The Treasury Recruitment Market in 2022 & 2023 - Europe

Foreign. So for those listeners in Europe, this is your special time, this is your special episode where what we decided to do, we were going to do a combined episode. We have UK talk about Europe, talk about the US and thought, actually, no, if I'm in Italy, I don't necessarily care what's happening across the Atlantic, you know, I want to know what's happening in my country or when I was. Where are the main markets within Europe? So we're prepar doing this episode for you guys and I've got the lovely Katie on the line. A good afternoon, Katie.

Hello. Nice to be here finally. I know a couple of times because.

Poor old Katie's been a bit crock and sounding like a Dalek for a couple of days, quite croaky, but hopefully you're back on top form. What I want to kick it off a bit like with Craig is, well, let's just jump in. What's it been like throughout Europe, just focusing on Europe post pandemic. I'm going to do another episode for any of the listeners where I do reflect on the year, but talk about the year in Europe in Treasury recruitment, over to you. First of all, what's the state of it?

Europe was slightly delayed in the aftermath of COVID but actually right from the beginning of 2022, it's been very busy. I think as we've gone on during the year, there's definitely been pockets of regions which have been slightly busier for us. So, for example, the tail end of this year has been very much a focus on Luxembourg and Germany. Roles are out there in full force and I think the competition is a lot higher. I think there's also a focus on the fact that there's obviously a rise in the cost of living. So this is sort of pushing more people to be slightly more open to listening to new opportunities, but obviously in turn, they're making more conscious decisions before they sort of jump ship into a new position.

When you say competition's been high, is that competition for candidates or is that clients trying to, you know, they're more roles around or more candidates looking, or is it a balance of both? What do you. Well, if you. Let's talk junior level. So junior levels across Europe, what's that?

Junior level of the market has actually been quite tough in terms of recruitment, purely because there's such a vast difference between what candidates want in terms of salary versus what clients are prepared to offer. And at the junior level of the market, there's a lot of roles out there, but there are a lot of candidates who are looking and they seem to be inflating the salaries quite significantly. So a lot of the business that I've been working on has been on the junior level within Luxembourg and you're looking at once where you used to be able to get somebody with sort of three to five years experience for around sort of the 70,000 mark. Clients are asking for five plus years experience for 65,070. But actually candidates now, because the competition is high, you're looking at dropping that experience level. You can only get somebody with one to two years experience who is open to moving for around 65,000 Euro. So quite a jump and a significant increase over the last couple of years.

And we talked there. I recently went to the did the Dublin Treasurers Conference and that brought on a lot of the time. And this is the influence again, this sort of, you know, we've joked about flexible working. That five years ago, if someone had come in my office, I'd say, you know, oh, do you embrace flexible working? Yeah, I do. Off you go, get out. It was like, now, you know, we have to embrace it because it's been proven to be the case over two years of COVID You don't need to be in the office five days a week. But there are still some clients saying, oh, we want to get the people back in. But it doesn't seem to necessarily have to be. How are you seeing that with the remote working thing versus and then salaries? Do you think that if you pay a better salary, you're able to then get people to come back in the office or what are your thoughts?

It's a very interesting one actually, because we went, obviously you and I went to Euro Finance in Austria and I was obviously having lots of different conversations with various levels of treasury professionals across various parts of Europe. One of the things that kept on coming up was around this whole working from home and remote working. Obviously there is a consensus these days that actually to be in line with the competition and to be attractive to individuals, you have to offer that hybrid working policy of around two to three days working from home. However, I've sort of found over sort of the last few months is that with this whole thing to do with cost of living and the rising cost of living, I'm finding that a lot more people are more open to going back into the office unless the company is prepared to either pay for or at least contribute towards their Internet costs or their electricity costs in order for them to be able to work from home. So that is now becoming a conversation around Benefits because for some people it will work out cheaper to go back into the office than it would be to pay to work from home. But they still want that work life balance. You know, at the junior end of the market, those junior individuals want to be back in the office because they like that social interaction. I know clients sort of spoken to me about the fact that actually in order to create the certain working culture within the business, there needs to be some physical presence within the office and within their teams. But there has been a lot of questions that were asked to me in Austria around are clients looking now at subsidizing Internet costs and electricity costs if they're asking people to do that hybrid working solution. And it's an interesting one because then you do have to look at salaries and you have to think, well, actually you're going to have to put the salaries up even further to be able to cover those costs if you're not having that as an active benefit. So all of those things seem to be pushing those salaries up quite a bit. And, you know, salaries, as we know during COVID were very flatlined because no one was moving, nothing was happening. So it just seems that the two years that we had, we were in Covid, nothing's moving. Suddenly those two years of general kind of pay rises have all come in this year.

Yeah.

And all these little gray areas are coming into play and it's how these companies are going to be able to manage those demands, I think is, is something that is probably going to carry on into 2023.

How are you giving them advice? You're talking to people that you've got a couple of final round interviews for a couple of your clients. You, you, you're giving them advice and everything else. What advice are you giving them? As we do move into 2023 with the treasury job market, I think, you know, we're gonna, on the other podcast, I'm gonna talk about treasury being not recession proof, but recession resistant, you know, ups and downs and everything else. But where do you see it heading as we go into 2023? Is it all going to stop or is it all gonna really kick off again? Or what are your, you know, again, what advice are you giving to people?

I think they've just got that they're going to have to be slightly reactive to these different situations. Definitely. I think, you know, if we go back to working from home or remote working, whereas I'm sure Craig will probably tell you, and you've quite rightly said at the start of this, that in the UK Working from home was sort of an exception to the rule, whereas in Europe it's always been around, it's not been an exception. So I think actually the whole kind of balance, the hybrid working will still remain in Europe. I think where the demands are going to be are on those extra benefits. And I've seen that in the last couple of weeks, actually in regards to, if I go back to Luxembourg again, some of these bigger corporates are pushing boundaries in terms of benefits. So where standard holiday in Luxembourg was 25 to 26 days holiday, some of the larger corporates are now setting the trend and are pushing holidays up to between 30 and 34 days. Now obviously then you've got, you know, regardless of people interviewing at big corporates or slightly smaller companies, they're still demanding the same level of holiday. So actually some of my clients are having to have those internal conversations because they need to stay ahead of the curve in order to attract these people in. And I think that's, that's just going to carry on into 2023.

And you mentioned that there's been a, an influx of activity or a lot of roles coming through in Luxembourg. But you don't just cover Luxembourg, do we? Did some, yeah. What other regions have you been seeing?

So there's Germany, which has suddenly come to life a lot in 2022. There's Amsterdam, we've done quite a bit of work in Belgium, France, so there are, you know, we cover obviously the whole of Europe, but there tends to be sometimes a pattern. You know, at the start of the year there was a lot of focus in Amsterdam and then it moved to sort of Belgium and then Luxembourg and Germany. So they come in in waves. Definitely.

Yeah. Well, that's cool. And obviously, you know, so it sounds like it's not stopping, you say it's just continuing to go.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you know, I think it's across all levels. I mean, there hasn't been as much movement at the very senior senior level, but there's been a lot around sort of definitely at the junior level, Mid management up to head of level. And I think a lot of people are looking at their structures for next year, looking at increasing the support at the junior level. There's been more people moving at the mid management to sort of head off level. I think again, as some of the other questions I've had this year have been around businesses in different locations that are looking to set up treasury centres and where in Europe is the best place to set up treasury centers. So, you know, and we've just started to see, well, which you'll be able to back up because you've been there recently. More movements in Ireland and that seems to be one of the locations for companies to set up treasury centers or relocate treasury centers to.

It does, and I think falsely, you know, salaries are being pushed up. And when I say falsely, I think is because there's a lack of. When I went to Dublin, there were some amazing treasury professionals out there, but it was a very limited pool. And you know, when I was talking to a lot of the guys said, yeah, this is, this is great, there's great keeping our salaries up and everything else. But the cost of living and getting accommodation was brutal. You know, some of the guys were saying, yeah, we literally can't afford to be in town. They're having to move further and further from town because the prices are going up. So it's sort of. Yeah, the salary is that much higher. Yeah, but so's your everything, you know, cost of living, but also rental and all the other bits and cost of travel and everything else. So in actual fact it's, you know, net net. It's no real gain for some of them as well. Now one of the things that was great was, you know, talking to a lot of the people and they were starting to say to me, what do I need to do now? The great thing was conversations, know, reaching out to us, sending us their, you know, I, I got that, I got an email just, just beginning of this week where someone said, look, I'm happy. Yeah, of course you're happy. That's why you're sending me a cv. Yeah, you're not that happy then. But they were saying, look, I'm getting my bonus in February so I need to start looking now because I'm on three months notice by the time, you know, I want to be ready, you know, want to be doing interviews in Jan, Feb. March if possible. You know, they're very much at the senior end of the market so I think there are less opportunities there at the moment because a lot of people have, you know, sitting in their seats and not moving. What would you say people need to do to sort of plan next year or to get ready for it? What are your thoughts?

Well, I think if they are open to hearing about opportunities, you know, they're the types of people that we do speak to rather than necessarily the people who are actively on the market. I think they need to obviously do our salary survey so they're aware of sort of where they're sitting in the market. Yep, that's where. So they can see where they're sat in the market.

If. Sorry to jump in, but if only you went to treasurysalary.com were able to benchmark themselves. It's a real survey, not made up numbers from one of our rivals I saw the other day, which is just bloody stupid. But. And if only they were benchmarking themselves as of today against 935. Oh my goodness. We will hit the ,ousand 935 treasury professionals globally at all levels from Treasury Assistant to Global Treasurer. It's amazing to get. I mean I said to you that I should have got Craig doing it before because he's really taken this and taking it to the next level. So we're gonna have a thousand people doing our salary survey. That's. That's insane. But as you say, so benchmark your salary by doing that. Well, sorry I interrupted. What else we can do.

And I think one of the big things that I've definitely found, and I think we were talking about it recently, was that, you know, obviously to make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date, obviously make sure that your CV remains a live working document. You've always got it to hand and updated and current. But I think it's around sort of having. Looking at where you are, looking at your goals, where do you want to, where do you want to get to? How do you do that obviously without selling our services massively, obviously the podcast that you do, you know, you can listen to top treasurers around how they've got to, where they've got to in, in their careers and you can see them where the stretch is. And I think, you know, one of the things to remember is that when you do go on an interview or you do have your CV submitted to, to a role, you need to be looking at what your key achievements, what is it that's sort of setting you apart from competition, you know, what makes you different and that is very much around how are you adding value to your current business.

And you just mentioned there about the podcast, so I doing another one Reflections of the Year. But I've just got, I mean we've got some incredible people. Severin from Aliaxis, John McAnulty recently of Richemont, Justin Ziedler from Bosch, Stefan Deal from SAP, Ben Helsing from P3, Lane Silverman, Andrea. You know, I mean these are, these are incredible people. It's just, it's just really cool. So I'm just looking at it.

Yeah. And they just give you the, that they're very transparent. They give you sort of insight around how they've. And they're all very different in terms of how they've got to where they've got to but it gives you, it gives. I think it makes you start to think about actually for me to get to that stage this is what's missing. This is the goal that I need to set myself for next year. Whether that's still within the company that you're in or whether that opportunity, you know will only lie in. In a different company in a different role.

Again for anyone listening today, if you go on there, just where do you come? Which, which kind of companies do you talk to in Europe? Well we've got Equinor, we've got Merck, we've got Hitachi, we've got Medtronic, we've got abb, we've got Ceta. I'm just going through this. This is just bloody brilliant. Lane who was ex JTI P3 SAP yeah Rishma Aliaxis and she was X Honeywell as well because leading global corporates where you guys can really hear how they've got to theirs. So if you're. And at earlier stage your career or at later stages you want to know what other treasurers doing. Exactly. It's brilliant.

And you've forgotten Wolfgang.

Oh he was. He wasn't this year he was.

Yeah.

Well again we're doing this massive campaign for Porsche and again one thing I think that you and I have found as well is you know exploring, trying to get more be very pro women. You're a lady, you know and we're trying to sort of look at that as a thing. What we notice it seems to be underrepresented ladies in the German treasury market. So we're particularly trying to help them make their next move. Give people advice and everything else, you know not you know because that's what we believe in. We want people to move onwards and upwards within their careers. You say so you know you've got Wolfgang, he was back in episode. Yeah got a year ago now. 2021. Yeah yeah episode 168 for anyone maybe put that in the show notes. So any wrap ups? What else are we going to say to people to take it away because we want to keep these short and sweet. What are you. So register with us, look at your LinkedIn profile. We give you advice. Any, any final takeaways.

I think it's just, it's watch this space really because I think I don't foresee the European markets slowing down particularly I think there'll be a lot more movement. I do think there's going to be a lot more focus on not just basic salary, but benefits generally. I think 2023 will be another good year.

Great. Thank you, Katie. And anyone listening and wants to hear about the US market, then you can tune into that episode. But you know, if you're in Italy, you're probably, you know, or wherever you might elsewhere, you might be in Europe, you're not that interested. But we look forward to seeing you at one of the many, many conferences we'll be attending next year. There's been a good flow of stuff this year, but looking forward to end of the year, Euro finance and some of the other bits. But no, thank you for your time today.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending.

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