The ‘Accidental’ Keynote Speaker - Mike Richards speaking at the ATEB Belgian Treasurers Conference

Good morning, everyone. As you see on the screen, I'm a Treasury recruiter. Don't throw anything at me, please. Now, for those of you that were here at last night's session with another English guy. That's right, two English guys in 24 hours. You're thinking, what a treat. Now we're just here before Brexit really comes into effect and you won't let me back in. So rather than shameless self promotion, as Karen said not to, this is just a bit of framing to explain what I do. So I've been a Treasury recruitment for the past 25 years. Originally started with a very little known company called Robert Walters. Started their treasury division. After a number of years there, I joined Hydrogen Struggles doing global search work. And then in 2002 I thought, I love you, treasure guys too much. So I decided to start my own company, Mr. Recruitment. Bit of self love, Mr. Recruitment, we didn't do that one. So we got offices in the uk, in the us, work across and we truly work globally. So recruited for 24 years, 25 now, getting older, all levels. So treasury assistant. So when you want advice about that level through to senior stuff, we can recruit from Chicago to London via Brussels and lovely Johnson Control stroke Adient now recently to Sydney. Some of the clients you see again, because people say, well, who do you work for? Little companies that large, corporates, we don't do so much on the banking side. So when you're thinking of sending me your, your CVs, BMP guys, I'm sorry, just keep them here. They don't want me there. Right, so that's enough about me. I want to talk about you and social media and the impact it has on you guys in the current world. So you might be a candidate, someone searching for a role, looking, wanting to know how to present yourselves, how to frame yourself in this new world. Might simply be a Treasury professional here, wanting to understand a bit more about it. Say, Mike, I haven't had a new job in 10 years, hopefully I won't need a new one. But you might still want to understand it or a client. You're looking at the new world. You're dealing with the millennials, as they call them, from 2000 onwards, looking for new opportunities and want to understand how they view the world. Yeah, deliberately it looks like that. It's a horrible can of worms and it's a very public can of worms. So when you do get involved in it, be careful. It's public, it's social, it's in the actual name. So Rocketing through there. You've got Facebook obviously less applicable in the business sense, but it's still public. LinkedIn. We'll go on about that. And a bit more detail about LinkedIn. That's a key one. And you might think Twitter really is that applicable to me. We'll see in a minute. See what people are thinking now remember, don't confuse the two. I don't want to see your holiday snaps. We'll come back to that later on LinkedIn. Every opinion counts. Let's sink in for just a few seconds. This is from Erin Burry. She is one of marketing magazine's most top 30 under marketeers. And it's like she's talking about on a massive billboard. I did get there was an image but wasn't quite sure about using it. And actually what it did, it said some nasty things on a massive billboard that someone had put on Twitter. And we've seen a lot of the issues that are coming through at the moment. Now she's pretty good as a marketing executive, but now I want to show you a quick video, just a few minutes for someone who's got about 10 years in depth social media experience. Want you all to look at this. I think you'll learn a thing or two. Over to the man in the box. So Rebecca, our social media expert, we could you please tell me the differences between Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Twitter is all the gossip about famous people. Facebook is about your personal life and you can post personal pictures and other people's pictures or keep going. And LinkedIn is about your business life and network. Cool, thank you very much. Basically that was my 10 year old daughter. What she does, she talks about, she explains that actually Twitter is about celebrities and it's about chitter chatter and everything else. So it's about Facebook, that's your holiday photos and we talk about LinkedIn and business social networking. Now actually that came from a conversation one day. I just asked her, I said, what's social media to you, Becca? She said, she said that was literally. I recorded it when we actually did this. I did this over in Chicago. We played the video, everyone laughed. But actually I said, hang on, she's 10. She's 10 and she understands. Some of the guys didn't even have LinkedIn profiles. I was like, she understands more about that than you guys do. Okay, LinkedIn, some do's and don'ts. No, it's not. If you just need a new job, it's a professional networking tool. Ask Rebecca now what I mean by that as well. Some of you are sitting there going, well, I don't really need LinkedIn, I'm an employer. Well, actually, if someone's wanting to join you as a company, they're going to look at your LinkedIn profile as a company, but also the LinkedIn profiles of the employees and is that someone I want to work with? So first part of LinkedIn is obviously your name and then your job title. I said maybe explain a bit more about what you do. Made this slight amendment last night. Just wanted to show Global Treasury Recruiter and then the feature and then the benefit. What I actually do now, there's some guys out there going, well, I'm a group treasurer, I look after the money, I steward it, I do everything else. What else have you done with it? Have you implemented a new treasury management system? Have you saved your company 10 million over the past three years? Are you an innovator? Maybe you've been received an award from atep. Why not put it up there? Because then if someone wants to join your company or if you're looking to be headhunted, maybe at a later stage, then that's what's going to come up. Should you have a LinkedIn photo? Grab some water. Yes, you should. Does anyone here. I won't name names. Not have a LinkedIn photo. Just as the grey profile. Oh, Patrick. I don't want to pick on anyone, but Patrick will pick on Patrick 14 times. I think it's risen slightly at the moment. You might say, what? Mike, I'm not looking for a job, I don't need one. He's right. But actually if you want to expand your network and you've got say 10 connections and you're all looking at, looking at banking relationships and obviously you're going to choose BMP. I know, but if you were looking at RFPs, if you were looking at a new treasury management system and went out to your 10 connections and said, guys, who uses this system, they all come back. No, we don't. That's it, you're done. Actually, why not have a bigger professional network? The fact you're in this room and you've come to this conference also shows you're very good at networking. You're wanting to expand, you're wanting to learn. So exactly why. Ah, here we go. Photos. Now, what you're about to see is Courier Public Health Warning. They are the worst LinkedIn photos. Not only seen, but I've recreated these. It's not self love. These aren't my profile photo. These are all photos that we gathered in a top ten Hideous Rogues Gallery. We'll talk about the one that got away at the end. They're remakes of people that I've seen as I've gone through LinkedIn. Flowers. Really? You're not a bunch of flowers. It's very pretty and all that, but get rid of it. Yeah, there was a guy and I can send you the links afterwards. Yeah, looked mean. Don't know what was going on. Looked like he just got out of jail. Quite funny logo, bit of self love, you know, you want to promote your boss and everything else. No, it's about you, not about them. Awesome. Just dislocated my shoulder. About to go off to Chicago. Just thought, oh, God, how can we do that? I hate that shirt. That shirt's going to the bin. There's a better one coming along, but no selfies. How many times? And how many of this, really? It's a professional networking site. Squash stretch head. How many of you uploaded your photo, then gone and looked at it on your phone? Roughly. Actually, I'll tell you, actually, I think it's approaching 65% of the social media and people accessing LinkedIn do so from a mobile device. So you put up your photo quickly, check on your phone, will you? Because so many of these. Or the really Constantine, really narrow one. Yeah. Look in my eyes. You will choose bnp. You will choose us. And again, these are remakes. It's not me. Yeah, cute kid, family man. Employ me. No, please. It's the impression again. It's wrong. I told you the shirt was coming up. That is available for private hire. The shirt. This is on Facebook. This is not LinkedIn. Yeah, you can see me chugging another pint later under the bar. Pretty high. Again, remakes. This is something we've seen. The next one coming up is actually. And I'll send you the links later. Creepy arty pose. And that is actually. We undid the button. We did this. And this guy's like, what? Excuse me. So the one just before I move on, there is one that is missing. Unfortunately, we can't put it up on the screen because some of you will actually know the guy. And it was our number one by a mile. There was a guy, he's obviously at a Christmas party or something like that. We remade it. A little unicorn children's toy. Give him a kiss and he's got it on his shoulder. Should be on Facebook. And actually, I wanted to put that as our number one. Unfortunately, he's the head of treasury for a French company who we might be doing some Business with. So I will name a shame in the bar, but I won't do it on the stage. Personal statements. Okay, so you go from your title, you've got your photo, you then want a personal statement. As you can see, I hate personal statements. They are rubbish. Chuck them in the bin where they should be. If you just have something that says I'm a flexible, motivated individual, why bother? It's not going to say you're an inflexible old fart, is it? I don't like change, I don't really get on with my colleagues, I'm not inspirational and I'm quite happy just to do the cash management and go home at the end of the day. What you do want? Bit of shameless self promotion. Even the monkey got it. This was a photo with a monkey managed to get hold of it. It's so what time Shameless self promotion. What I mean by that is when you're going through your personal statement, it's I implemented a cash management system. Which one? How much money did you save? Treasury management system. How much money? So what? Keep asking yourself so what? And that's. This is one of the key things is when I do this with people's CVs and resumes and they just literally upload it and I'm sitting there and they've got these personal statements which we avoid but then we move on to asking them about them and I say, okay, so you did this and you manage four team guys. Yes, I do. What do they think of you? How have you promoted them? Yesterday we did about effective team management and talking about, you know, how to inspire those guys. Well, how are you an inspiration to your team? How have you coached them and mentored them? Tell us about it. Because that's then if someone wants to come and join you or someone's thinking about your organization, they're going to say actually that's somewhere I want to be. References and testimonials. Now let me just do that. Lovely. So people ask me, should I bother to have them? Well, the first rule of thumb is don't ask the guy sitting next to you. Well you could and if he doesn't say anything about it then you could get worried. But don't ask your peers, ask your boss or past boss maybe or ask someone that's perhaps worked for you top and down. Now people say, well I'm not sure they work, why would I bother? I'd like a quick show of hands. Very little known website might have bought the odd thing or two. Anyone here in the room that has used Amazon, keep, put your hands up, please. Anyone bought anything off Amazon, keep them up, please. Fantastic. Keep them up, keep them up. Don't put them down, Keep them up. Karen, thank you. Can you then keep your hand up if you've ever looked at the reviews on Amazon? Okay, fantastic. So you all looked at the reviews, seen the five stars? Yeah, I like this product. Keep your hand up if you've met that person that gave the review. What? So nobody has actually met the person giving the review but you actually trusted what your peers said, Someone that was like minded. I think it's called social media compliance which means that you want to believe what other people recommend. 92% of consumers trust peer recommendation. Just grabbed these last night because it used to be about 80 odd. Now they're saying 92. So actually when you read through those recommendations and testimonials, people actually do believe what you've written up there. So make them good ones, only put the good ones up. Okay. Request connections. I'm sure after this conference you're going to go home, you're going to find number of people. I'd love to connect to you, I'd love to do this. I, I get lots of connection requests, probably about three or four a day. I don't connect to everyone, I only add when you feel what I feel I can help them. So in my case, if it's an area we don't cover, if it's a country we don't have any, you know, presence in or we would struggle to place people, I politely decline or if I can't help that person, I'll send an email and try and tell them someone who I think who could similarly to yourselves, don't worry if you do reject it, they don't get a rejection note saying oh my God, he said no. They do actually say it's a good thing to do and expand your connections. So what's happening in the treasury recruitment market? Obviously this was little known site which I'm going to on Saturday to look forward to. Market itself is very busy post Brexit now it seems that everyone's a bit more calm and they least know we don't know the plans yet but things are happening the markets itself actually I was talking to someone last night over dinner who's in the audience and we were talking actually I don't feel that it's, you know, that was the key issue as to why I think we've come through a couple of recessions in the past 10, 15 years. I think Everything's now a bit more back to normal. But one of the other things that people are saying is, what's the difference with treasury now versus when I started 20 years ago and perhaps, if I give an idea, the difference in the UK market and the international market, I felt that the. Perhaps the uk, when they. When we started doing a lot of treasury, they were very much. It was a very specialist field and it sort of went separately to business. I think it's coming back now and it's working more hand in hand. But in Europe and a lot of the European clients, I find they've perhaps come from the business and then happen to move into treasury rather than treasury as a specialism. But you'll have a chance to ask questions in a minute. How competitive is my salary? So everyone over 100k, put your. No, sorry. We'll do that in the bar later because you'll be buying the drinks. We'll talk about these separately, basically. But these are a couple of the topics you might want to ask. How do you attract the best candidates and improve your chances of finding the right role? Have a nice LinkedIn profile. Don't wear that shirt. A few others. Should I stay or should I go? Where do I get more advice? Here. Go here. It's great. But joking aside, if you need advice, you can ask me. I'm here for the today and tomorrow and again we chat over a coffee. First of all, beer later, Q and A questions. That's. It's done. Silence. Oh, God. What do you mean? Sorry. Y. When you walked into the bar yesterday, your first impression of them was of them in their suit and how they were presented to you when you shook their hand. It's your virtual handshake. You know, you weren't going to turn around as they walked in. You like, so how are you, Patrick? Yeah. Don't see my face. It's over here. Yeah, it's. Yet your virtual handshake, it's about your greeting, it's about what they can expect from you. And I think that's one of the key things. It also, you know, both on a client and a candidate perspective, it gives an impression of you and why. Why would you want to connect with that person? Why might they be helpful to you, your company or your career or whatever else? You're gonna get a photo now. We'll do one in a minute. Yeah. Nice selfie. Yeah, great. Other questions, please. That's it. I've done. Oh, God. Yeah. Here we go. Yes. So the question was just for those at the back Have I seen a change in approach? Have I seen a change in the market? So actually it's the opposite way around. I have seen a change in the market. Have I seen a change in the approach? No. Should there be a change in approach? Yes. We talked yesterday. I write a lot of articles. Some of you might have read some of them. Some of them are a bit tongue in cheek. Don't send me your CV if it says Dear Sir, Madam, you know, things like that. What I have seen, so change in approach is everyone seems to be trying to do the same thing. People put up a LinkedIn advert and they expect people to rush through the door. You put it up there, oh, aren't we brilliant? But actually when you put it up, it's not brilliant, it's just a listing of responsibilities. There's no selling, there's no explaining to someone why it would be good for their career to come and join you. Also, we're moving into the generations as things move on. Said this, so I was at the Women treasury bunch the other day, we were talking about how people need to change because I've got a 16 year old daughter, it's quite scary but she's still 16 and scary. But the key thing about her, she's got an idea of what she's going to do in her career and her job. But she has this confidence which I certainly never had. When I first got into the jobs market I was grateful for a job. Whereas she's then talking about, when I talked to her about the jobs market she said, well, what are they going to do for me? They're going to give you a job and pay you and what are they going to do for me? Dad? I'm like, ah, okay, this is a bit weird when people are applying for roles with you again. We talked with one of our clients yesterday and she does a bill of recruitment and she was talking about some of the junior people she recruits in particular she was having to really get into and sell the company and it's a new thing. So actually that's one of the things I think you should talk about is actually look at, you know, how you're presenting yourself. So I think that's the change in approach that needs to happen and it's at all levels because people, you know, will vote with their feet and if they, if they don't find the right role then they're not going to apply and you'll still be sitting there within a vacant desk and you're having to cover their desk again. We talked about that yesterday. Any more questions before we wrap up? All done. Great. Thank you very much, everyone. So, Rebecca, our social media expert, could you please tell me the differences between Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn? Twitter is all the gossip about famous people. Facebook is about your personal life and you can post personal pictures and other people pictures or keep going. And LinkedIn is about your business life and networking. Cool. Thank you very much. All I can think about that social media expert is tidy a room. Thank you very much, Sam.