Mike Richards & Joe Grabowski, Treasury Recruitment Co talk about the US Treasury Recruitment Market

So welcome to this section of Treasury Career Corner. You've already heard from the wonderful Craig talking about the UK market. Then we went on to Katie talking about Europe. And now you might want to head over to YouTube. Not sure you will, but anyway, because you've got Joe Grabowski, who leads our efforts in the US and myself in high definition hd. Yeah, you lucky people. Well, okay, so maybe just listen to us. I don't know. Joe's going to talk us through the current state of the U.S. treasury recruitment market. We'll talk about salaries in a minute. We'll talk about our other plans for 2024. I'll shut up for a second and let Joe talk. So, Joe, talk me through what's going on in the US and what's it like for you.

Yeah, absolutely, Mike. Thanks for having me. And again, apologies to the YouTube audience. You got two guys who have faces built for radio that are sitting here talking about Treasury. But no, it's been good. I've been back in the fold for about a month now, really getting my feedback under me, rekindling a lot of old relationships that I had in the space prior to moving over to the crypto space. But then now I'm back. Y But one thing I've noticed, as much as things have changed, they tend to stay the same. I am we are definitely seeing an uptick in jobs in the US it seems like every week you have new jobs that are coming, being advertised, coming out for people to apply to. You know, I get a lot of questions just based on people I'm connected with within my network. Hey, what do you know about this job? What do you know about this person? Is this something that I'd want to pursue? It does tend to be a very similar. It follows a similar path to what you'd see across the pond or what you and Craig and Katie have seen. Most of the jobs that you're going to see advertised are at the analyst and the manager level. That's a great thing if you're an analyst or a manager. It's not as much of a great thing if you're looking to hire an analyst or a manager. Very competitive if you're hiring almost an abundance of opportunity. If you are looking at those levels as you hit director level and above. So your directors, your ats, your treasurers, starting to see small upticks in the amount of opportunities available. I think you had mentioned it in previous podcasts. It's either there's less movement, you're getting toward the top of the hierarchy. There so there has to be movement in order for opportunities to appear at those levels. Now, what that means, if you're looking at those levels, if you are that senior manager looking to jump into a director, or if you are a director at or treasurer who's looking for a new role, it might take a little bit longer, you know, not as many opportunities out there, very competitive, because everyone is looking for the top seat. So that's. If there's anything specific you want me to hit on, but that's generally what I'm saying.

Actually, we were just preparing the results of our latest treasury salary survey and it totally reflects what you've just said. A number of people have been moving from that sort of senior treasury manager into an AT spot, or maybe deputy treasurer role. We'll come back to titles in a moment. But the key thing was there wasn't really promotion per se, from outside. They weren't bringing in someone. And then, right, we need to hire this person at a more senior level and it's boosted the salary. Instead you're getting someone moving internally and they're going, well, yeah, we'll give you a 10 uplift. Oh, okay. And you've got to be happy with that. Okay. You know, and people. Some people are happy with it, some people aren't, but some people are taking it anyway. They're going, I'm happy for now, not maybe happy for the future. And also people think, well, they don't have to go external and try and use our support or use the dreaded LinkedIn, which Joe and I were talking about earlier, because I recently had an example with a client. They've been looking. They'd had 80 odd responses and they were like, we. Well, we screened 80 people. Yeah, good luck with that. How many have you employed? How many are you talking to? Well, we're talking to you, aren't we, Mike? I was like, yeah, exactly. Because I say not all of them and they might get lucky, but a lot of the time with them, I said, look, if someone is looking for a job on LinkedIn, particularly in treasury as a specialist area, I find a lot of the time, and I think you'll reflect as well, Joe, that they're looking to exit a bad situation, they're looking to leave where they are. They don't care about your job in the nicest way. They just want to get away from lack of pay, lack of flexibility, a boss that doesn't coach them. Again, we do the salary survey and it's not about the salary most of the time, it's Actually about boss progression, everything else, definitely. And you know, again, I don't want to. I want to shut up for a second, but that's what I was just saying to them is that that's what they were seeing. And they said, yeah, actually you saw some nice people, but they just weren't right for us or they weren't right for us right now. And I'm like, exactly. That's what. Whereas then. And the first person I thought of actually eventually got the job, but they were like, oh, we want to see some more. So I had 12 people for them. They went through and they said, yeah, we've got that one right person. And I've known them for 10 years. So it's a career step for them. That's the key thing. I mean, you've seen this and you've battled against it in the US for as many years as I have. What are your thoughts in that? And about supply and demand?

Yeah, it's really interesting. So especially when you, I guess if you break down the hierarchy overall, your analysts and your managers, they're still on the upswing, right? Typically, the reason why they're looking to leave or why they're looking to change jobs, number one, they want to grow. They either want to grow their skill set, they want to grow their compensation, they want to grow their title, they want to grow their responsibilities, they want to grow all of the above. Once you start to hit that director level, people, you know, you've already touched strategy. You've already, you've already done that. Especially when you hit the treasurer's seat. Pretty much a lot of the treasurers that I've spoken with are all of a sudden open to director or 80 levels. They're like, look, I don't care what you call me, I just want to like the work that I do. I want to be paid fairly and I want to work for a company that I respect. You know, it's. It's really fascina and. But that also comes down to how you market your role. To your point, it's easy, you know, especially with these positions that are entering the market, it's easy to get lost in the sea, especially as the longer that your job is just sitting out there. You may have 80 applicants, but you're. Even if you renew that job posting, it's getting lower and lower down the totem pole. People are like, hey, XYZ company has been had this job posted for six months. What the heck is wrong with it? Why haven't they been able to hire and that's usually where you and I will get a call. And it's like, well, you got to market this a little bit better. You got to understand why your people. I'm sorry, why your target market would potentially be interested in a role. You have to be able to pitch the growth. You have to be able to pitch like, hey, I'm a treasurer who wants to grow his team. I want to have my lineage spread out into the rest of the treasury market. I don't mind turnover. I'm not afraid of it. I grow my people.

Yeah, well, I think. And you touched on an interesting point there, which crosses into ways of working, I. E. You know, hybrid. I was recently interviewed by strategic treasurer on their podcast and you know, they said, oh, have you got any highlights or any ideas of ideas for me? And I went, yeah, correct this Craig Jeffrey, great guy. I said, craig, remote working is dead. He's like, what? Whoa. Okay. I said, remote working in treasury is dying. Out is dead. You know, if someone needs a remote job, don't use us. Go to LinkedIn. You'll get it maybe. And they get hundreds. But the fact is, treasury by its very nature is a collaborative discipline. We commented about this in some of the articles you'll find on our website. Treasure recruitment.com. obviously great writing, but this is bringing it to life here. But joke aside, the. The key thing there is, we're saying treasury is collaborative two to three days a week with your team. We've got Dana laid hold. I was just talking to today, treasurer of nasdaq. She talked about the fact that she has to be quite deliberate about her time. She lives quite a distance from her office, but she's in her office in New York with a lot of her team two to three days a week. And she plans to meet them, not just over zoom, but meeting them for a coffee meeting and talking about challenges. They've got. She's got to run that teamwork thing. She's got to make. She's going to make an effort. But she could just be remote, could she? No, she wouldn't be successful. She talked about that, not me. I mean, you know this. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, you, you hear about it time and time again, right? The things that you used to be able to cover in the break room, all of a sudden, maybe a 10 minute conversation there. You're now trying to catch each other on teams or whatever, messaging software or that you're using or over email. Now all of a sudden you're trying to manage calendars and find Time just. You spend more time trying to schedule a 15 minute conversation to catch up on something urgent than you do to actually solve.

Yeah.

I mean, you're seeing it in the advertisements and what clients are looking to do within the market as well. It shifted well away from remote opportunities. It's not to say that they aren't out there. I think everyone who's watching this, if you're aware of the market, you know, those companies that still have remote opportunities available, they're not going to have a problem recruiting because they also have a pretty good brand that goes along with it. Right. So that poses a different problem for their internal recruiting team. And the fact that you almost have an embarrassment of choices, people who could do the role where you have a couple hundred, maybe a couple thousand applicants and some of them, some cases. Right. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's the gist of it is you're starting to see it shift away from remote, more toward hybrid, and you still do see some 100 in office. I don't really understand the, you know, it's not for me to make the judgment. I don't understand the logic behind it. It's shown that I'm going to judge. All right, go ahead. All right, go ahead. It is.

You just prove that you don't need it. Like, why do you have to. Yes, there might be a week or two here and there when you've got a corporate event. And what I mean by that is a bond issuance or something like that, not, you know, social event, but, you know, basically when you do need to be there, when it's all hands to the pump, when, you know, an IPO is happening, yes, you might need to be at your desk, but then it calms down and then you can go back to the two days a week in the office. Yeah, but you know, Steve Rosenthal, past guest on the podcast, he talked about going to his office sometimes in the city and making sure that, you know, he didn't just go there and close his cubicle door, because what's the point of traveling there? They had this planned intentionality to meet each other. And I think that's a key thing that people should get off of this and that they, you know, if you're going to go in the office, go for a reason, not just because it's there. And I think that's what, you know, that's what Covid taught us.

Yeah. And I mean, we both know it firsthand. Relationships are different once they're built, face to face, opposed to just over Video or over phone or anything like that. And especially if you are an analyst or a manager or if you're looking to advance your career, the only way you're going to be able to do that is yes, through the work, but also in the relationships. And those relationships, they can be built through technology. Don't get me wrong, it means that much more if you are in the office putting in that FaceTime and you are actually able to ask questions again, not running into the issue with the messaging software, trying to find time on a calendar or anything like that, just being in the pit with your team, being able to talk, ask questions and get to know each other a little bit better. It's, it's much different being able to work asynchronously that way.

And talking about salaries, I just want to jump into that. We've just published our latest set of results. It's quite an interesting one. A couple of our rivals, oh, we're going to do a salary survey. I'm like, the great thing for us, we've done ours for like 10 years, but really it's evolved and evolved and now we've got over a thousand people doing it on a constant basis. People say, well, when do you do it? Every day? Well, yeah, it's an ongoing survey. So we make sure anyone that is part of it is, you know, we have their up to date salary information from less than six months ago. People are like, wow, wow. And it just, we just get them to update it. Click, click. 30 seconds, done. Now, what are you seeing salaries wise when you're talking to people across the.

U.S. yeah, you know, it's, it's kind of interesting. I don't want to say that it's leveled out, but you've had the last couple of years where there have been increases probably making up for not only inflation, but for, I mean, basically is an opportunity to retain your team after Covid if you, if you were frozen on mirrored increases or bonuses or anything like that. It's typically been made up over the last couple of years. It seems like we may have hit a tipping point. I don't know if that's 100% true. Don't hold me to it. But the common refrain that I'm hearing from a lot of practitioners that I'm speaking with is, hey, this is a different market than what I saw two years ago. These people aren't paying as high. It's almost like you're starting to see a little bit of a shift from an employee market toward an employer market. And you're seeing some downward pressure on salaries overall. The bonus structures usually remain the same. Just the base salary, you're starting to see maybe level out. If not. Yeah, it's leveled up a little bit, I guess.

Yeah, I think leveling out, that's a better way of doing it. It's like sort of. And it's sort of just tapering off a little bit. It's not going to level off completely flat. You just going to continue and get back to more sensible levels, I think. And that's one of the things I've seen on the salaries. And Joe and I were just talking before this call about titles, you know, in our salary survey. It's an interesting1 because US titles are slightly different to UK titles, are different to European titles, but we put them into various buckets, into categories, if you like. So we go everything from treasury analyst, dealer to global treasurer. And, you know, people have said to me, oh, well, well, what about this level? Where am I? Where do you see this? I said, look, come and talk to me. Individual advice. But the general rule of thumb is, and again, we talked about this, that I had previously treasurers, if you like, in say, the UK market, that might be treasurers of housing associations. Now, at the end of the day, their title was group treasurer. They are a treasurer, but they run the treasury for a housing association. So they cover one currency, they're very cash centric, no fx, nothing else. And they then have the same title as a global treasurer, you know, that ran the treasury or three different regional treasury centers globally, 95 countries. So, yeah, they're pretty different jobs and they've got different rewards, you know, so one is, you know, well into the six figures, one's near, you know, probably just into the six figures. So it's quite different. And that's where you and I talked about that. And as you say, there are different titles in the us, aren't there? So that's one of the things.

Yeah, there are different titles. Typically what you'll see over here is just your analyst, your manager, your senior manager, your director, your AT or your assistant treasurer and then your treasurer. So maybe not as advanced as some of the titles or segregated some of the titles that you'll see in other markets. But that's typically what we see over here, where, I mean, salary and compensation is always the trickiest part of this because it's. So it's subjective, right? It's just. It's based on your location, it's based on the size of the company that you're working for it's based on the responsibility. If you're straight cash and you don't have any FX or you don't have any capital markets responsibilities, you can't compare apples to apples that way. Right. So it's, you have just a number of different factors. That's where it's usually, if you have the question about it, it's usually good to take a look at how really we want to or I'm sorry, it's really just good to ask someone like a you or a me for that specialized advice. Hey, where should I be? Where should I be benchmarked?

Yeah. And that's it. And that's what we're here for as well. So that we've done it for 20 plus years. So that's one of the things.

Yeah, yeah. And Mike, I gotta ask you, you're putting a lot of focus on the us Obviously I'm back over here and holding down this side of it. When are you heading back? I heard you have some travel plans.

Coming back this way next week. Well, a week in a bit. So. It came from one of the worst cups of coffee I've ever had. We didn't put that on everyone. We can talk about this from Chris, my good friend at Prior Cashman. I'm sitting, having a coffee with him last September. I've done the treasury career corner, live events where I talk to people and you've heard it on the podcast, if you're a regular listener. Did in London, done it across Luxembourg, done across the world, did a little bit over at the afp. And I was just sitting there looking out of his offices in Times Square. I said I should do it here and I just meant do it here in America. It's great, it's great to meet treasury professionals anyway. Yeah, great, you can do it here. I was like, what do you mean? Come with me. Took me down the corridor to hit amazing conference room. And that was September. And at the beginning of March, over two nights, we're going to have over 120 treasury professionals in total talking for two nights in a row about Treasury. We've got Dana Laid hold from nasdaq, we've got Chris Cocan from Endeavor Brands, wwe, UFC and everything else. We've also got Orac previous podcast guest from Louis Von. We got Brian Harrison, who one day will be on the podcast. Get him on there. Got Luke from gxo, great guys there. The night before we're talking to, you know, some of those guys. We're helping people in the room talk about developing Their treasury careers, some of the, their career journeys. Two amazing nights. You know, I sometimes think, wow, what am I doing too? It's a, it's double the work. But the fact is it's going to be 100 treasury professionals over two nights in times Square. And then I do that and then I'm back and then after Kariba live in Vegas, back via texpo. So if you're in either of those, is in Vegas, see texpo, then fly back that week, come straight back to our London event. Last year we had 100 and well, it was crazy. The year before we'd had 100 people, 80 people in the room and oh wow, it's amazing. No, it's not. The following year we had 130 show up on a wet. When wet Thursday night in November. The room was stoked. And we're gonna do that again this year. It's gonna be amazing. Followed by. So back for that, we've got Luxembourg, Greece, back to New York a bit more. Yeah. Then. Then we got Nashville, afp. And then we've got London. Oh yeah. And we've got Frankfurt. Don't forget Frankfurt. We can't. How can we do that as well? And we've got a couple more. It's just insane.

It is insane. You're gonna earn your air miles and good luck figuring out what time zone you're in at a given time.

Yeah.

What was the, what was the. I just have to know. You had 81 year, you had 120 plus the next year. What was the main difference there? Like what, what was there some sort of misunderstood expectation coming into the event the first year where maybe you didn't have the same attendance, where all of a sudden, hey, the, the secret's out. Now all of a sudden you have people banging down the door to get in the event.

I think people realize it's about networking and people want to be back in the room with other treasury professionals. And there's a couple of rules we have. We don't with. If anyone's listening from a bank, I'm really sorry. If anyone's listening from consultancy, I'm really sorry. We love you guys. We love to see you at other people's conferences, but it's a very non sales event and even though we've got the brand up here, treasury recruitment company, we don't make it salesy. We don't talk about recruitment per se. We're talking about people issues. Again, you and I have talked, barely, you know. Yes. If you want to recruit, call us. If you Want a new job, Send us your resume. But we don't do it, do we? We do it, like, sort of. Sometimes I think we should be a bit more overt. We should tell people. But certainly at the events, that's never the case. What we want to do is help treasury professionals with their treasury careers. And there was a real need. Everyone was coming up and saying, oh, there's no one else doing this. The associations aren't doing this. We love doing this with you. And, you know, just going back to those events. I missed out. I missed out. Chicago, Windy City. Sorry. Love you guys in Chicago. Yeah, over there, I think. Yeah, there you go. You know, one of the things is. Yeah, so we do text bow, London, Windy City Summit, and each of those. I've got Kerry, I've got Raquel live on stage doing treasury career corner. Lives with those ladies about their treasure cruise in Chicago. I've got Fred Shackney's previous podcast, Tamara Sarah Eisner in Texas, talking about their treasury careers to show people in the audience what steps they took so people can copy them, they can emulate them. These are amazing global treasurers. Be like them. This is what you need to do. So that's the exciting thing for me that we. And that's why I think more and more people showed up this year for the London event. I want to go to 180. I want to get 180 treasury professionals in a room. Okay, We've got an amazing panel. We've already got Dan Ferguson, we've already got lovely Diane Wilson from ti. They're both gonna be on stage. And hopefully I've got an amazing other guest to be announced. He's just trying to work out a schedule. That'd be amazing. And, yeah, just someone said to me the other day, well, you're really busy. I went, yeah, because it's a business. So this is what we do. But I. I get stoked every time you guys are listening to this. You're seeing this. I'm talking to treasurers. That gets my juices flowing. I love it. I talk to Treasury. Oh, my God. It's like spending time talking Treasury. I've done it for 25 years and that's what's helped us get to here. And I bloody love it. You know, and that's why you're on board as well, because, you know, you and I just get a buzz. We need more jobs on. So if you are looking to recruit treasury people, call us at whatever level. Yes, we do retain search. Yes, we also do contingent. Yes, we can give you advice. That's why we're here. So they go a bit more salesy. I think we need to do more of that. Yeah. I mean, and again, I'm looking forward to hopefully getting you across. We can do this. That we've put forward for the session in Nashville at afp. We've got a few other ones. And, you know, I'm hoping Joe will come and join me on the panel there as well. I mean, anything else you. You're thinking about?

No, not at the moment. Again, it's. It's chasing jobs and. And just getting to know again, rekindling a lot of old relationships and. And just seeing where we go from here. But it. It's been a fun ride. It's been a fun month, and I look forward to everything that's coming up.

Amazing. Thank you, Joe. Well, I'll do the closing bits on the podcast in a second. Yeah. Look forward to seeing all of you guys in New York or Texas or wherever it might be this year. So thank you.

Thanks, Mike.