Feature Series: Starting Out in Corporate Treasury

Foreign welcome to this special feature episode on the Treasury Career Corner podcast. This is one of four amazing Friday episodes. Usually I talk to treasury professionals about how they've gone through their careers, developed them from the start, and then some of the issues that they face and everything else in these four shows. Those we often get asked about all the different stages of your corporate treasury careers. How do you start out? You know, we get junior guys coming to us, oh, I want to get into treasury. How do I do it? So we answer that I do this with the amazing guys at Corporate Treasury 101. We'll put in there their details to their show as well, which is a. A great education series if you like. You can find out all the concepts of Treasury. It's just amazing. So go over there if you're interested in getting into it. But anyway, show one, we talk about your getting into treasury, if you like, breaking down the treasury topics into easy to understand conversations. And it's a good way to, you know, really solidify the early stages of your career. Now you might be further on in your career. You might be approaching treasury manager level. God, if only there was a show episode two that actually talks about middle stage of your careers, what you should be doing to take yourself to the next level, how it varies across different regions and demographics and things like that. And then show three, that's talking about there's more senior levels of treasury, so group treasurer, global treasurer, deputy treasurer. Right. But you know, when you're getting towards the top of the treasury tree, as it were. And the fourth show, well, that's a more rounded episode that also features my lovely colleague Katie Hardy. And we talk with the Corporate Treasury 101 guys about the markets, how the world is of treasury, what's happening and everything else. I'm gonna release them every week over the next three Fridays, four Fridays. But I know that you guys might want to binge on them, so we're going to put them in a separate area. You can find them in our feature episodes area of our podcast. So if we get into this first episode, we're going to look at breaking into corporate treasury if you like, don't forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. Just like these can even add me on LinkedIn. We'll put that in the show notes. Anyway, as I say, each and every week on the Treasury Career Corner. Let's get on with the show.

Mike, happy to have you on the podcast.

When you guys suggested this, it's a little bit scary, I also Sometimes struggle. Having done 200 plus episodes of the Treasury Career Corner, where as I said to the guys, I speak to a treasurer each and every week about how they started their careers, where they are now, where they see the treasure profession. Going to next. A great show. I thought it'd be 10 episodes. We're 210 later and it carries on and the guests are getting bigger and bigger. And then I got approached by these two amazing other podcasters and said, look, we're opening up the world of treasury and helping people. What can you do to sort of interface? And that's it. We're here today and it's just we can do some bonus episodes for you guys listening and just it's great fun. So yeah, back to you. And it's quite nice sharing the mic and getting you guys to do some of the questions, although I hope I come up with some good answers.

Super excited to have you on the podcast and to be sharing these episodes. We've listened to some of your episodes of the one you're animating the podcast on Spotify. Yeah, obviously you're asking most of the time the questions and we're really thrilled to be the one asking your questions and hear your views on the treasury world, treasury careers. In this episode we're going to to go through the application process and how to enter into the treasury world. So Mike, first question we have for you and we'd like to know more about, is how do we enter into the treasury world? And if I may specify a bit, the question, as a young graduate, ideally, because in business school we obviously hear about finance, rights, banking, eventually consulting in finance or not, treasury seems a bit more niche. How do we enter into this world?

Concretely, I think the first way is to try and find out about Treasury. When I started in treasury recruitment 20 plus years ago and I wanted to learn about treasury per se and the people I was recruiting, I used to have to go out, have coffees with treasurer and said, right, tell me what you do. The first one I met, I said, right, can you tell me about cash management? And they tell me about that. And then you meet the next treasurer, go, oh, can you tell me about fx or do you want to know about cash? Oh no, I know about that from them. And you sort of built a knowledge that very accidentally and that's where a lot of treasury professionals certainly accidentally fall into Treasury. Now it is improving. And actually I spoke to a group of treasurers just recently, some North American ones, and actually we were talking very much about how do they get treasury folks into Treasury. Now one of the things I asked them to do and suggested with a lot of them, there's a wonderful lady called Severin Leblivenik and she used to be Honeywell Aliaxis now. And I joked with you guys previous to the show that she's dreadful. She drives me mad. Why? Because she does an amazing job for junior treasury professionals. What she does is she goes out and helps out. She does a sort of an outreach and volunteering at the local university and she finds if you like junior treasury professionals, she gets to lecture. Now she doesn't do it all the time, she's a very busy treasurer. But what she does is she can then sort of cherry pick some of those guys, some of them bring some of them into on internships, then get some other members of a team to go and integrate with them and they get to do and replace me in a way. So they recruit people for free. Great way to get in and the follow on from that as well. You can also do, I'm hearing more in your business course where people doing the one year placement, so the sandwich course if you like, in the UK for instance, I know that FedEx do an extremely good. And they partnership. I know they partnered with University of Surrey University, I think it's Sheffield and there's a couple of ones in the. In Birmingham as well. I know they do that and they also coats have done that as well and xplc what they do is so years one and two, they do the degree and then they do a one year placement as a Treasury assistant if you like. And sometimes they do a bit more in the company, they go back and finish their final year and honestly we recently placed someone that had gone through that and they jumped straight into a job in like seven seconds because here you go, here's a fully trained treasury assistant, knows how to work the systems, cash management, everything and wasn't worried about Treasury. So that's a great way of doing it. And I'm giving a very long answer but I'm going to keep going. So outreach and volunteer train from within as well. So make sure you as a Treasury group treasurer or deputy treasurer are trying to do. There's more rotation programs now try and go to whoever organizes said, oh by the way, we'd like to train someone or they have them on rotation for three months, six months if possible and then they get this great view of treasury, they get to move into other areas of the company and they go out and spread the word of treasury which is you know exactly what we're here for. Just why we do the podcast, guys, very much indeed.

So you mentioned more the aspect from a group tutorial perspective. How do you get young talents right the other way around, like as a young graduate. So you mentioned like it can be accidental. How do you intentionally go into Treasury? So you must be curious and interested because you mentioned, oh yeah, I want to learn more about this or that. But how do, like are there some studies that are targeted to treasury or are there some things we can look at to get to know treasury and those internships and those one year period as an assistant while still doing the studies? Is there something that exist?

I think, I think the first one is listen to Corporate Treasury 101, this amazing podcast.

That's the answer we're looking for.

There we go.

Next question.

And I think that was one of the reasons I teamed up with you guys because I was like, wow, this is blooming brilliant. This is exactly what people want and that's what we need to get, you know, so get you guys out there spreading the word, the good word of treasury and actually saying this is why treasury is so engaging. I mean globe, you work within it, some of you know really well as well. And I think we'll get you into treasury one day. Don't worry, we'll get you out of your way. I think also, you know, there's so many education programs out there. I have seen some very highly priced, you know, an introduction to treasury, pretty punchy price there. But there are a number of other treasury qualifications. They do a really good one in the Netherlands which is just recently. There's got another one in Luxembourg which are very good. And in the show notes we'll put some links to maybe some, some of those. So for people listening today, I think it's about getting interested in treasury and there's so many other things. Now when I put typed in Treasury 15 years ago, I was like, oh, the government. No, it's not that, no. Now it's liquidity, cash management, FX global. And by just doing this. And that's why I do my podcast and everything else and go to treasuryrecruitment.com our website. We do give lots of information for junior guys trying to get into it and that's a key thing as well.

Okay, very nice. What are those like the typical degrees you see entering into Treasury? So like I said, there's no specific undergraduate or graduate degree in Treasury. The first one off the top of my head would be like a finance degree, a business degree is that are those like the bulk of the applicants that typically go into treasury, or do you also get people going to treasury as graduates from other backgrounds as well?

You do. I think there's a predominance of coming from business degrees, economics, accountancy, and you get a lot of those because of the way of thinking, you know, and that's things like that. You don't tend to get the graduates coming from, say, philosophy and stuff. And I say that, though, because recently we play someone and they'd had a philosophy degree and they realized what was interesting about them. They'd realized it wasn't for them. They didn't like the idea that there was no answer. You know, it's like, how many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb? Depends if the light bulb wants to change or does the light bulb actually exist? It's that stuff. It's like they said actually they didn't enjoy that sort of thing. That's right. I think it's psychiatrists in there. If you, you know how many psychologists they want to change. I think it's also. I don't think it's right. That's one of the things I would say. I think anyone can get into treasury if you have a passion for it. When we have adverts, it sometimes says accountancy qualification, degree in accountancy, or business advance preferred. And a lot of clients said, oh, highly desirable, essential. And I'm like, what's your degree in? Well, it's in chemistry. You're like, well, okay, so it's not actually in this. So I think that's one of the things that the company's recruiting and the clients recruiting need to think about.

I mean, if we can step out, then of finance graduates, accounting graduates, and you're saying, really, it's open to pretty much anyone with that kind of mindset. What are those like again? At the student level? Right. At the graduate level, hard or soft skills that typically is required to go into something like Treasury. So hard skills would be, I guess you need to have a basic understanding of Excel. Right. Which maybe a philosophy student hasn't touched since high school. But what are those other hard skills and also soft skills that make a good treasury graduate, regardless of background of degree?

Well, if everyone and anyone listening goes to a thing called treasuryskillswheel.com and that's because we created this, because I got asked this a number of years ago for the Chicago Treasurers association and we put together. We'd analyzed the first 70 podcasts we did, and it was the treasury skills wheel. And to answer directly, the core ones that came out of here were technical expertise. Exactly as you've just talked about, qualifications. Now that can be degree and then follow up qualifications in treasury itself, diversity of experience and that's across a number of solid areas. We gave these as the hard skills and then there was project management. And those are the things that you start to build, you know. And someone said, well, hang on, I'm a, I'm a grad, I haven't got any project management experience. I've done this. Okay, did you run the student union? Did you organize these events? Did you do all of this? Well, yeah, I did. Okay, so as well as your qualification, you're pretty good on project management. That's a key thing. On the softer areas, and I'm just looking at the screen now, you've got enthusiasm, drive, relationship building, communication, propensity to learn exactly as you might be doing. Strategic thinking, risk tolerance and change, resilience. And all of those were things that were mentioned by 70, I think it was 75 global treasurers. And it was distilled down from what they were saying. So it's not me, it was their words and what they had said would made them successful. And now we're at 200 plus. To be honest, it hasn't really changed. And when you look at you, when you speak to a lot of those treasurers, you can sort of plot them on each of those graphs, you know, two concentric circles sort of thing. And, you know, the global treasures, they tend to be in the outer circle of each of those because that's the way you get to the top. And the ones that aren't very good, they're all enthusiastic, I would say. But those that, you know, need to work on their communications, you know, their personal communication skills, that can really propel you as well. So I think that's an interesting one as well.

When you enter and let's say you check most of the boxes about the skills, both hard and soft, what are the industries you can look at when it comes to Treasury? So obviously we talk about corporate treasury, so we think big corporation, so that's one. And we'd like also to know more about what are the other options. For instance, well, in banking, are treasury skills or treasury positions related somehow? Consulting as well. Like, what can you tell us about those possibilities and opportunities when as a young graduate you want to touch upon treasury in your daily job, but you're not fixed on exactly one industry to go to?

So let's cover firstly, corporate treasury you can go into any corporate and it doesn't matter what widget it is or whether it's FMCG or with whether it is heavy industry. There are differences between those. You might be a debt laden, you might be a cash rich company. Treasury is treasury, but it is different. And the way that, you know, I often say that treasurers in each of those have different skills. They draw from their toolkit in a different way. The drivers are different. If they go into the bank saying please give us some money or they come and say hey I'm aaa, you know this A plus. They go, no, you know, please, we want to give you some money. The opposite way around. So those are differences. So if you're going in at that level, that's a great grounding for yourself I think also banking, yeah, as you say, can be very good and a good way for a lot of treasury professionals to start their careers. However, if they start to go on a bit further in their banking careers, they, they become more and more specialized. And then at a later stage they sometimes come to me and say, oh, I want to get out banking now. I'd like to go into corporate treasury because I do corporate treasury sales. I know what they do the other side. And I'll say to them, okay, so you're in cash management. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. When was the last time you implemented a Treasury management system? I've never done that. Okay, when was the last time you did fx? Well, no, that we give that to our FX team. Okay, when did the last time you did this? Project management? Well no, as you go up in, and it's not criticism, as you go up in your banking career, you become more specialist. Now actually I'm going to come back to something here. Chance to get my own back on you guys. Well anyway, you tell me you're in consulting, you know, so it as a junior treasury, why is a junior person going in? Why is consulting great? Surely you spend your life out of a suitcase and that's horrible.

So obviously there are quite some things to take into account here. What attracted me in the first place. That's interesting because that's something we wanted to touch upon a bit later, but let's tackle it now. My feel about consulting in treasury is that, I mean treasury is super interesting obviously but in consulting you get to do the transformation projects, you get to do the, let's say, expensive stuff. I'd say for a company that it's hard to do on its own. So you hire consultants. Right. So you're a little Bit less into the day to day treasury task and missions if I may say and more into the. Okay, we need to implement. You just mentioned the TMS for the people listening to us who do not know this acronym. It means Treasury Management System and we're like okay, we need to change our Treasury Management system. How do we do that? How many people do we need? Okay, we definitely need to hire some consultants or even implement one because we do not have one so far. Same for banking landscape. Right. We are looking at transforming our banking landscape, rationalizing around the world, centralize our cash to start a bit of fancy words but this is something we need to have consultants for. And it's really interesting that you mentioned project management. I didn't expect it to be a skill in a pure treasury function, but that's really the aspect that I love actually being into the project management of some transformation, looking towards the future. That's what's attractive into treasury consulting, I'd say. Does that answer your question, Mike?

That does. Any other questions Sam, you have or other ones? I know you had a whole list but we don't want to keep everyone.

I mean I think that we have a million dollar question or hopefully million dollar question for you Mike. What are the salary expectations for a new graduate into going into Treasury?

Sorry, hello to call me now it varies widely I would say across the different markets. But an interesting thing I think is once you get into treasury it's highly valued and you are a valued member of staff obviously but actually you can prove your worth quite rapidly. We've talked a bit about supply and demand. In actual fact the demand for there are might be two or three treasury assistants or two or three treasury analyst dealers. You'll only ever have one group global treasurer. Typically you might have one or two deputy treasurers but as you get then you got to treasury managers then you've got wider team. So it's typically the, the model is a triangle if you like. However, as we said earlier, you tend to get into treasury by accident. You know a lot of it certainly in previous years. It's now becoming more part of things. So if you remember an old style kite, the supply of staff at that level is quite difficult. So again that's why we particularly as a recruitment firm target those guys at those levels and they make quite rapid steps up. So it's a really. So if you come into a role in the uk, let's say that market for a start and you become a Treasury assistant, you would be looking at a salary anywhere between and we're doing these mid 20, 22, we're looking at those salaries. So you might join minimum 20,000, but I would say more typically it'd be 22, 24 as a minimum. And that's outside of, say, people, places like London. But you would expect degree, maybe years worth of experience or zero experience. You're the right person be securing a salary 25, 26 as a starting salary. Within a year, I would expect to be at 28, 30, 32. And when you're up there, that's when you start to move after a year or two years. Treasury assistant to analyst, analyst, dealer. And the difference between the roles, just to go on that treasury assistant does exactly what it says on the tin. So it's you assist within Treasury. Can you sort this out? Can you do the paperwork, can you do the reconciliations? Can you work with accountant to make sure this. You'll generally be supervised a lot of the time. We sometimes see through our salary survey. That's another thing. If you want to benchmark, go to treasurysalary.com if you're listening in your early stages, great way to do it, but you'll typically see a lot of those candidates and sometimes we find they get a bit frustrated in the early years of their careers because they're being told what to do every day. It's actually as you start to then become analyst, dealer, you're probably told what to do every week. And then you become treasury manager, you're given guidance on what to do every month. Whereas when you get to a global treasurer job, you meet the CFO once a year. These are yearly targets. I'll see you next quarter for coffee. How are you getting on against some of stuff? And actually that's one of the things that when we do the salary survey, people have said, oh, it's all about the salary. It's not. People are happy. We've got some of the figures here just coming on 20. It's because of the manager or boss, decent work, life balance, friendly, supportive team, buried work, fifth on the list. So one out of 10 people is about the salary and that's across the board, globally. So those are some of the salaries UK wise. I know international audience. So again, you could do the euro conversions, I would tend to say, depending on the country. Switzerland has its own Swiss bubble. You know, the Swiss bubble, the cost of living, everything else. It's a bit like when we do stuff in the US as well. I was talking to Craig Jeffrey the other day on strategic treasurer about salaries and I was trying to Talk about the global nature of our survey. And we're going to split it out as we go to the US because salary someone in New York and California are probably quite comparable, but in Ohio or Texas, you know, they're stepping down. And if they're. You're in Colorado, it's very different because your cost of living. So there are different. You know, he was talking about in New York, if I was to recruit a Treasury analyst, as I recently did in New York, that person I place on $90,000. And they were, it was their second job. You know, they came in as treasury assistant. They're on $60,000. So going to America is a really good for your treasury grit and it's a good place to start in Treasury. But we'll get on some remote working and working from home on one of our last episodes actually about, you know, in the future. So look out for that episode as well. But yeah, I'll shut up now. Back to you.

Okay, sounds really interesting. And actually, as you mentioned, it can. I mean, it's quite a yearly raise. If after one year you go from 20 to 24k to 2830, that's quite massive.

Oh, really? The really good steps as well.

And you're about pounds. So for the. In Europe, it's. The question is.

And it's high demand that's the problem as well. So one of the key things to do if you are bringing in junior members of staff, I said to again this group of treasurers earlier this week, I said, I've got a relatively junior team. They're young, they're vibrant and stuff. When I started the world work. Yeah, last century literally was last century. All right, move on, Hassan. That's it. Face the radio. That's why we do it. But joking aside, you know, you got paid, you did your job and you went home. Now it's much more about that. Just talk some of the balances there. But having your achievements recognized and everything else, one of the key things I find, and I think it's the right thing as well, is that junior members of staff don't just go to work for the salary they want. How are you going to look after my career? How are you going to develop me? So I have to now, with my own team, say, right, how are you feeling? You know, today, this end of this week, end of this month, every quarter? Because if I don't, somebody else will. So that's a defensive. But you need to look after your junior staff because they will vote with their feet. If you're not careful.

We started getting into those treasury analysts and assistant roles there. Mike, explain a little bit. You said a little bit about the day to day and the frequency at which you're given instructions and the frustrations that can come with that. That's really interesting. So would a Treasury assistant be involved anywhere? So do they just do the day to day tasks or are they also involved in transformation projects like Guillaume was mentioning earlier or anything like that? So what's, what goes into the role of assistant into analyst in terms of responsibilities typically? How does that impact that?

Yeah, they're doing the day to day stuff. Why? Because they haven't got as much value to add yet. Because they haven't seen as much, you know. So there is a lot of learning on the job and everything else what you'll tend to find. So someone will do the day to day tasks to then free up the treasury analyst or dealer. They're the next step up. They will start to assist with a project, you know, so say there's a rfp, rfi, rfp. When you're looking at a new treasury management system, for instance, you'll tend to find they won't get involved in that. Well, they might do, but at a very, very basic level because they're still learning their craft. Whereas get treasury analysts and dealers. But that project to look at, assess the needs of the treasury team will be led by treasury manager who might then lean on the treasury dealer. But the treasury dealer will be actually passing activity center. I'll show you how to do the dealing each day and you'll get sign off from me as the dealer, analyst or whatever. So you need to do this, this, this off you go, do it and then come back to me. Whereas actually so again that's one of the. Can be a frustrating time as well. And I think now as we come out of COVID and everything else, you know, it's a much better time. That's why people need to be in the office that much more to be practically trained, to be coached and to be led as well.

As you go through that career progression from assistant to analyst and onwards and as you take on a little bit more responsibility. Right. As opposed to just executing what. And this question I like to ask, usually my manager when I'm at work and everything, what makes a great treasury analyst at that level? So what sticks out in your experience as you take treasury analysts and place them somewhere else? What do the treasury analysts that stick out in their role do versus the average Joe?

The ones that put the hand up the Ones that actually are enthusiastic enough to say what can I do to help? The more you get involved, the more that you go out of your way and do not 100% more. Every time we talk about it, do one. You know, one of my ex bosses said do 100 things 1% better than one thing, 100 better. And it's an old phrase and everything else but it's right. If you can do that marginal gains thing, do every day say to you, but is there anything else can help with? Can I stay a bit late? And you know, not saying work workshire and stuff like that. It's more about every time you do that you will gain more responsibility, you'll be given more responsibility. And you know when we talk to someone. I was talking to a treasurer this week and I went back to they. They'd had a couple of placement students who had done their sandwich years and there were two. One is just about to finish up. They're going to go back to university. We've already reached out. We want to talk to that person. We're going, we want to help you. When you come back, you're fully trained. We will have clients queuing up around the door, around the block to say, yeah, come and work for us. I said oh, you know, what about the other person? They said, do you know what? They didn't really commit to it. I said what was that? They said well, there were some other issues. Yes, we had pandemic and, and everything else but they didn't really put their hand up, you know where they were a lot of the time. Missing in action. They weren't quite there. They were sometimes they missed the team call. Oh, I've got this. I've got to do this. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm around or I've got this. It was, you know, excuses and stuff. They didn't really lean into it and I think it's always something. Yes. And that's at all levels really as well. You want progression, you've got to take.

On more responsibility just to bounce on something. You said earlier, Mike, what's the day to day task exactly? We tried with Hussam during, I mean throughout our episodes to break down what Corporate treasury is. As an assistant analyst, you mentioned like. Yeah, you basically do the day to day tasks business. Right. What is it exactly like? Oh yeah. Do they take care of the cash management, for instance? Do they look at the positions on the bank account and make decisions out of it or advice to take decisions out of it? What's the day to Day task an assistant analyst do? Exactly.

Well, you just answered it in your question.

Perfect. Moving on to the next question.

That's it? Well, no, it is, it's about. And it could be any of the, any of the above, you know, so it could be the cash of a company. And when I've coached the guys that work for me, they're brand new to treasury, they're like, what's Treasury? And one of the examples I'd love to give is many years ago there. We will still remember it just about Tomb Raider I think it was Eidos Games at the time or whatever it was. And there was when Barclays treasury, there used to be a thing called Barclays treasury products and they were a team that used to be quasi stand in treasury dealers for the company. So what happened at the time they were selling a number of their games, number of units say so call it a thousand to Germany. And what happened? This was back in the time of the deutsche mark, a long time ago, I know, before euros. But by the time they actually took delivery of the product, say three, four months later, Deutschmark had moved and it strengthened against the pound. So they sold a million pounds worth of goods or whatever it was and they went to settle their bill and they said, here you go, here's £900, is 900 grand. They were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've lost 10%. Where's it gone? Oh no, you didn't hedge, you didn't hedge your risk, you didn't take a contract. That's what a lot of, you know, Treasuries do. So they lost money on it. Now you might have treasury assistants saying, look, could you do some forecasting and work out what you think might happen? And yeah, things have changed in terms of currencies, but what do you think might happen in terms of this currency spread or whatever? And it's not particularly complex but actually what happens now is you'll look at taking a forward contract. You will be paid this amount and for that you give a little bit of money back to the bank to insure yourself if you like. So that's where they get involved at those very basic levels. And so it might be modeling that you won't necessarily hop on the phone to the bank, but you'll actually do things like that. That's just one example. And so I explained that that's how treasury works a little bit as well.

So you can touch upon any of the corporate treasury aspect as an analyst or assistant already. It will just day to day business.

And that's actually a really good point there as well. If you get in as a Treasury assistant, make sure by putting your hand up, if there's someone doing the cash, great. There's someone focusing more on the front office doing the foreign exchange, great. Speak to them. If there's someone doing the treasury management system and it get to understand. So the more that you can broaden your knowledge, the more valuable you will be.

You mentioned hedging there. If anyone's interesting to understand how you hedge financially, you can go listen to episode 15 of the Corporate Treasury 101 podcast.

We'll put a link to that in.

The chat things exactly the situation Mike just described and how you would hedge against it.

There you go. I can't knew what I'm doing after 25 years.

All right, so we broke down. What you do as an treasury analyst and a Treasury assistant, what makes a great treasury assistant and analyst, how you expect to grow. Stand up, put your hands up. Mike, we'd like to ask you what's the boring part of the job that you eventually need to put up with in order to grow? Or just like, you know, every job, every position has withdraw his drawbacks. What is it for the treasury world?

You're the bottom of the pile. The stuff that you're going to get to ask to do is sometimes the stuff that nobody else wants to do. And if you, as I said, if you go mia, if you just get away from that, say oh, do I have to do is oh, it is quite tough because do I have to do you know, say you've got an accounting degree. And they said look, we really need someone to check these figures or maybe your training as an accountant, a lot of accountants do that as well. You get into treasury, good. But if you shy away from that, if you're not willing to go through some of the drudge work now, lots of treasuries are trying to straight through process, are trying to improve themselves, are trying to move to the next level. But if you're not willing to do that at the end of the day, then probably treasury might not be for you because there are hard times and the more that you can cope with that and more resilient you are, the better you'll be able to cope when you're a group treasurer in 15 years time.

Yeah, okay, no fair. And yeah, it also enables you to be able to control this kind of work once you get to manage those analysts and assistants. Right. Since you've been through that, you know how it works, you know how to produce good quality work. Maybe it's better that you go through this first in order to be able to say to the following people, look.

There was a guy candidate I registered a while back who, great candidate, didn't have the best cv, started talking him through and I noticed at the bottom he was studying Python, the programming language. And I was like, oh, why have you done that? He said, well, some of the work I was doing first thing in the morning, I was reconciling these cash positions, doing this every day and it got really boring. So he was quite it literate and everything else. So he went on this training course and as a result of actually he discussing, they rolled out what he was doing and it saved the company his wages many times over because he created this report, it went out, grabbed it with, worked with the IT guys and got this rolled out on a global basis for this global company who's given a recognition award. It accelerated his career. And the other thing I said, Tim, and quite quickly I said, why is it buried down here? He's like, what? I mean? And I said, well, I don't want to be known as a Python program. I said, no, you can be known as a Python change maker. You know what you're doing. You studied this, the result, you then implemented this. The saving was this. And it was a matter of days or weeks or weeks rather than weeks before he's hired by someone. So we keep in touch because one day I'll place him, don't worry.

Okay, fair. So it's interesting that you touch upon this. So Python is typically not the qualifications or skills you'd look at in the first place for treasury analysts or assistants, but I mean, it helps understanding the person profiles. Right. When you purely look at treasury, what are the qualifications? We had some conversations before this record and you mentioned some certifications. I let you give the acronyms because I forgot most of them. But so what are the qualifications and certifications potentially that you'd look at into a young graduate or as an entry level?

Well, you've got. And in fact I spoke to the association of Treasurers in the UK recently and they were saying, look, could they simplify or, you know, for people looking and you can look at it. Here you go to act treasurers or learning.treasurers.org Again, we'll put this in the show notes, but actually this certificate and Treasury Fundamentals, which is their first first level, if you know, that's three to six months study time, 150 study hours and assessment online and stuff. And I'm not just doing this as a big sales page. We get nothing for that. I wish we did get this pager. But the fact is that's a great qualification if you're wanting to get into there. In addition to which there are others, you know, there's. There's one in the Netherlands. There's a variety. Basically look at them in and particularly in the US as well, you've got ctp. So that's their, you know, run by the association for Finance Professionals in America. And that's their basic qualification. And I say, basically, I think it takes a couple of years. It's very good. It's all online as well. It's less recognized in the UK and Europe. People say, oh, I've got ctv. They're like, ct. What you tend to find, as I say, there's a great qualification that's come through with ATAL and the Luxembourg Association. It depends, it depends on your audience. So there are, there are a lot of good ones out there.

Okay. But will mostly depend on the region and where what is recognized Extra. Okay. There is nothing mandatory, right. You can perfectly have developed an experience in the field and then it just.

Means you've got a benchmark of, well, we know we've got this level of experience now. If you do one that someone doesn't really understand, you don't have to go and say, well, actually I've done this, this, this. It's, you know, that's why a lot of in the uk, for instance, have you done the ACT exams and as you go up, you go up through the different levels of exams. So because that's quite a predominant one over here, a lot of people understand it.

So, Mike, looking at, you know, growing in, in treasury, right, overall, is it really the right place to get started in your career as an overall, like say the finance side of a business. Right, the business management side of things, because you have finance account. Like, is treasury really in your opinion the right place to start or would you rather that a graduate goes into another field first, like finance or accounting in the business, and then moves in treasury or vice versa? How do you typically see a career path? Scroll here.

Obviously, my view is skewed by the fact I've been a Treasury recruiter for many years, but I have seen a number of people come from outside of treasury and be extremely successful, you know, so they might, you know, one of the things, you may qualify as a. An accountant and then you can slot in as a Treasury accountant. So you will be looking at the middle office Function of a corporate treasury area team, if you like. And you will be coming in and looking at the accounting for various products, look at financial risk management and then from there you can choose where you go if you like, but you will have an accounting qualification and any treasury accountant as an example. You know, we were talking to some of the other and you know, once you qualify as an accountant, typically the UK minimum salary, you're going to be 40, 45 grand if you're lucky, if not higher now at the moment, with inflation and everything else, and then you could very easily step into Treasury. You'll have a lot of the fundamentals of finance and everything else in your back pocket. Then you find Discover treasury, fantastic, or you come in to treasury, as we said, and GLOW mentioned earlier, that you could do banking for a couple of years. And a lot of the guests I talked to on the podcast, particularly in Europe, less so in the uk, I don't know why that is in the way. Maybe it's just because the nature of banking in Europe is wider and you maybe are given a wider exposure and asked to do a variety of different things. Maybe in the banks, some of them are smaller, so maybe you have to be more generalist. But a lot of the treasurers I talked to, they said, oh, I started, I did two years in banking, then I started to be on the sales desk and I saw the treasurer, this treasurer of XYZ company, and I love what he was doing and the variety of things. And they said, oh, we've got a treasure analyst job coming up. Could you apply for it, please, because we'd like you to start with us. So there are a number of different routes into it. As we said earlier, a lot of the there's accidental, but now it's a bit more planned. So again, I think any of those are valid. I think the key thing is when you are going there, be aware it's your first step, step, not your last step in your career. So you're going to come in, is it going to take you to the next levels? And it's quite difficult in some ways because your early stage of your career, you don't. I'm not saying to you, oh, you have to plan out where you're in 10 years from now, but where's it going to be and what is that treasury team going to do for you in the next two to three years? Are they then going to move you into the business or they're going to move you up within Finance or up within Treasury? Sometimes I do see A bit of frustration for people that come in junior level in treasury and they can be slightly pigeonholed, bit like in banking. But treasury does have such a breadth of exposure, so you do get to see all of the business. So again, that's why I find it so interesting.

Okay, that's good. Because Treasure can be considered a bit of a niche, right? So some people might be concerned that if you start off there, you're a little bit too, like you said, pigeonholed or specialized in that to move around afterwards. But you're saying it is done and it is, is possible all the time. And then final question on this, Mike, as we transition into our next episode, which listeners can tune in later to hear about, how do you take on those more responses? What are those projects that typically you might need to deliver or those activities you might need to have a good fundamental grasp on before you move on to the manager level here then?

Okay, so when you're then going to treasury analyst dealer level, and a lot of the guys may be listening today, it's any of the above. We said earlier, cash is king. So cash management, simplifying processes, getting involved with different international businesses. There could be banking projects as well. So you have different banking partners in different countries. And one thing you can, you know for certain is nothing is certain that each of the different countries has a different set of banking rules, different level of complexity, if you like, and evolution. And, you know, Gillon will know this much more from his prod, you know, from his background and consultancy, that the UK banking system has his own nuances, but as does, you know, the Belgian one. But actually, as you move further into Eastern Europe, there's still a lot of development happening there. So some of the processes are perhaps more basic. They're still, you know, learning, they're growing, they're developing a lot of those. And that's not criticism, it's just as it evolves, sort of thing. Now, one of the key things you might get involved in as a treasure analyst, dealer, look, we're looking at our Eastern European banks. We need to assess them and stuff like that. That could be something that you could have on your CV or resume. That's one of the key things. So we went in and assessed this. This is what we want to do, or we wanted to then systematize it using this treasury management system. I'm not going to name check all the TMSs that are out there, because we'll be here all day. But actually that's a big project you can get involved in there's also one of the key things, I would say that when you're doing that, make a note of how much money you're saving the company or how much time you're saving. There's a lot of people say, how do I measure the success of my treasure hands dealer? Well, look at the contribution or get them to do it. So tell me what you're doing today that has brought in value rather than just turn the handle.

That's interesting. So it's really like the breadth of experience and how many different things have you seen? Because like you mentioned, I think we're going to go into a lot more detail in future episodes as well, which is that every role that you have in treasury, everything that you touch, slightly different. Treasury will be a completely new learning experience.

Yeah. What is that? It's an improvement mindset. The more you can improve it, the better it gets.

Just want to mention that you touched upon something very interesting. So the question was how do you transition towards more managing position? Right. And what I take out of this is how aligned, how much of an enabler you are for the overall business. And you do not look only at treasury anymore, but more the transformation. How do you understand the business so you can have a broader view of the whole industry and company you're working within. So you will have a real influence as a manager. Is it a correct summary or.

Exactly. And I think, I think the more that the problem is when you start as a Treasury assistant, as we said earlier in the show, you will be very focused on what your day to day tasks are. And does it have a wider breadth into the business itself? No. Sometimes it can be quite insulated if you like. You're not, you're not getting to see, you know, the guys in Tax or the guys in accounts or anything as you're just doing it. The treasury piece, as you slowly grow and as we will talk about in other episodes, you say when you have a treasurer, a lot of my treasurers, when I talk to them on the show, I say, what's been your, you know, springboard for success? How come you're going off to be a CFO? When I first started in Treasury Group 20 plus years ago, treasury become quite ivory towered, you know, quite separate to the business. Give us your money, we'll look after it, we'll give it back to you when we need to or hedge it. Thanks very much. Now it's treasury going out to the business. Very outward focused. It's sort of, you know, one of those old fashioned cartwheels that the treasurer can, you know, if you're at the heart of things helping tax helping financial planners, FPNA helping the more that you can actually help the in your business as well commodities and say look guys, we can help you with that. The better you, the more successful you're going to be. And again from the if you have that mindset as a Treasury assistant, day one, how can I help the rest? And pick up the phone when someone's got an issue, you might not know the answer, but if you know, you've got to be willing to keep on putting your hand up and say I'll go and ask the cfo, go and ask my treasurer. I'll go and ask my treasury manager. You know, the more you can help, the more successful you'll be awesome.

So I feel we are, we are starting to get a feel of what's coming in future episodes. So Mike, to maybe close this one, first of all we're going to put in the description your LinkedIn profile in case people want to find you, see what you do, get to know your podcast and the different activities your company propose. We're going to also put the act in the footnotes the thing you mentioned for different trainings that you can follow. What do you want to say? Maybe to close off this episode? If anything, we forgot to mention that is important for treasury analyst and assistant position or even to get into this.

This reflect on two things, I think. Firstly, if you're managing treasury assistance or analysts or whatever. And again I gave this at this conference this week. I said the first thing to do is not to use me. They're all like what? I said, yeah, if you're using a Treasury recruiter, you failed. You've got it wrong. You've not. I said, you know, I said earlier in the episode ask your treasury assistant what they want now three months from now, six months where they see it and if you show an active interest now, they will sometimes move on because they, they have to, you know, you, you outgrow the role and you have to recruit the replacement and things but the more that you can integrate them into and and help them with their career, the longer you can retain them and they will keep going and keep going. So that's on a client side, so that's what you should do. And and then the flip side, if you're a candidate, look for a boss like that because those are the ones you want to work with. Look at the people that aren't just trying to fill a slot. You know, we Actually, one of our clients who we won't be working with because they want someone to be in the office five days a week, which only 5% of people ever want to be in the office from our salary survey. 5%. So 1 in 20 people said, yeah, I want to be in the office 20, you know, five days a week. Great, great. We're like, we can't help you. You know, oh, we're quite old school. They said, oh, we're like this. Yeah, well, people are new school now that school's closing down. We actually, that's the key thing, I think. Don't be too pushy, that you need to be try and be as flexible as you can. But it doesn't mean to say you still do have the power. You are an employee, you have to work for someone else. So be picky with it as well. And we encourage that. So I think, you know, treasury is an amazing place. It's great springboard for a finance career, but I would say that.

Awesome, Mike, thanks a lot.

Pleasure. Look forward to it. And as you say, we'll go to treasurerecruitment.com go to the LinkedIn profile for you guys as well. Great to have you network and yeah, look forward to the next episode.

Same here.

Thank you very much, Mike.

Thanks. Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, 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'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. Let's take a look, say 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.