Jay Steller talks about building a treasury career by getting broad experience across different areas, developing management skills, and understanding why you're doing each task. He emphasizes connecting treasury work to actual business goals rather than just executing transactions.
You think, well if I'm going to do these rotations, you know, quote unquote rotations that are two years in nature, it's going to take me a long time to really build up that experience at a place like IBM and so wanted to do more, wanted to have a broader based experience and also, you know, kind of felt that at that point in my career wanted to expand and have some managerial experience and similar to how things work with Bristol IBM, a banker called me and said hey, we've got heard of this opportunity at Hershey, would you be interested in. And you know, I've always kind of had that philosophy of it's always good to take those calls and have a conversation. Right. At least to be aware of what is out there from an opportunity standpoint. And it was really appealing to me because the position was very broad in nature. The people that stand out ask why instead of just going in and doing a day to day task, it's why are we doing this? And I think it's important within treasury there's background understanding or there's a financial theory behind a lot of things that go on in treasury and understand what that theory is. But then understanding how is that going to apply to the company. I think that brings a little bit better understanding and appreciation for what you're doing than just doing the task. Right. If you're just going into SAP or your treasury system and you're just clicking buttons and kind of doing things, get your tasks done, the people that are going to add the greater value are those that are going to take a step back and ask why. Where I've seen leaders that have really excelled, it's been of they have a good solid understanding of what the underlying key issues are. But what I've, I guess what I've appreciated. So that's one of the things that stands out to me as a good leader. It provides you kind of with the background frame but allows you to go out and do it, think about what they want their career to be. Yeah, right. So if you want to be solely focused in on the treasury world, that's great. And a lot of people do that, right? A lot of people become experts in treasury, they find a career there and they spend their whole life there. But if that's not for you, think about how can I then leverage my treasury experience and get it involved with the business and aligned with the business and that's probably having the right career conversations. I think within treasury you have to think about what do I want to develop, do I want to develop a depth of expertise and experience within certain roles, or do I want breadth of experience across the treasury spectrum? Because there's a lot of different roles within Treasury. Right. And then what we had talked about a little bit earlier is be inquisitive. Right? Ask the whys. I think that it makes a lot of sense to have, you know, what we've labeled as a continuous improvement mindset of evaluating what you're doing. Is there a better way to do it?
