The Challenges of Recruiting a Good Treasury Team with Susana Aristizabal

Hello, it's Mike Richards here from the treasury recruitment company. I hope you're enjoying the Treasury Career Corner. If you are great news, perhaps you give us a rating on itunes or wherever you consume your podcast content. This means that even more treasury professionals can benefit from finding out, or by finding out about how treasurers have achieved their career goals. The link to rate our show will list at the bottom of our show notes. And please remember as well, the show itself is as much about you as it is about us. There are specific questions you want us to ask or there's feedback you want to give. Please drop me an email. My direct email is mikeresuryrecruitment.com inventibly enough, but anyway, that's enough from me. Let's get on with the show. So welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. I talked to them about how they got started in treasury, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show I'm delighted to be joined by Susannah Aristobal, the assistant treasurer at Bombardier Transportation. Bombardier, the world's leading manufacturer of both planes and trains. With 60 production and engineering sites in 27 countries, 69,500 employees. They are truly a global leader in transportation. Headquartered in Montreal in Canada, the shares are on the Toronto Stock Exchange and in 2017 posted revenues of over $16 billion. Susanna is originally from Colombia. She holds a Graduate diploma in International Business, also an mba, and she's also a ctp, which we'll go into. While I do a lot of the shows, I outline people's backgrounds and everything else what I'd rather do. Susanna and I know each other rather well. I'd rather just kick off from those early education days and get Susanna to tell her story rather than me. Keep on wittering on. Susanna, take us back to your beginning of your journey and how you first ever started maybe from education and then in Treasury.

Thank you, Mike. Yes, actually my interest in treasury dates back from my early days at university. I really felt I enjoyed financial mathematics the most and I chose to go into a major in Corporate finance. Later on in my studies at the Master's degree, I also felt this is the field what I really enjoy. And then from then on I graduated from the MBA and I started as a part time lecturer at McGill University, teaching Treasury management. And it was just, I think it was a chance of life that I was put into that actually that program itself because I had an option to Even going deeper into the topics of treasury and convince myself that this is what I wanted to do professionally.

Did you know about treasury before that or how did you find out about it?

I was a tutor in many fields related to finance. So I tutor financial accounting, cost accounting, economics, microeconomics and corporate finance was by far my favorite and through the university because they knew me before they invited me to be a lecturer. And it so happened that the teacher that was giving treasury management had to step out for a term. And so I was there. It just really landed on my desk. But what happened after was that as I enjoyed so much the topic and I really devoured books and the classes were so amazing with the students. Then soon after I found my job with Bombardi, which was then a full time job exactly in the Treasury Department.

And that was back in what, 2005, is that right?

Yeah, 2005. I started as an analyst in the front office. So truly the trading desk, very much entry level, despite my degrees. Let's say at that time an MBA you could have said or you could have expected. I say it from my colleagues of the day where going into other levels but for me was so critical to go from the very beginning of treasury and just learn from it.

And then also you made a move just to backtrack for a moment. You made a move from Colombia to Montreal and things like that. How was that shift? How did you find the difference? Maybe in the way that the treasury team operated or the corporate operated from some of your previous experience in Colombia.

I was working as a consultant and this role, in fact I was working with the six largest banks in Colombia in some of the the most innovative ideas of the time. For example, one of the projects I worked on was introducing electronic cash. Okay, today's day that sounds like. But of course, but back then this was a major deal. The value carrying cards. This was innovative and I just felt I really enjoyed it. Now as a consultant, it's pretty standard that after certain years of doing your consultancy, you need an MBA to progress in your career. So that was my moment. I had to do an MBA and ideally come back to Colombia. And then in this same consultancy firm grew my into a partner or a manager or etc. But once I was in Montreal and I chose to study there because of family ties and I speak French and I really enjoyed the Quebecois culture. I found myself in a very good field. I enjoyed particularly I had very good professors that I felt this is great and I wanted to do more. So I did actually two programs of international business at McGill University. Sorry, two programs. One was international business and the other one was E Commerce. We're talking year 2000 where e commerce was a boom, right? And I thought, I need to learn all about it. So I did E Commerce. And following that, I started my MBA with Montreal, which was a program, it was bilingual, it was English and French, and as you say, is very well known in Canada for its emphasis in finance. So some of the best professionals in finance careers, Treasuries, corporates, bankers, have come from, I should say. So it just felt right. It was the path was. Was the one I wanted to follow and led me to where I am today.

Yeah, into Bombardier and things. And as you say, you started from the early days as an analyst within Bombardier. Talk us through that progression because you've been with Bombardier since 2005, so 14 years now. Talk us through how it grew and how it's changed, because obviously in one company. We spoke to Mark recently from Johnson Controls and he'd been 16 years there. What kept you and what kept your interest as you move through the company?

That's a good question, Mike. I can say I've been almost 14 years with this company, but I never had a day that looked like another. It's just been evolving, challenging, very, very motivational in terms of growth, personal growth, and professional implication in the task that I do. So let me tell you about my role. So then you get a feeling of it. So I started in the front office. As I said, I was a trader. I was doing the daily position, the FX trades, and I got very interested on how we used to work. I remember it was so manual. We had a very rudimentary tms, which you can barely get the deals into it. No connectivity to anything. It was basically Excel. And we spent a lot of our time making Excel reports and printing them out. And I just felt like there must be something more than this. And I basically raised my hand to be involved in selection implementation of the new tms. I'm talking back then it was actually globes for something that is no longer in use by corporations of our size. But I got involved into that project and by being in the implementation, I learned not just about front office, I learned everything about accounting. Link, the reconciliation, what back office does, how to process interest, derivatives, liquidity. So many things that really opened up my mind to what I wanted to do next in my career. At that time, I wanted to do. I wanted to increase my knowledge of treasury and that's when I got a very good advice from one of the seniors in the organization to do the ctp. So I immediately went back and looked at it and said, oh, this is great. A lot of studying I have to say, very heavy. I did it over a summer so the summer was a bit sad. All my friends were going out to barbecues and whatnot and I was stuck with my very heavy book. But I really felt that gave me a boost and it really helped me know that there is actually more to treasury than I was just doing in my initial role.

And just for those of you that the listeners, some of you may know, but the CTP obviously certified treasury professional exams run by the Association Finance Professionals in the US and it's usually sometimes a one year program but you were doing it quite quickly or talk us through.

No, it's a, it's a one year program if you want to do it the normal time frame. But it's an exam in July. But when I decided I wanted to do it it was January and I said I can do this. So it was more like, yes, I could have delayed it but I was really into it. As I said I was doing it for the exam itself for getting the certificate. But for me was more like I really need to learn so much more. And I enjoyed it.

Amazing.

So what happened afterwards is that Bombardier had said to had a Treasury center in Zurich and the other one in Montreal where I was, I was in the corporate office. But they decided to make some changes and to really boost the Zurich office more, more scope to really had all of the transportation treasury needs globally. So it used to be the European treasury center but now it became the global treasury center for the transportation group. And that was very appealing to me. So again I raised my hand and said I'm available, I'm interested, how can I help? Or what's, what can be done? Yeah.

And you, and you made a move there when you started. How big was the team or what was the transition? You know, you walked into the office. How many people did it grow from and to.

Well, it's different times. It was, I mean the Office had about 30 people but it included also structure, finance and insurance. Now actually that same office only has about 18. So we've actually done a lot of, you know, you can call it downsizing or streamlining or outsourcing in the last 10 years I would say. But back in the day when I arrived in Zurich, things were great. Things was great. We had a great treasurer leading the team. Mark Kirkland had come over from Philips and had great ideas of What a Treasury should look like a state of the art Treasury. And that was very inspiring for me. Those were probably the best years. My career was really having the feeling that not only I want to change things but I'm also supported to change them. And I was actually mandated to make things better in everything that we were doing. I came on a two year delegation and a stayed, I stayed in Zurich. As I said, I cannot remember how fast the time was just flying and project after project and initiative after initiative, new people joined, new changes. All of this just kept it very dynamic, very interesting.

What was Mark's ethos around Treasury? I know this but again for the listeners, what's Mark like? And he came in and all right, let's turn the handle on Treasury. But it's not like that. That's not Mark's way of doing things. Explain maybe, you know, you said you were doing lots of things. What were you taking treasury from and to. And what did he want to do and what did you want to do?

Mark is a visionary. So for me he inspire people to, to do best and to, to also see beyond what we're doing today. So we, yes, he arrived in a Treasury that was. It's still very manual. Okay. The treasury in Zurich had a TMS so it was a little bit more ahead of the game still. There were still a lot of processes that were manual that were not compliant in his mind. He's like we are, we have so many doors open for fraud, for risk, for just mistakes. So he really came in to strengthen the environment and streamline. He was very good at conveying this message to all the employees that it's not acceptable what we had. It was very clear that there is room for improvement. For example, I just give an example that maybe some people in the audience will relate to confirmations. They were being done by fax. So yes, there were piles of papers on the desk of clerk that had to process them by fax. So clearly that was not acceptable. The risk of settling deals that had not even been confirmed because the person could not process that many facts on a day. And right away we said well, we need something to match deals electronically, electronic trading, all of these things that today I say when I hire new people they all take it for granted that it's obvious that treasury must have an online trading tool. When Mark joined, and I joined him very soon after he started it was taking the treasury from those very basic settings to what it is today, a very different, almost automated, very streamlined reporting and also very compliant in what we.

Do and then you move through roles. You directed cash management, financial risk management, and then became the assistant treasurer, branch manager. Just talk us through briefly the progression for you.

When Mark engaged me was as director cash management. It's a role that actually I enjoyed very much because it had so many actions that translated into real things, you know, implementing a cash pooling. We had a lot of the Eastern European countries were not pooled at the time when I joined and I went from a 50% cash pool to 85% cash pool. This was amazing. And as I said today, people say, oh, how come it's not 100% cash pool? But nobody remembers that actually it was 50 and we are proud that we got to 85. Okay, we are a bit farther now, but I'm just talking about my days in the role of cash management. Then the financial risk management department was headed by a colleague of mine and he had to unfortunately take a leave of absence almost without much advance notice. And again, I raised my hand and said, hey, I can take over for him. He was only going to be gone for six months. So I said, okay, let me take the team. It's not something, it's not my expertise because it involves a lot of hedge accounting and project accounting. But again, I just wanted to learn something else and stretch my pool of competencies. So I started doing financial risk management on a term basis. It turned out that by the time the six months had passed, our colleague was not going to return to that role, but he had accepted another role within Bombardier, a good opportunity for him. So I was then staying in this role. I took a department that had of course very focused on hedge accounting and that was not my expertise. So I had to very quickly learn all there was to be about hedge accounting, to be paired with my colleagues because my team members almost didn't believe in me. Like, what does she know? She's cash management. So sometimes like proving yourself, but also just for me, it was not comfortable to not know what I was doing. And I was facing head of consolidation, the head of audit, the external auditors with very tricky questions. So I ramp up in my knowledge very quickly. And I also, with the support of Mark at the time, very focused on improving what the department was doing. And because of that blessing, I was able to really contribute to the tasks at hand. So we had huge amounts of FX to project to hedge our projects, our train project, so each train, our London Underground project, kind of a mini company, we protect that project on its own. We don't hedge the UK legal entity or The German legal entity, we hedge each project so it becomes very heavy. Volumes are quite large, but also very delicate. When a hedge is ineffective or where we have to disqualify, it impacts the project's profitability and therefore gets a lot of attention from upper management.

All about that and then got promoted yet again and carried on your career. Talk it through.

Yes. The next step was to be promoted to the assistant treasurer. At the time there was a reorg in the business and therefore it really meant taking over cash management again. That used to be my department, then staying with FX and then adding these roles. So really the objective was to have one single person overlooking at all of what treasury is and their interconnectivity to improve synergies and so on. With this move, I increased my team to seven direct reports. Fortunately for me, I had a very good experience with all of them in the previous activities I had done. So it was very easy in a way to kind of bring the team together. So we were no longer like four teams, we were one team and we were all interconnected. The cash management was supplying information to back office, back office was helping front office, front office with helping controlling and compliance. So it really went. It was a good move to make. Just meant the team was more cohesive and we worked together much better.

What do you like looking at that team? You've gone from managing a group of three to overseeing the work of 10 people plus sort of thing. What do you like as a boss?

Seeing the development of people over time, it's very rewarding. Sometimes you're given a team, let's say, and people say, oh, I didn't choose this person or I didn't or these skills are not present or this. But you accept what you have and you know you have to improve it. You or yourself? Myself as a boss, I need to improve, but so are the members of the team identifying this, talking to the person, seeing, okay, this is something, this is an area we need to improve, or simply saying, you're very good at this, you really add this. You bring so much to the team because of this skill or this know how, do it more. And so over time, seeing how this, the people grow and the team becomes better is quite rewarding.

So, Susanna, what would you say within your treasury career is Bryn, perhaps your greatest challenge or toughest challenge so far?

That's difficult to answer, Mike. Overcoming challenges is almost part of the job description for a Treasury role, but okay. In my personal situation, the toughest challenge has been staying healthy, focused and motivated. There are way Too many challenges on the day to day, resistant to change, politics, unexpected demand, changes in the team or in the management, you name it. And through it all, I had to remain focused on the goal and on the purpose of our tasks within the organization and within society. I often remind myself and my team to reflect on the purpose of our roles. We're here to make sure Bombardier has enough liquidity at all times to pay our employees, suppliers, partners, so that we can continue building the trains that transport millions and millions of people every day to their homes. When I put this image in my head, I feel encouraged to do what it takes. Really? Yes, I know it's all about the bottom line, but for me personally, the bottom line is the community, where we serve.

Then looking at treasury, you've got a passion for treasury that comes across just when we talk. And I know Susanna very well as well. But why would someone pursue a career within Treasury? What's it given you? Obviously, you've got so much great stuff and we're talking about the improvements you've seen where you are. But why would someone, you say, hey, you need to do treasury, you've coached MBA courses as well, so you're pretty biased in a good way for it. But why would someone pursue it?

Yes, I would say this decisive factor here to choose treasury would be speed. If you like fast paced, variety, challenging environments, then you have already 50%. Because if this is not for you already, from this perspective, you will have a difficult time to fit in a Treasury role. The other factor, I would say, indeed is hard skills. But in this case, I would say you need to enjoy numbers. And I really mean enjoy. It's not the idea of, oh, I'm being uncomfortable with numbers, or I've seen in some advertisements like, you need to be comfortable with large sets of figures or complex financial models. Well, I don't think being comfortable is enough. You really need to enjoy, you need to feel the passion already, because without this, you will not be able to develop this. You can learn the skills, I mean, you can learn the technical, you can go to courses and acquire these knowledge and like I said, over time, develop this. But if you don't have that in your blood, this passion, there's no one, not even your boss or not even a colleague that can actually inject it to you. So you have to have this. If you have it, then you already know that this can be a career for you.

And when you're recruiting, we've recruited for you in the past and things like that, what do you particularly look for obviously, as we know we're hosted today by the treasury recruitment company, but we try not to bang on about that too much. But what are you looking for when you recruit yourself? What stand out to people? Is it qualifications, is it attitude? Or is it a combination of both? What do you look for?

I call it personal drive. Sometimes you can sense it by reading the CV or the motivation letter, but more often it's something you feel in an interview. So when I don't see it, I often try a second interview or a follow up call because I do believe most people have it and I just looking for the one that has the strongest personal drive. And what do I mean by personal drive? It means the positive attitude towards challenges, towards change, towards teamwork and understanding that there are deadlines and compliance to be met.

How do you measure it?

It's a statement that understand and if you understand the role will be difficult and the person is looking for difficult and wants chances to make a difference, to bring up ideas, to solve problems, then the person will come across and will stand out. In my interview process, if the attitude is more like the person expects, paved road for your problem. Is everything already automated? Can I just come in and go then clearly you will not succeed in the role once you're hired. So coming back to your question, how do you put that in an interview? It's really through examples when you're going through the questions and the clearer examples that are provided by the candidate on how they've approached challenges in the past, or for example reorganizations, how they approach change of management, how did they take on regulation, what happened when Dodge Frank was implemented, how did you handle it? And the response, sometimes you see it in their face when they say, oh, it was such a burden, it was annoying. And others would say yeah, that was a great opportunity because I got to do, I got involved in the project and I had to do a lot of traveling to meet other people. So you see it in the way those examples convey the message. Yeah, yeah.

Have you ever struggled to recruit staff? Obviously, you know, location wise can sometimes be challenging when you've been in Switzerland and the things. But. But what have been the challenges for you in past years?

Yes, I had a few challenges myself. Recruiting is difficult because of course you have an expectation and you're in this balancing act of between getting the resources as soon as possible, but getting the right resource and within a budget and you have to follow the standard process that is quite lengthy sometimes and, and unfortunately it takes you a little bit away from that human side I talked about. Right. This is all you know, we know we have to go through these algorithms that do the pre selection of candidates and as a hiring manager sometimes I feel really frustrated of what the algorithm gives me. You know it's. I say it sometimes I find it hard to believe there are not that many more enthusiasts for a Treasury career in a global organization like Bombardier. We don't get that we sometimes we struggle because of this. Following that process gets us not far away. So that's what I think. We have to use other methods through my network, through you Mike, through peers. That has often saved the day for us just being in contact through LinkedIn or through the various treasury activities where you breakfast or things organized with banks and just say it out loud. I'm looking for someone with these qualifications, with this attitude and soon enough you can hear back faster than the job posting has driven.

Yeah. Effective networking and things.

Yes.

Two things I want to sort of, you know, the evolution of treasury, you've seen it change throughout your time. You talk there, you know, right back at the beginning about confirmations and people now being surprised at auto confirmations and everything else that you've seen it evolve so far to today. What do you see as the next things we see? There are various challenges in the global landscape. We're not going to go into those. It's more. But where do you see treasury changing? What challenges do you see coming along? What's the evolution if you like.

Yes, Mike, I would say I feel myself like we are in a crossroads already been a few years into this moment within treasury and there is a connection to recruitment. When we get to it, it's this feeling that treasury first of all is not an isolated department anymore. It's so connected to the business, to accounts payable or to supplier management, to procurement, to sales. And so you can no longer move or take actions in treasury with a closed mind or this is just impacting us in Treasury. It's really very open scope. That's when it comes to with internal, what the internal aspect is. But externally I would try to summarize it as all the technology trends of not just automation and all the possibilities that we see today that were not there a few years back pose as much an opportunity as a risk. As a treasurer you need to be. You feel like you need to know all about them, you need to be discerning because clearly you cannot use everything you have to choose. And then how do you get the skills to this decision making, to this election process? It's not something that is given at the university or at the master's degrees these days. That's it. Or technology, let's say, and fintech. But there's another side of it, which is. I'm surprised or not surprised. I knew this was happening. But how much time a treasurer spends these days on talks about regulation and complying to new regulation and new, new, new, new, new, permanently new regulation. So we had, in the last, in my career, I've gone through some regulations, but, you know, they would come like every two years or so on, but in the last two years alone, we've had a mass of regulation changes and you almost used to be like, you get a committee to look at the, a regulation change and you look at it for months now it's like you get an email on Monday, by Friday, you need to comply with this. And that's the pace. I'm saying we are crossroads because when it comes to staffing a team of treasury, the skill sets that I used to recruit on 10 years ago or 15 years ago are completely different to what I need today. I need more IT savvy people. I need people that have, of course, the core skills of treasury and the know how of the technical parts. You need to know what to do on net present value and you need to know how, what duration is in bonds and so on. But you also need to have all of this ability to take the regulation. So you must have had a course in law, you must have had a course in programming, you must have taken a little bit of relationship management to work with the banks and, and so on. So it's expanded, I think, in a good way, but it's challenging because we're also facing now the millennials who bring up a lot of these skills, but are also looking for different things in a career to attract talent, but also to retain talent. It's quite critical for the treasurers of today.

Yeah, find that balance and everything else and with yourself. As you look to the future, obviously things are changing. I mean, what's next for you? Where do you, you know, what are you looking for next?

Next is a new team. I'm really looking for. I'm finishing a very good chapter of my life with Bombardier this year. A lot has, has happened. I've grown a lot and I'm very proud of every moment I spent in this company. And now I'm moving on to, to find new opportunities, ideally new challenges. I'm looking for places where I can really continue with this, thrive towards process improvement, towards automation and really to be there to be that kind of treasure that is able to really bring a team together and make things happen, as I successfully did in bombarding.

Yeah. And if someone's looking back and what advice would you give to them? They just stand alone. As someone's new and looking at your.

Background, I'll try to combine it all in one word. Persevere. I think it boils down to this desire to learn new things, to enjoy what you're doing, but also to not stand still. Challenges will come. Obstacles will be there for sure. This is a role where the treasury is a role that every day in and out, you're facing challenges, you're facing difficulties. Everything from finding funding for your subsidiaries or finding counterparties to do your FX or to settle or et cetera. If you find these challenges are encouraging you and you persevere in seeing these challenges as opportunities to grow and to succeed and to bring a lot of value to the organization and the community where the organization is serving, then that's what will take you farther in your career.

Right? Well, what a great wrap up to today's show. Just want to say thank you to Susanna for her time today. We'll publish in the show notes Susanna's link and thank you once again for talking through your career. Look forward to working together in the future.

Thank you so much, Mike. I really enjoyed sharing this. Thanks a lot.

Thanks very much.