very much for all your support and we return to normal programming next week with some other great interviews of treasury podcast guests. Thanks very much.