Networking Tips for Treasury Professionals

So, hello, everyone, it's Mike Richards from the treasury recruitment company here. I'm here today to talk to you a little bit more about your networking and if you're any good at it. Great. Hopefully you'll get some good tips from today. If you're not so good at it, you definitely need to be watching this. Short session, quick fire. So only about five, 10 minutes. What I want to talk about is give you some tips. Now, what gives me the right to talk to you guys here about it? Well, I've been doing it for a couple of years now, as you can see above me. Been doing treasury recruitment for the past 20 years. I talk to treasury professionals day in, day out. If they are looking for a new role, you can call me and we'll give you some advice about your CV, resume, LinkedIn, interviews, whatever. If you're looking to recruit someone, you can call us, we'll give you advice about what the market's doing, wherever that might be. That might be the us, across Europe, Asia Pacific. We're here, we do it globally. Do I just here for a sales pitch? No, let's move on. Podcast. Do a weekly podcast. 160 episodes. Crazy Man. It says 50,000 downloads in the slide up above, which is a bit weird, but. No, it's not. Sorry. It's 58,000 now. It's mental. Very popular. I interview a Treasury professional each and every week about how they started their career, where they are now and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. It sounds like I've said that a few times before. Yeah. 160 episodes. It's brilliant. You guys are amazing. So really good. But that's not the point of today's session. Some of you treasury professionals are very good at networking. You work at it, you think it's a good investment. Now, the ones that don't come to me a lot of times, oh, I should have started networking a little bit longer ago and, you know, maybe they're looking for a new role or something's happening to them. A change of company. Now, it's a bit like a website in some ways. One of my friends said. He said a good website is never finished. Well, the same with your network. You've got to keep working at it. It's an active thing. If you just sit back and let. No one's going to take charge of it. You need to work hard at this. That's why I'm here today to tell you that. So what's the first thing? Obviously, it could be why bother? That's right. Could be getting a new job. That's where you need to look at up there. Yeah. So if you've got a strong professional network, opportunities will come knocking for you. I've talked a number of times about Chris Chap. I know in the us, very, very good. He was a treasurer, he's now become a cfo. He wasn't looking for a job, but they saw his LinkedIn profile, so he was a great guy. He got approached about a couple of opportunities. They said, well, I'm not looking. He said, no, but we like what you've done. We've seen your profile. You are a great networker. You know some great people in our space. Would you come and consider working with us? And he did, and he got the job and he's a great guy. I'll send you that. I'll put the links to that. Maybe later on. Why else? So what about the flip side? What if someone is looking to come and join your team? If you're looking to attract a new member of staff, you need to have that strong network out there. So it might be, you know, if you want to attract or even recruit yourself, you don't have to use us, we don't mind if you do. But if you've got a strong professional network and you're looking to replace your treasury manager, you might be able to just reach out to members of your network and just say, look, who do you know is looking? Also just get them to have a look at my LinkedIn profile, see what they want to do. You know, that's a really good way of actually them buying into your company as well. Done this at a couple of conferences before, and one of the guys said, do you know what? This new member of staff, one of the reasons he wanted to join us was he looked at the profiles of three members of the team, including himself, the treasurer, and had seen the. The progression they've made, made over the three, four years they've been there, and that's what he wanted to emulate. So that definitely works. A few of the other reasons now, it could be you just want to expand your network. Might be your own personal development, learning and some of the. Some of the ways to grow yourself, those are key things as well. Having a strong professional network is key. If you're a Treasury professional. If you're looking at a new treasury management system, for instance, why wouldn't you? You know, it's like, so you go to your network of, say, five, 10 people, you know, we've never Used that system. It's not going to help you, is it? Maybe you go to a network of 100 people, now you're getting some results, go out to a thousand. Incredible. Recently, I had a situation where I had to get some information from one of my clients in the us. It was late at night. What did I do? Hang on. I reached out to my professional network, spoke to one of my friends in LA and recruitment, I was just talking to him, said, oh, can you help me? I mean, no problem at all, Mike. The information was there. I was like, whoa, okay, great. It's a really good thing and it helps you do your job. There's no way I could have done that if I hadn't worked hard at having a wider professional network. Let's go a few more internal opportunities. Now, this is a key one that people say, well, my professional network, I'm just going outside. External. No, what about internal? Having strong internal networks are key to your treasury and career success, if you like. By having that, you're going to make a really decent name for yourself. I've had it before where treasurers have been voted into their positions because they were going to do an external search. So. Well, actually, the deputy treasurer, what do you think? Oh, he's amazing. He's helped me with every problem I've ever had. We want him to get the job. And that's not just then, internal promotion for the sake of it. It's actually because that is the best person for the role and that is your strong professional network. That's the key thing. Okay, move on. So helping you in your current role, as I said about treasury management systems and things like that, that could help you. What other ways could it help you in your current world? Well, just have a quick think. You know, you. You've got this network, you're wanting to attract someone maybe to come and join you. You know, you might want to, you know, recruit people from other members of the finance team to come and, you know, they might be interested in treasury, they might not. But if you had a strong network, they would hear about you and they would want to come knocking on your door and networking internally. Now you're trying to develop yourself. What about if you need some advice? Had a very good podcast many years ago with Karen. She was at Avnet before, she's brilliant lady and she said one of the key things from her professional network was she had a mentor. And one of the things she said it was when she was talking to her mentor, this came through her network. It was, it was A safe space, she could run ideas past them. I said, oh, how did you get them? I was an ex boss and actually, I don't know if it was, but it was actually referred to her. So she actually knew or got introduced to that person. Fantastic news. Other things, your softer skills as a good way for you to get to know different people. Now you go out to, say a conference or maybe a meeting with your peers and everything else. And we are getting back to real meetings, thank goodness. And you go to meet those people. What is key about that? So you meet them and they give you their card and you think, oh, I'll just do that, I'll do that. I've got lots of other things to do when you get back to the office. Well, that's interesting. You go back to them a month later and with the greatest respect, they're not going to know who you are. So follow up, you know, whether it's just a quick email thanks to be meeting you or connecting with them on say, LinkedIn or whatever, would be great to meet up with you for a coffee in the future. Follow up, that is key. That's where the power is. If you just sit and do nothing, it's just going to go to waste. So there's no need to do it. What else can you do? Well, let's give you a different way. It's not just about making money now. I'm all for making money. I don't mind recruitment, you know, that's what we have to do. We've got bills to pay, things. But back last summer, height of pandemic, or depth of pandemic probably is the best way. We put on a thing called our Bounce Back program. I decided that there are a number of people sitting at home, really challenged that wanted help, they needed our support. So we talked to them about their career goals. We then went through, looked at, did some reviewing of their CVs, resumes and stuff like that. We wanted to help them for that and we approved them. Nice critique and stuff like that. And then we did LinkedIn advice, then we did interview advice and then we did how you'd work with your recruiters and how you work, maybe network and develop a professional network. Funny that. And weird thing was people were saying, you should charge us for this. It's amazing advice and we really enjoyed it. But the key thing I found about it said, no, guys, we're not doing it for that. What we want to do is we know it'll come back if we give it or pay it forward as you can see that's what's going to happen. So it and I'm not just saying this in altruistic terms. Oh, you've got to be nice and fluffy about it. What you need to do is be out there to help. If you give it out with your professional networking and you truly commit to that, lean into it, pay it forward. Just think today, once you've watched today's session, if you would just think, who could you help in your network? When someone calls you next time and you haven't really got time, just say, do you know what might have time now? Can we talk in an hour, you know, and develop that relationship? Or maybe you can meet for a coffee, virtual or real? You know, that's the key thing as well. And then that's going to help.