Feature Series: Our Take on the Corporate Treasury Industry

Foreign welcome to episode four of our special feature series. This final of four feature length episodes, we give you some of our views on the corporate treasury industry as a whole. We're also joined not only by A Galom and Hassam, the amazing host of Corporate Treasury 101 podcast. We're also joined by Katie Hardy who helps me. She's got a great experience, you know, across the industry along with myself. You know, we bounce off some ideas, we talk about, you know, how you get to the top of the treasury profession. I hope you've gone back and listened to some of the other episodes that we've done in this feature length special edition episodes if you like. In the first episode we covered the early stages of treasury career. It wasn't just about how you first get into treasury, it's also how if you're a treasurer you might want to attract those members of staff and actually that's a key thing at the moment. The industry's going a bit crazy for it. How do you attract treasury analysts? So it's worth having a listen to. That second episode feature length episode was more about treasury manager mid levels of your career, how you grow it, develop and also set yourself up for success to become in episode three a global treasurer. And we talked in there about some of the different things we've seen across the different, you know, geographies, how it differs between the UK to the US to Europe, you know, all very different. But I hope you enjoyed those. Go back and binge on those if you want. And this in episode four and say we talk about how the treasury job market has evolved and as always, don't forget to subscribe to both my podcast, the Corporate Treasury 101 podcast. Gman has some amazing podcast hosts. Yeah, got some good competition there but there's obviously focus a little bit more on breaking down some of the corporate treasury topics that people we get asked about. Ours obviously focus on your treasury careers. Now we're also joined by the lovely Katie Hardy, so connect to her. But as I say each and every week on my show, let's get on with the show and welcome to part four, the end of this current series of bonus episodes. I hope you enjoy these. They've been amazing to make with Gal and with Hassan from Corporate Treasury 101. Great podcast. If you're out there, go on Spotify, itunes and everything else. We'll put some links in the show notes in this week's show and in this show if you like, we talk with also we involve lovely Katie Hardy joins us on the show we talk about treasury markets globally. In the other episodes we talked about Junior Treasury, Mid Level treasury and Global Treasurers and Senior treasury market, if you like. In this one, we're sort of. It's a bit more general, if you like. We talk about working from home, we talk about some of the trends, talk about some of the different things happening in the world of Treasury. I'll shut up, actually. I'll let the episode do the talking for itself. Anyway, let's get on with the show.

Welcome, everyone. We are back again with the lovely Mike and Katie joining us today. Hello, Katie.

Hi, nice to meet you.

Hello, guys. Yeah, it's great because I've got Katie now, so you can't bully me. All episodes you've got, you know, Katie to take up some of the hard answers. That's fantastic.

Mike, we've had three great episodes with you so far. We've gone through the entire journey of the treasury career path, all the way from getting into it straight at university, into your assistant treasury role and all the way up to becoming a group treasurer and all the different intricacies of that and how it works and everything like that. We wanted to talk a little bit more with you and get your expertise, yours and Katie's expertise of course, into the overall market as a whole. So what's the treasury market like and also what's the recruitment market like and how the role of a treasurer has changed over the last few years?

Prior to Pandemic, the market as a whole was starting to recover. We'd had a few flat years, we'd got couple of recessions and stuff and it was starting to get a bit better. Then came along the Pandemic Covid, everything stopped. I saw a number of treasurers that were planning to leave, planning to retire, covered it on the last show that about, you know, where do you go next with treasury cruise? And sometimes they do get to the end of their careers and that's it. They've filled out their pension pot and they want to have a break on the beach and everything else, so why shouldn't they? And so what we've actually found is there were some of them faced having to manage their teams remotely. They'd managed it, but they were stuck at the homes filling up their pension box. But now as we come out of it and there's this working remotely and then hybrid working and people would do that a bit more in the show. But as people come back to that, they are people that want to be back in the office or certainly used to be back this five days a week. They've got this new hybrid ways and these new teams are going, I don't want to be back in the office five days. You know, we do our salary survey. I think we touched on it. One of the other episodes that one of our clients in the uk, for instance, said they, they're a bit old school, they want to do things, everyone back in the office five days a week. And we went, well. And actually we're not working on the assignment. We can't support them because only 5% at 600 people globally said they want to be back in the office five days a week. I mean, that is mental. I mean, I've done this on previous ones that if five years ago someone had come into my office and said, can you tell me about the job? Yeah, no problem. How much salary? Okay. And it's based here, you know, what's your flexible working policy? And I'll be like, get out my office. Do you not want to work? Get out. The world's changed, you know, we have to do this. Katie sure will explain a little bit more in a moment and I'll pass to her that Katie has always worked remotely working with me. We see each other quite regularly. We done virtual and everything else. But that's one of the things that I've sort of seen that that's the biggest shift. And Katie, with yourself, you cover help me on the international markets, particularly US and Europe, and that's where we've seen a lot of growth. What are you seeing for those markets and the way the world of workers change sort of thing, if that's the right way to put it.

Yeah. And I think it is to do with the hybrid working policy for each individual business. I know that in Europe it's slightly different because the flexible working and that hybrid working has always been there in Europe versus in the uk. So in the uk it's a bit alien for people to have flexible working and you kind of have to push for it. Whereas before the pandemic there were still opportunities for people to work from home in Europe. I think the biggest shift that I've seen working on roles across Europe is very much the. That the questions are very different when you do the recruitment and speak to candidates. Because if it's not the first or the second question, it's definitely the third question is what's the hybrid working policy? And I think also from a European perspective, I found it not easier, but I found it less challenging, should I say, to have people move from, from you know, one part of Germany to another part of Germany, people now don't want to do that because of the hybrid working situation. So actually when you're asking somebody to go to an office two or three days a week, they're like, okay, fine, it doesn't require me to relocate now, whereas before it was a whole relocation situation. So I think in Europe it shifted that way definitely. And I think the market in general across Europe has seen it's become more fluid since the pandemic and definitely more fluid and more buoyant this year, I think across Europe, again I'm doing comparison to the uk. In the uk, when you've got a role within treasury, there's a lot to do with the qualifications and a lot to do with that kind of side of things. What I've been seeing and more so this year in Europe, it's all about the conceptual working, so the strategic element of the role rather than just the day to day reactive working.

I was just going to jump in and feel free to chip in as well, but the US as well because obviously we've got. These guys got a lot in the us. I think this was one of the things when I did this session with US Treasurers recently that a lot of them, you talked there about hybrid working or visiting the office and things like that. It seemed that there was still an undercurrent. So it was some of them. Well, for this next, you know, till this year we're recording this mid-2022, you know, it's still going to remain remote and then we're going to do two days a week but that's till the end of 2023 and sounds a year and a half. Oh, and then we'll probably be going back in the office. Not what, what that's a difference. And actually that, that sort of shift back, you know, we've got, you and I, Katie, we got UK and European clients who saying we can never go back to the office. We've sold our offices or we've let the lease go away so we can't all be in one place. But there seemed to be much more certainly with them that some CFOs wanted to be in the same place as their team and for them as CFOs. We did this on the last episode with, with the guys that actually it's all right being a CFO because you're pretty well paid so you know, you can be say in downtown Manhattan and you're a 10 minute walk from the office. But your two treasury managers they can't afford to live in Manhattan. They've just done two years of working from home. How do they afford it? They're not going to be able to. So they're like, well, actually I'll do one day a week in the office to meet people and things like that, but that's it, I'm done. Because I don't want to do two hour commute, you know, give up 10. Yeah, 20, 20 hours a week. Katie, what, what would you then I was also going to ask Gloom. I wanted to ask him because he is a consultant that's got this traveling sort of thing. Assam, you know, you and I touched on this as well about the new ways of working. But Katie, your input from that.

There comes a time where I've got a mix of clients that have actually now embedded their hybrid working policy within a policy within, to some extent within a contract. I think because it is such a big thing now. They have to be sure. And I think candidates, you know, will bring it up in interviews as well. I've had candidates recently, I suppose, if you like double checking. What I've said about the hybrid working situation is actually, is actually the truth. And I think it's around having that advisory approach when you are speaking to clients and it is an education piece as well, that there is that shift, that mindset shift. Definitely that actually before it was well, how much is the role going to pay? That was the driving question whenever you talk to candidates. Now it is fundamentally how many times do I have to be in the office and it's around educating the clients to actually say this is now the blocker of somebody wanting to be put forward for a job and not. You have to be 100% sure that the flexibility that you're telling me is actually what is going to happen with this person. Otherwise down the line you're going to invest all that time in training and then they're going to leave because they can't sustain what it is that you're asking them to do.

You're a Treasury consultant and you're in the consulting profession and you said you like traveling. Yeah. Because you're a bit mad. Yeah. Aside from that, you've got that working style and everything else. You're at the coal face. You're seeing this and you're seeing also with clients without disclosing names, how are you seeing that with them?

So there is several things here to mention. So first of all, there is traveling and there is commuting rights going every day to the office and it Takes you one hour back and forth. That's something what I do love is traveling. Indeed. So for different assignments and mission, go abroad. That's the lovely part of the job. Even though I joined consulting during the pandemic, obviously nothing was happening in regards of traveling there. Now it tends to ramp up a little bit more, but still I assume much less than before. And now, especially in consulting, I guess every client facing jobs, right. There is such a thing as being physically present in front of the clients. You mentioned quite a lot ethos in the previous episode. Well, we are all about that. When you are in front of the client, can get a feel of the room, can involve everybody from a team you are talking to. Right. And not only the leader or the group treasurer, for instance. That's so, so important, especially in consulting and I would assume in any other kind of meetings. So all the front office, for instance, that we touched upon in the treasury manager episode. I think whenever you have relationships with the external world or at least outside your company, meeting in physique is very important. I'd say now there is a lot of people who like this hybrid way of working and if I may throw it back to you, Mike and Kathy, so we understand the advantages of working hybrid and remotely. What are the rationales for the CFOs like the legitimate reasons for a CFO or a team lead to say, look, we need to be present physically at the office five days a week. What are their arguments?

Actually, I think one of the key things is about. We talk about the water cooler moments where you meet someone, you know, the physical training actually of someone who's a junior member of staff and actually having crossover and you know, sharing knowledge transfer if you like, to those guys that are, you know, sort of, you know, learning, you know, the first how to operate that we talked about it before FX all how to work the dealing platform and everything else. And then it comes more about some. You, you mentioned about personality and training and a lot of treasurers. One of the things we didn't touch on previously was that have become accidental managers of people. And actually I did this on one of the sessions when I spoke to a load of uk what load of treasurers in the UK and Europe and stuff. And they're saying you guys are treasurers, manage teams of 50, 60 people. And they're like, yeah, yeah, so how much management training have you had? And they're like none. But you know, you're expected. And that's what a lot of the time we're talking about. People come in the office, everyone's talking about the Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursdays where you're all doing this. Now one of the things again that came up from this American set of treasures and I had an amazing guest. Luke Blumink. Previously on the show. Treasurer of Remy Cointreau, great guy, but he talked about his virtual water cooler moments and the actually work chat was banned. You could have this virtual coffee back in Pandemic and you talked about your weekend. Well, you got up to obviously sometimes it wasn't very much, you know, bit restricted. But the thing was it was sort of a nice sort of way to decompress and he found out lots of stuff about his team and things he didn't know and everything else. When I was talking to these American treasurers, one of the bits of feedback was they said, oh, we're back in the office now, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Oh, I said yeah, all the banks are flying into a meters and we're doing all this. I said great. You actually seeing a team more than. No. Oh, this year the Monday or Friday we do all the tasks on those three days we're sort of seeing all the business partners but actually not all being out in the business. And some of them were saying, do you know what they need to get that balance back as well? I mean Katie worked with your clients, what have you seen with them? What have they said to you and you know, your feedback from some of your recruitment campaigns.

Prior to working within an agency environment, I actually headed up recruitment teams for businesses so being extension of their HR department and I think, you know, obviously we're treasury recruiters, but it's fair to say that when you talk to clients, and I found this actually a lot more recently because a lot of our clients are looking at restructuring their teams, creating more modern structures within their treasury and corporate finance teams. But one of the things that they're talking about is for their. It's around changing the culture and I think you can only really define your culture and your. If you like your employer branding, if you've got the presence in the office, it makes the whole cultural piece quite difficult to do if it's all remote. We have a lot of clients, especially across the States and in Europe that have a lot of the younger generation within their junior and mid management levels and you know those guys want to have that interaction within the office and, and you know when you speak to them on the phone. Yes. Is there any chance to work from home? But for them it's one of their questions is what's the Culture, like, it's very hard to define that if you're not putting people together, you're not collaborating people. So I think, you know, as touching on what Mike said, there has to be that balance. And I think that's why people are slightly more reserved when it comes to, I guess, if you like, formulating exact policy for hybrid working. I think on the flip side though, I've had clients that have said, right, it's only two days in the office. From a recruitment perspective, in some respects that does widen the pool a bit more because, you know, I've had candidates saying, well, actually they would be prepared to drive for two hours, two days a week, whereas if it was five days a week, absolutely not. They would have to relocate. But actually for only two days a week, that doesn't bother them. So again, that's an unusual kind of shift. But I do think it is hard with the culture piece. And I know that, you know, we've got a client that we're working with in, in Germany and they're trying to create a more modern structure within a team. So at some point they're going to have to define that culture. So I would understand for them why there is the need to have more time spent in the office, because that's the only way that they can can do that.

Taking the problem the complete other way around, have you seen in your experience, Kathy and Mike, some culture and some Treasury Department saying, look, guys, no office anymore. We are 100% remote. You live wherever you want. I want to touch upon this a little bit later on, but there is such a thing as cutoff times in Treasury. But if we do not take this into account. Have you seen this? Have you seen, like. No. Look, we want a young team. We want a very hybrid, if not completely remote environments. It's completely up to you. You can not come at the office at all anymore. Does that exist? Do you face that?

I have seen it. I'm not sure how much it will work, okay, Because. And there are candidates who only want remote. But then when you actually explore what they mean by remote is they don't want to have to go to the office. They don't want to just meet their people like this remotely. They actually. And you know, at some stage, I might even buy Katie a glass of wine or two or seven. And I definitely want to see you guys, you know, next, next time we're over, because we're people, we're humans. And you know, and, and actually I think in some other disciplines, say maybe tax. I'm not just saying tax, not picking on those tax guys or financial control. You know, when I've spoken to some of those guys, they're quite happy because and I was talking to my accountant about this and he said one of his staff is 100% working from home remotely. Child care, blah, blah, blah, will never come to the office. That's fine because they want to, but they're still delivering and everything else is about to. Treasury is a very social activity. You know, it's about working with each other. It's about commit with shared ideas and everything else. And I'll hand over to Katie in a minute. And I haven't had quite funny. I haven't heard from Hassan for a while. I mean, it's a nice break, but I want to see what he says as well. If someone said to you both, actually, this is a question with a question. You do Katie first. But if someone said it's 100 remote, that's it, we don't have an office anymore, would it make a job for you as say you put yourselves in that situation, more or less sort of attracted to it. For me personally, you know, I've got a couple of young members of staff and they all want to come to the office now. I don't want to come to the office every day. I've got things like podcasts, get through emails and have got lots of. Lots of different tasks to do, but I can see both sides of it now, Katie, for you, you know, you have always worked remotely, but there's always an interaction. We've often met as well, and we do lots of things like conferences together, so there's quite a lot of crossover. But you're probably better positioned than any of the three of us to talk about it. What would you say?

I think for me, I guess I'm more productive, if you like, if I'm. If I'm fully remote. But actually funnily enough, and there are several reasons behind it, but actually I've recently started working in a shared workspace and it wasn't until I got there that I realized that actually, even though everybody's doing different jobs, to have that interaction and that social element has actually been great. Whereas just sitting at home in an office or in, you know, a home office, whatever that may look like, you don't have that interaction. And I think if I would be 100% and everything on virtual, I would struggle. And that's partly because a culture of a business and the people I work with, regardless of whether they're actually sat next to me or they're people I collaborate with on a day to day basis. That culture and the way that that gels together is hugely important for me. I think I haven't really come across in Europe. I've had a couple of roles over the last year that were people at very senior level working for an American corporation, but they wanted somebody to cover Europe. But again, these people were remote but they were traveling around meeting the various different business entities, meeting various different stakeholders. So again, there was that interaction on a face to face basis. So yeah, for me personally I would find it a struggle even though I do work remotely and you guys.

So there you go. Question with a question. Get some of our own back. You got a job, it's offered to you. What would you say if it was 100% remote?

For me, I'm that 5% you mentioned before. I love coming to the office. That's just me as a person, if I'm honest with you. But I think it depends a lot on the stage of your career, your stage of your time, your family stage, right where you are, you single, married, kids, you know, whatever. And also just your seniority in your role. So for me, you're new in a role. You need to come into the office. That's so much of what I've learned has just been the conversation as I'm passing by a desk or that barrier to ask someone a question is so much lower if they're right next to you and you can kind of see, okay, it doesn't look like they're working on anything important right now or I'm just going to sit next to them and strike up a conversation or something like that. Okay, they're all, they're walking that way. I'm just going to quickly grab them as opposed to pinging them on, on teams. Right. For example, and then trying to get them into a phone call and then you know, like the barrier to get that little bit of extra learning, that little bit of extra training, early stages in your career or in a new discipline maybe you're in is just too high that I think if you're new, you're severely disadvantaged. If you're not in the office face to face with someone that's an expert in your field, does that mean you have to be 100% in the office? No, but I think that's you're going to learn so much quicker in that regard. However, I've seen lots of people make working remotely work. I have people in my team who are 100% remote in a different location, whom I work with, they're, you know, married, they have their kids, they're senior enough in their role that they know enough that they can just get on with it. Then they get their social aspect from other things. Of course, the human aspect of it's always there. Now, then there's the challenge of, I'm saying the senior people can work from home and the junior people need to come in to learn. If the senior people aren't there, then who are the junior people going to learn from? Right. So there's that difficulty to manage, for sure. I travel a lot for work. I travel to different countries and cities a lot. Whenever I get back to the office, which every time I'm in Brussels, I always go into the office, there'll be 10 people that come up to me and ask me, oh, do you have an example of this document? Or could you show me how to do this quickly? And, and you know, in one hour of being there, I've touched, helped five different people and five different people have helped me that. Whom I never would have spoken to and they never would have messaged me for if I wasn't there. So you just lose that interaction, in my opinion. But again, depends on your seniority and how much you need other people to learn and like that versus maybe already there and you don't need that.

I agree with you about that because I think, you know, when you are onboarding a new person, especially when they are younger or they're just starting out in their careers, they might not, I don't want to be patronizing or disrespectful, but they might not be used to, or know how fundamentally to be proactive and productive working from home. And actually they want to understand about the business. They want to understand and, and watch. And I think there is a responsibility when it comes to leaders, whether they are in treasury or finance or any other department, that actually you do need to be in the office for the first time, six weeks or, you know, everybody talks about 90 days more than you would do on a normal basis so that you can get those team members up to speed and how you can get the best out of them then whether or not it's in home or in the office. So I do agree around the seniority piece.

There's another side of it as well, which is a little bit less on your experience, but more as a company culture, from what I've seen. I work as an engineer, right? So innovation, technology is a big, big part of what we do. Reducing friction of communication is 100% an enabler for innovation. That's a proven method. Overall, the faster you can communicate, the faster you can iterate, the faster you can run through ideas, critique ideas, etc. With multiple people. It's always going to drive innovation much more. In a Treasury landscape, that's just as important as any other brainstorming, coming up with the right risk management strategy, coming up with the right overall overall cash management strategy, picking up on what's working and what's not.

Right.

Especially as you're the custodian of cash of the company. Right. Which is a topic we want to come onto about how important that is in today's economy. As much as I'm loving this conversation, so that speed of running through ideas and breaking down problems is so much faster face to face. And especially like even just right now, we're all remote right now. That one little extra second of over to you. Oh, do you want to chip in? You don't have that face to face. And that's lovely conversation. Slowing things down just a little bit. Right. And that little bit of friction matters.

I think the one I'd like to ask maybe before jumping into the cash aspect, is the treasury recruitment market strains. And by that I mean, so now people wants to get into a hybrid way of working into flexible environments. Do recruiters have the choice, like, okay, if this employer is not willing to make me work hybrid. Is the recruitment markets tense enough to be able to go to any other, like, how hard it is to find a job into the treasury industry in the treasury world, no matter the level?

So one of the treasurers that I recently spoke to on the session, he said, wow, at the beginning of the pandemic or shortly after, they had a remote working job and they had 150 plus applicants. Okay, good for them. Yeah, they didn't call us, funnily enough, because they could sit through those together. And then mid pandemic, they advertised virtually the same role and they only had 50 applications and the quality, funny enough, had gone down and dropped down the stuff and everyone was like, whoa. And then just actually a few months ago, they put the same advert, virtually same role, hybrid again. So there's no question that five applications, none of which had sponsorship, none of which they could take, and everything else.

Okay.

And they were like, oh, what do we do? When they were working with their HR team to go out headhunting. But actually I said, do you know what? And we use this example, never use. I can't remember if I think I May have already used it, one of the other podcasts, but it's great. I gave the lecture in Chicago, stood there, how many of you have a team of 100 a room? Over 100 was actually more than that. But 5% of the room put their hand up, said, looking for new jobs. You know, you're looking for a job. Yeah, put your hand up if you're comfortable. And then I said to the rest of the room, I said, okay, if I come to you with the perfect role and it's the right role, the right money, the next step in your career, it's everything that you want in a job. They were, oh, yeah, yeah. I said, how many of you going to apply or even answer the phone to me? Said, you don't have to send your resume, just put. 80% of the room went up and I said, look, you are the 20%. I know you're sitting next to your bosses, so you can't send me a cv. And they're all like sort of quite, don't worry, I've got your boss's CVs or resumes. And they were, oh, yeah, okay, yeah. If you come to the people with the right role and we, that's where we fish in. You know, Katie and I were just talking about one of our regions. We've had a client recently who said, you know, they're going to go out with a generalist recruiter and then they're going to come to us. And we said, look, there's not a massive talent pool, there's a talent puddle, you know, in certain bits, you know, you're not going to be fishing, you know, we, we've got to go to those people that aren't looking for a job. You've got to tempt them out of it. They're happy in their roles, but they are temptable, you know, so we go there and we say it's a new role, it's more money, but the fact is it's a development new career. They're implementing new treasury management system or there's a new treasurer in and they want to look at their attitudes to risk at the moment. They just, you know, they. Maybe they just use Excel, maybe they're just a whole host of variety of reasons. That's what might be that person's first leadership role, where you'll be able to coach and manage a couple of members of team and. Or you'll be doing bond issuance, which is something debt, capital markets. It could be any of the above. And that's where we fish in that pond or pool. And Katie, you know, I'm going to come to you that you and I talk about this a lot of the time and a lot of the people you talk to aren't people. You know, we put an advert out on LinkedIn a lot of the time. We sometimes we get lucky and we get the right person. Fantastic. But most of the time it's followed up by research, headhunting approaches, and that's where we earn our cash. Katie, what would you say?

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think, you know, the people that our clients want are the people that aren't desperate to leave their job. Roles are people that are the temptable people. I would say pretty much 80 to 90% of the people are people that I have approached. And I'm finding more and more that when I'm talking to clients, I'm saying, well, you know, this person isn't active on the market, they're not unhappy in their role, and basically that you've got to sell it to them to get them to leave their current position. I think it can be different in different markets. At the beginning of this year, we were working with a client in the Netherlands. At that particular time, it was very much a case of there was a lot of jobs and the candidates could cherry pick from those. So actually it was more. You've got to have a unique selling point. You've got to have something that's going to drive them away from going for X client coming to you. So I think some of the time it can be market orientated. But in general, very much I agree with what Mike said about tempting them away. Really.

So, Kathy, how do you do that? How do you tempt them away from a position they are not unhappy?

I do it very well.

Okay, perfect. But technically, she's amazing.

How does that work?

Like, do you sell the company's culture? Do you sell the hybrid way of working? Do you sell the salary? We discussed it with Mike in a previous episode and salary isn't the main metric. So how do you convince somebody who is, well, not unhappy, comfortable, not super thrilled, but what he or she does, how do you do that?

Can I take a little bit of this?

Yeah.

There's a key word in there. Convince. We don't. Okay, we present an opportunity and if you want it and it's the right opportunity for you, then you'll take it. And how do we do that? By not convincing you. By not, you know, this guy backed out of a role I could have. Oh, no, you can do this. His family situation has changed. It's not. He's not going to want that role. That's fine. You know, I've said to him I'll talk to him in two or three years time when it's the right time for him to move. You know, we've got to speak to a wider range. If you try and convince someone you can't sell something that you don't want to buy.

Yeah.

You know, we present an opportunity. So what we do is spend our lives getting to know candidates, talking to them, understanding what the drivers are and where they are in their career, what's right and talking to people. And it's not. It's about list, you know, two ears, one mouth. So it's quite weird doing all this podcast. We're doing all the talking. I said, that's to you, both of you guys. And say it's Katie, that sometimes when I do podcasts, I'm the other way around. It's great. I can listen. I said, that's great. But instead, this is, you know, so that's when we talk to candidates, say you were candidates, we'd ask you, what are you looking for? So actually I'm not looking to move now, this year. Okay, great. When can we speak? Next year? Six months? When's going to be the right next time for you? And here's our details. And if you need us, call us when you next need us as a client or candidate. We're there in the event of need, not for greed. You know, so it's. That's the key thing and not that convincing. And actually, and Katie, you. I know that's what this is what Katie, who. Who's done it from HR perspective, but also recruitment perspective. That's why we share an ethos, isn't it?

Yeah. And I think when I have maybe approached somebody and they're not actively looking, there is a piece of obviously getting to know them and seeing what their triggers are to potentially, you know, move. But it is just a case of being. I believe in transparency. I like to get from clients what's great about this role, why would somebody want to join? But equally on the other side, it's not a perfect role. No role is absolutely perfect. So what are the challenges and what are going to be the frustrations of somebody coming into this role? Because when I speak to any candidate, whether they're unhappy in their current role or not, I want to be able to give them the full picture and very honest picture. This is why I joined Mike and the treasury recruitment company. I'm very passionate about my career and I, you know, I know it's a cliche, but I would never treat people in a way that I don't want to be treated. And I've had recruiters in the past that found me jobs and I've had, I've worked with recruiters when I've been in house and now I am a recruiter in an agency. So I understand what works well and what doesn't work well. And I think from a success perspective, you know, you have to understand your candidates. And there are times when I've said to candidates, when I've had, when I've presented them the role we've spoken about, you know, what are they looking for in their role in the next company, etc. I've actually said to them, do you know what, I don't think this is the right move for you at the moment. There are unfortunately other consultancies out there that would then push, push, push, push, push. It's not what I do, it's out of my comfort zone. I don't like doing it. It's not how we are and it's not our culture. So as Mike said, it's not about convincing them, it's about presenting them with an opportun. Everybody knows their values that they want in a company, in a role, and it is kind of luck of the draw that you hit them at the right time when they are temptable, basically. I think that's probably the only way I can sort of sum it up really. It's not just getting to know them on a professional level, it's also getting to know them on a personal level. And I know it goes back to hybrid working, but it's around their family situations and finding some a common ground as well because we aren't just putting these people in and never speaking to them again. A lot of the, you know, the majority of these candidates that have the positions, we, you know, if they're junior people, we carry them through their career. If there's, if they're going in at senior positions, they end up being our clients. So it's important. It's not just a case of putting a. I'm on a seat, basically.

Yeah.

You shared this progression as the pandemic happened, right, where these companies didn't even need your services at one point because they're getting so many high quality applicants that slowly went down and you sort of linked it to the progression of the pandemic almost. What's driving this shift of people not moving roles and you guys being recruited or being employed, sorry to come and take much more active roles. Like, are people just happier where they are? Are people less willing to move? Are they more risk adverse? Like, what's. And is it just the treasury employment market or is it all employment markets at the moment, or do you see something unique in the treasury market right now?

One thing I would say is during Pandemic, the market slowed. We were still really busy, but what we were really busy with were more specialist roles. Actually, I recruited one of the biggest roles I've ever recruited, a global treasurer position. And I went to the client quite early on in the pandemic when we got the instruction, and then I said, oh, pandemic's come along. He said, yeah, Mike, this person will be on six months notice. I was like, yeah. And they said, how long is it going to take you to get this person? And it's about, well, three months to come. You know, two to three. Two months with our short listing, because there were lots and lots of interviews, very, you know, one of the most senior roles I've ever recruited. Oh. And I said. And then once their interview process and a lot of it would be virtual and everything else, maybe two months. So we're looking at, from instruction to presentation of shortlist, you know, six weeks, eight weeks as it was to, then another two months with or a month and a half if they went quickly to offer. And then the person on six months notice. So you're looking at nigh on a year, really. And they said, we know before that bummer is on the seed, and it's literally. And he wasn't a bum, he's very good guy. But actually, till that treasury professional started, that senior, it might be a year, and they said, off you go, start going. I was like, oh, right. And they said, yeah, we need you to recruit that role because actually we see this an opportunity to beef up our team in an. In a market where sometimes they wouldn't answer the phone because we know that they're working from home. So a lot of the time they would answer your calls and they would respond to emails for the right opportunity. But it did have an effect on the market and everything else. More operational roles, they were paused, people couldn't move, so there wasn't sort of recruit to replace. So if someone left a Treasury manager job. Well, they weren't, because a lot of the time they would had to be onboarded. So they weren't actually looking to leave. A lot of people sort of stopped their job searches. Now we've got this sort of log jam of talent, log jam of people starting to go, right, they're moving, they're moving, they're moving. We've got some retirements happening. I think it will calm down a little bit. I'm not saying that's because of recessionary things. It's not. Even if there were recessionary pressures, we don't get a phone call, say, recruit 30 treasury professionals. We don't get a phone call that says, cancel all the recruitment for 30. We get, you know, if it's a boom, recruits three. You're like, whoa. With one client, you know, it's like, you know, we have 300 clients, we have a thousand clients that we help globally. When I used to work for a more generalist recruitment company, they had someone that worked with like four major banks and that's all they did. You know, when the. When they got hit, they said, oh, we've product controls canceled this is, canceled this. They suddenly would have 18 jobs on the board and suddenly went to one. Whereas with us we had 118 clients, or 180 clients. And I'd have one role there, one role there, an interim role there. And that. That was our ethos, if you like.

That's really interesting. So you're saying because people weren't sat next to their boss, they're more willing to pick up their phones.

It's a dream, right? It was like. But it was. The thing was, it was very difficult because you made a point earlier about this balance of life. And I was in, again, I did this session with the act, the UK act, and it was. We were at the later stages of it and I said. They said, do you think there's a. There's some burnout? I went, no, no, I don't think it is. There is burnout. Oh, what? And I said, I've got examples of it. I had one of my treasurers, he thought he'd done a really good job, got an award from someone of the association, done a great job, re. Implemented a TMS system, done all this, and his operational treasury team had coped, bless them. And what they'd done is they got to the end of this and two of them, he was saying, oh, we've done this, you've got this one. We've done really well. And I was like, okay. What he didn't know is they'd confidentially shared their CVS with me because they said, we've coped. He's later on in his career, his Kids have left home, they're off at uni and stuff like that. He said we, you know, one of them had like two kids, a six year old homeschooled was getting up at night, sort of six o' clock, shower down, answer some emails, right? Schooling, boom, get this done, okay. You know, carrying on with their work, got that finish at 8, 9 o' clock at night, boom. Bed, get up, repeat. And then at the weekend, still in lockdown. And so the perception, or the mistake was that he thought everything was brilliant, but it was actually a bit like one of those swans, you know, where they're sort of, they're all serene on the top but everyone's like paddling like crazy underneath. And actually that was quite very difficult and very difficult for me because I've sort of trying to coach him. How's the team go? Yeah, they're brilliant.

Yeah.

But you want to give that advice because he wasn't doing it deliberately, you know, and that's the thing, because they're not natural people, managers. I said this in the session, accidental managers. Katie, just for you, you know, have you seen sort of similar things or what are your thoughts, reflections, pandemic wise?

I think it's definitely shifted and as you said, it's busier at the moment. You know, I still recruited during the pandemic because there were gaps in teams that needed to be filled and they were quite happy to onboard people remotely, both in the UK and further afield, and then relocate them when it was safe to do so. I think I find that now when I speak to candidates, going back to what Mike said earlier about them being more available even now because of hybrid working candidates, most of the time will say to me, well, can you call me on next day? Because that's when I'm working from home. You tend to then book in when you're. When to speak to them around when they're working from home, which never used to be the case. It used to be, right, it has to be before 9 o' clock or it has to be after 5 o' clock. Now it's can it be on this.

Day all the call with where the phone rings and they go, yeah, you're talking to a recruiter and they walk through the office and stuff.

Yeah.

You say, no, don't worry, we'll pretend that we'll talk about the football for a minute or the rugby.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm in a conference room. Right, okay, let's talk about a job.

It's definitely shifted in that respect.

Is there anything special about the treasury recruiting market through the Pandemic or now versus the overall job market, or is that really just in line with the. With the overall job market and if so, what's different?

I think it's more resistant and resilient. You know, when, as I said earlier, when you get a boom and bust, we don't. We never have. We've sort of operated in this mid level. Whereas it's like boom times, you know, back in turn the century dot com, you know, it was absolute boom time. And I recruited for boo.com. how do you scare an investment banker? Back in the day, just say boo and you were there and that's what they did. But we never got the downturns. Yes, we do get, you know, and it was tough and stuff, but as I said throughout Pandemic, we still did recruit. I think what I. I've noticed is that different markets have reacted differently. So UK market is quite a mature market in some ways and they are used to using recruiters, such stuff. And this is not just a sales pitch. In Europe, they getting to know people like Katie and they know that there is that specialist service there. In the us, it's still a fledgling market because recruitment by its very nature, and I looked at many years ago, back in 99, actually relocating to the US to head up the division for one of these companies and they said, mike, if you go there, you have to go and actually just live off your fees. I was like, no, no, I want to be paid, you know, I need to pay bills. They went, no, no, you go there, we'll give you a much higher commission. But if you don't eat, if you don't place anyone that month, you don't get paid. And I was like, well, I'm not doing that. Then, you know, the wife and one. One child. And then a second one of the way, I was like, no, that's not happening. And it's actually the maturity and. But that's changing in the US market. You know, people are knowing that there is a specialist treasury recruitment company that they want to get passive candidates. They don't have to go on LinkedIn, not get success and just waste those time. They can call us and you can still use LinkedIn. You know, if we think we said, actually you'll get a better result, there's. But if we say actually we've got people, we can save that hassle. Again, it sounds sales pitch. It's not meant that way. It's meant much more that we're here, this is. We'll give you advice if you need it.

I think also in the treasury market, as Mike touched on, it's not a high turnover industry. So because we're not restricted to industry, we never acquire it where we don't have any roles on. I think, you know, the only comparison I can use, and again, that's pulling from my experience of, of a different industry, is that I've got experience in retail and, you know, the pandemic affected retail hugely and, you know, employment was very much dipped, stores closing and things like that. And now with talk of recession, I think those types of industries will suffer again, as with hospitality. But from a Treasury perspective, it's around having that in the back of the mind. Treasury is a function that's always going to be needed. And so I, again, with recession, as Mike said, I don't think it's going to. It. It will have an impact, but it won't have a disastrous impact at all on the job market.

Katie, you mentioned about your retail background. I sometimes get interest from. Had it one time back in the day, a few years ago, I was asked had I recruited anyone in California? And I had, yeah, we were working on that. Had I recruited anyone in la? I'm like, okay, no, I haven't actually at the time. I have since and. Oh, but have you got anyone that you recruited as a treasurer in LA in heavy industry and construction? I'm like, no, but I can name you the sort of six or seven companies head, you know, headquarters. I know some of them. No, but have you actually placed a treasurer there? I was like, no. And I said, but I know that four of them are very happy and aren't going to move anyway. I was like, you know, we've got a pool to a puddle to a drop, you know, sort of thing. I think that we, we've discussed it on previous episodes. Treasury is interchangeable. Don't have to have experience of retail. You know, I've seen retail treasurers move to construction, move to high tech. It's, you know, as long as they've got the malleability. It sometimes comes back to a lot of the other stuff we've done on the other episode about treasurers and throughout, you know, the, you know, all the way through maybe the mid level, the industry is not as relevant as it might be. There are some industry things which are useful but not compulsory. That's the right word.

Going back to this remote thing that involves technology. Right. That's also something that came up lately and with the pandemic, we needed. Okay, everybody Needs a laptop now to be able to work from home. Everybody needs a decent microphone, a listen, camera whatsoever. I'd like to touch upon the impact of the technology evolution on the treasury market. And since I know you like bullet points, questions Mike thrown in a row and then you just answer them one by one. What's the impact on the. Of technology on a. The recruitment? Right, because now we just got used to do our interviews remotely, do some tests remotely, group works remotely, business case, etc. What about the onboarding? We touched upon this a little bit earlier with the senior being present a certain day of the week and the juniors elsewhere. And the last one is, is it a requirement now in recruitment to have knowledge about Treasury? You released quite a lot of episodes about technology, right? Technology focused episodes into Treasury. What's the impact of all this on the treasury markets? For the three above mentioned points, let.

Us do the last one first. Do you need to be a data scientist? Will robots take over and automation takeover Treasury? No. Do you have to have an amazing understanding and the more understanding you have a straight through processing, you know, you've got. Some of the guys that I've interviewed have been up on stage. One of the guys did before he did some Python programming live on stage and showing how they could automate. And this is a treasurer, global treasurer. Because. And I said, oh, goodness. And we. He and I talked about it ages ago. In fact, he's coming back up on the podcast soon and he demonstrated to people how to create a subroutine and how to do this. And because that was a passion of his and I actually asked him on the show, I said, do you take apart radios and drive your dad mad? And he went, yeah, how did you know that? And I was just like, I didn't know, just guessed. I thought, I thought if my son started to take apart radios, I'm like, oh, right, here we go. This is where you're going to be in there. He doesn't, thank goodness. But the use of different tools. We talk about the toolkit so many times, knowing that stuff, is it, you know, more helpful for you to be able to do it? Yes, totally is. Because then you can also talk to the IT guys and understand what they're talking about. Back in the day, there was an amazing treasurer, Alkis Shalonakis, used to be with Colgate, and one of these SAP guys was saying, oh, we can't do this, we can't do this. Da, da, da. It doesn't work. Went, yes, he does. When? No, no, no. He said, he just pushed this guy gently towards it, excuse me, and just sort of sat down and he went like this and programmed this and did this and I made it work and this cup's like, how'd you do that? He said, if you go here. And he said, yeah, he said, you see those initials or whatever it was? He went, yeah, he went, that's me. And he was, he started with Colgate as a programmer for SAP and that's how he then used it. And you know, so he loved technology and he was the international treasurer for Colgate. It was amazing and still is an amazing guy, but amazing. Taking his career by utilizing that in a business sense didn't mean he had to be programmer, but it certainly helped him. I mean, Katie, you. Technology just. We'll keep that as one short because otherwise, you know, we don't have a two hour show today. Technology. And then we'll come back to the couple of the other, the earlier questions that we'll get them to rephrase and go, what would you say?

Technology. I mean, across the markets I'm finding that it is sort of the buzzword with treasury clients. I think a lot more people are implementing new systems and want to have people that understand it. So there's a lot more of the clients asking for certain treasury management system experience. I don't think, as Mike said, I don't think it's going to take over the treasury world, but I think it's becoming more and more important and I think, you know, like with anything, you've got to have your finger on the pulse and the technology side within treasury is, is definitely quite big at the moment. I've recently just picked up a role that's around sort of the optimization and transformation side of things and that is specifically dealing with the new treasury systems. So it's definitely heightened over the last, I would say 18 months.

Going back to your previous questions, which, which of them cherry picking from the top of the list were you going through? Because I've got a pen that doesn't work.

That's perfect. No, no, that was actually the, the main one we wanted to tackle. I had also in mind the onboarding aspect and how treasury is involved into the, the career of people more than, okay, the skills related to it. But we touched upon this a little bit earlier in this onboarding, remote, et cetera.

Any final bits before we wrap up for today? You know, we're all exhausted. You guys have been doing it for two and a bit hours with me and stuff like this. On today's Recording. But what other areas do you think that you brainstormed about? Horrible questions. Looks like he's got a little smile. He's going, he's ready.

You mentioned quite some times, Mike, cash is king. And that's a term I also heard in my job. Can you develop a bit on this? Is cash becoming more king than before? Because we are still into the context of the evolution of the market, right, over the last five years, we touched upon why treasury is becoming more and more important, more and more interesting. Cash is king. What does that mean? Can you develop on that?

It's all business speak, isn't it? What is it? That profit is sanity, turnover is vanity. But cash is king and it's actually about the profits that you do this because it enables you, you know, from an entrepreneurial point of view, if we don't make profit, then Katie be even blacker than here. She wouldn't be here, you know, like, you know, I'm talking about the black box here, Katie, that you just disappear. There'd be no Katie. I'd have to do all the work and I'll work instead. I have a KT in my life, which is great. I think cash at the end of the day drives business. And when I talk about cash, I'm talking about profits and having profitable business. If you don't have profitable businesses with, then you don't have businesses per se. But one of the things that I would say is. So I was asked to speak recently, this Euro Finance conference sat there on stage and I've said this to you guys on a previous session, but it bears repeating, is directly related to this. I said, it's all very well, we've got all these, you know, little stands. And they said, liquidity Planning, cash management, TMS's implementation and all these different bits around the room. And I said, do you know what? There's a table missing here. I said, but you know what? It would have to be a massive round table, the biggest one in the room. And about talent. Now, okay, I was up on stage, I was doing a bit tongue in cheek, but it was true. The people in that room, you know, I was saying, you manage, you do all this, but you actually operate the machines, you coach and mentor the staff. We underestimate the, you know, at our peril, maybe the impact that treasury professionals make. That's one of the key things that actually, without people doing this, nothing would happen again. It was like without doing this, you know, it'd just be this empty office. But it's got to be Filled with people. Whether it's a home office or working remotely, whatever it might be, it's actually the input that you do and using technology and all the different things. And in that interrelationship, treasury is all about that. And that's one of the reasons why the treasury recruitment company is about people. That's where it's about getting all those processes and working with people. And I think that's underestimated. There's everyone. Oh, we got this amazing cash flow forecast. Yeah, but who did it? Well, the machine produced it. Yeah, but who input the numbers? Well, the business produced it. And how was the business? Well, it was run by people and they were selling goods on the street or. Oh, so there were people involved. Yeah, people. People. And it's. It. Sometimes I think that people lose sight of that. People lose sight of the people. The. The talent aspect, if you like, if that's the right way to put it. Katie, what are your thoughts on that?

Cash is king in treasury world. There are lots of areas of specialism, but cash management tends to be one of the ones that comes up the most.

Oh, that's very interesting. And that's a no. Some transition from cash is king to talent is key. Thanks a lot, Mike, for that. All right, anything else we forgot to ask you during this, I think more than an hour.

I think I'm all washed out. Perfect.

We did our job.

Good. Yeah, no, it's great. I think I've been stretched this way and that with all the different levels. Have I reflected on this? Yeah, I just felt completely washed out because I feel like rung out a bit like a sponge, but in a good way. And that's one of the key things that I think I listened, actually. I hadn't listened to as many of your podcasts until we did our first two episodes. I then got back on and listened some of the blooming brilliant. And although I've got to say, Hasani asked some horrible questions. Hope you're all right. The fact that people are here. If you're here on the treasury career corner and you're listening to it, go to Corporate Treasury 101. If you're there, forget those losers come across to us. You know, they might be charming on air, but they're not that like that in real life. But joking aside, you can hear about people's careers and why they've done it for so long. Yeah, but it's been a blast. And I'll talk to you. We'll do more of these things as well going forward. But you know, it's just been great, as always. We'll put the LinkedIn details, the show notes, you can to me, Katie, you guys as well, I think, you know, just, just thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you. And thanks a lot for the opportunity. Thanks a lot for having us. Mike and Katie, you thank. A very nice exchange that we had those four sessions. So, yeah, thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We dream. Really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.