This is a YouTube video titled "The Recruitment Ethos Behind Corporate Treasury with Lynda Heywood" containing a monologue or interview segment from November 2018 where Lynda Heywood discusses her approach to interviewing candidates, the evolving strategic role of treasury, and the impact of technology on the field. The content is a reflective talk rather than a multi-speaker conversation.
I'll look at someone's background and skill set and experience on paper and then shortlist them in an interview. Interviews with me tend not to be very technical because what I'm really interested in is someone who is straightforward, who is easy to communicate with, who I can more or less have a relaxed conversation with. And I think what I try to do in interviews is try and put people at their ease so that I can understand, I can get a sense of what they're like, try and understand why they've come for the interview, what they're looking for in the role, whether the role is going to meet those aspirations that they have, either immediately or with some development. You need to try and develop, keep developing people. And so I've had people come to interviews and I've almost tried to talk them out of the role because I think they're already overqualified. So I've challenged them on what it is the role can provide for them and for their career. And sometimes, as a result, that people will say, actually, I think you're right, I'm sort of almost overqualified for this role. And sometimes it really makes them think about what it is they want out of their career. And it's quite a good way of making sure that actually, when they get into the role, if they're appointed, they're not kind of disappointed by what they find. So I think having that sort of dialogue in a kind of relaxed, open and honest way is really important in interviews. For sure. Treasury is more strategic now than it was when I started. It's much more widely recognized by the executive team and not just the cfo. It's a much broader discipline in this role. And in my previous role, I was involved in pensions. Some treasurers are involved in insurance. I've done share purchases as part of a share buyback. I think there's a lot more breadth to the role than there was previously. And the other thing that's changing, and that will continue to change, is technology. You know, I think back to when I started, and we used to use an electronic banking platform whereby you had daily codes for unlocking the system that were on a piece of paper that the bank sent to you and which were kept in a safe, and we got them out of the safe every day and typed in today's code. You know, that seems prehistoric compared to where we are now, you know, and I think I certainly. I'm not able to predict where the. Where the future looks like in terms of technology, but I think it just keeps on moving and you just have to keep trying to keep up with it and move with it.
