The Treasury Recruitment Market in 2022 & 2023 - UK

Foreign. So welcome to this feature episode. I'm going to do a few of these with only Craig in the uk, Katie in Europe, and then I'll be, you know, chipping in about the US market because been traveling around the world and everything else. But what we want to do is prepare three or four shows for you listeners out there who want to know the answers to the most common questions we get asked. We get asked, what's the state of the market? What's happening with remote working, where a salary is going, you know, what do I need to do to get a pay rise? And then, you know, that's where you are now. Where's the job market heading in 2023? What's next and how do I prepare for it? So I'm delighted to be joined today with Craig Perkins, who heads up our UK practice. Good afternoon, Craig, you lucky man, you. You get to share the airwaves with me for a change. You poor, poor soul.

Pleasure to be here, Martin. Thank you very much. Pulling me away from the day job, but yeah, no, absolutely fantastic.

I want to get you back on the tools. Come on. Right, let's, let's jump in. And so, as I said, we'll try and do some of these quarterly, but we're recording this just at the beginning and, you know, beginning of December 2022, it's been funny few years. What's the current state of the UK market? When I do talk to Katie, we'll do more around Europe and then I'll do another episode for the US listeners. But UK wise, what's the state of the market, Greg?

Absolutely. So, I mean, probably most importantly, there's a fair amount of opportunity out there. And realistically what this is coming down to is the fact that a lot of people, and we'll touch on this a bit later, Mike, is a lot of people out there obviously are going under those, those pay reviews are, you know, as soon as their bonuses come in, you know, in December, they're wanting to know, okay, what's the next year looking like? Am I going to be getting that, that pay rise that I'm after? I'm hearing like, you know, past colleagues and stuff have been reaching out to me and they're moving on. There's been a lot of movement in the market the last year. I think where opportunities are at right now, because there is still quite a bit of movement heading into this time of year. It's opening up a lot of gaps. So we're seeing a lot of opportunity, but we're also seeing a Lot of for that opportunity. And I'd mentioned to you earlier, and I touched upon it a bit, that there's been a strong particular focus throughout the, the whole of the last two quarters, especially in particular around front office opportunities. There's been a lot of those out there. But at the same time, you look at the amount of people who have got that, you know, particular focus, it's been once again highly competitive. And I think, you know that when you look at that kind of, that supply and demand, it's going to have been a busy year, that's for sure.

One of the things we touched on there going to come to pay rising salaries because obviously that's a key thing. But I think you and I talked about the fact that people aren't getting their pay reviews. Yes, you might get me getting the end of year pay review, but people have been putting up with it for a while already, haven't they? And they said, oh, actually now we're finally getting to a pay review, guys. Yeah, but even if you get the pay review or you had it a couple of months ago, now it's coming back again. You're like, right, well, I need another one. Because cost of living is soaring and it doesn't seem to be keeping pace, wouldn't you say?

Well, no, exactly that. I think we're all kind of stretching out the pounds and the pennies, you know, in terms of, you know, we were looking at our electricity bill and seeing these things go up. I think there's just more pressure on it now than there has been in the past. And a lot of people, like you say, are becoming more speculative what they're seeing. And that's why you are seeing more, more of these opportunities out there, more people taking an interest in them. People don't want to put all their eggs in one basket. So it is a case of, you know, keep people keeping their eyes open and just seeing where things kind of fly out. You can kind of sense the stress in the air, let's put it that way.

And we're going to move on to remote working, which has been during lockdown. It was the thing, you know, everyone was one day they were all in the office, a month later they were 100% working from home. We've now come out of that. Are you seeing now this post lockdown, some employers embracing it, saying, yeah, well, we're still going to be remote, or are you seeing some people? Oh, no, let's get 100% back in the office. How's that sort of sitting with people out there.

Yeah, that's a great one. I mean, thankfully for us, the vast majority of the clients we currently work with and have been working for for years have adopted that, I would say, London Average of 2 to 3 days max a week in offit. And we know, obviously we're, we're in a very pleasant spot to, to be supporting them on that, although. And there are some potential clients who we aren't currently supporting who have, you know, they've even come to us and they've had to pitch to us and say, hey, we want to see these people days a week in office. Now, to certain parts of the treasury market, that's not necessarily an issue, especially if they're more, you know, in the early stages of their career. You, you could certainly swing a case for it. But for most people, I mean, it's turning people's, you know, potential talent pools from, from a pool into a puddle. That's probably one way to see it. And, you know, we're looking at that, as you mentioned, like that, that two to three days a week in office, it is very much standard. And clients further afield, Oxford, Cambridge, Brighton, Bristol, those other, you know, not exactly the treasury hubs of the uk, but, you know, they, they're using the one, one or two days of fortnight, you know, as their people in there and they're paying a London wage. So that's the thing, you've got to offset all of this.

And one of the other bits about remote working, you, you and I, we talked about working with a client earlier in the year, didn't we, where they said, oh, no, we're a bit more traditional. We want five days in the office, five days a week. And we're not. Right, but actually we're a bit more manual and we don't, you know, we like to have paper copies of stuff. We don't really, you know, we're not big on technology. And, you know, you and I just said, well, hang on, that's immediately. You've taken our, you know, from a pool of 20 people when we do our salary survey, which will come to only one in 20 people says, yeah, yeah, I want to be back in the office five days a week. So we know that. We said, well, look, you can do it. Yeah, yeah, carry on, instructors. And we're like, no, hang on, that means that 100 people, it's crazy. Only five people say, yeah, please, I'd like to be back in. So it's like we're not going to approach all of them to just get five people, are we. It's. I think people have just got to get their heads around it, don't you think?

Well, yeah, absolutely. And a major part of what I do, Mike, as you do in the us, although I know it's slightly different, is a big part of our job is to educate clients and potential clients around what that actually looks like and actually the ramifications of making those decisions. I would say that most treasury, the group treasurers and treasures we are, who I've spoken to over the last, you know, especially over the last quarter, for sure, have had made it quite clear that I've got the ability to allow people to come in, you know, two to three days a week or it's. We can be pretty flexible. We. There's, there's nothing necessarily contractual. That's the other thing we, you know, it's very quickly mentioning here a lot of, A lot of people, when they're taking up new opportunities now, they want these things written to their contracts. Doesn't quite always happen that way. I think most people like you say they, we can always make a hope there's a guarantee that these things will stay that way. But it is hard to know, isn't it? Because, I mean, end of next year, who knows what conversation we're going to be having, right, in terms of the market in remote working. But certainly for the time being that 2 to 3 is the average and it doesn't look to change.

And moving on, we're going to cover salaries, we've got inflation, pay rises and you've done. I've got to say to all the people listening, you should have taken part in the salary survey. Treasurysalary.com if you haven't go there, take part because we are now running the numbers for Q4 snapshot. We want to get it out before Christmas so people have got that as a early Christmas cracker present. I don't know. And the great thing will be I gave Craig the responsibility and Craig's done an utterly outstanding job. 888 people and we want to get to a thousand by Christmas. But we're all going to run the numbers. What are the salaries telling you at the moment? Are they taking off or you've been talking to people? What are you seeing?

Yeah, I mean, it's like you say, 888 people already the quarter. It's a really telling story. It's the highest number we've ever had in, in a quarter for any single uptake and, you know, it's been a great effort but in terms of where the numbers are at now, I know we're still kind of crunching them. You, you have seen, you know, an increase, not as much as I thought you would, depending at different levels of the market. But if we take one example about treasury analysts, kind of the treasury manager kind of level of the market, given that's where a lot of the opportunities have been over the last couple quarters, you have seen an increase in it. Good. I would say almost like a bit of a 10%. However, I do feel that, you know, whereas we used to place a Treasury manager at, let's say, you know, a entry level triple manager at 60 to 65, I don't think that's really, it's not competitive anymore in terms of where the market's at. There's just been a big shift and everything has, has, you know, has moved around and people are, are more aware of it. Yeah, it's going to be very telling when these numbers come out, hopefully in the next week or so.

And Also for the U.S. i think I've, I've seen it absolutely skyrocket. When I was talking in Dublin just the other day, someone was asking me, they said, oh, we're seeing salaries, said, look, it's red hot in the UK and then they said, you know, really busy and it's all right, okay. I said, in Europe it's even hotter. You know, stuff's getting there and you know, yellow hot or whatever you might call the next level. And I was like, all right. They said, oh yeah. I said, what about America? I said it's crazy, absolutely crazy. Some of the, some of the roles, some of the salaries, I would say hyperinflation, it's the wrong description but, you know, really is taking on it. People are voting with their feet. It's a different market as well because someone in the UK and Europe might be on a minimum three month notice and sometimes takes a bit longer. In the US it's two week notice periods. So the market is, you know, just shifting very, very quickly. But I want to keep focusing on the UK and things. And one of the other things, Craig, you and I talked about the, we do the grids and we sort of compare things across where we used to have, you know, if you were within the M25, you know, where you're in the West End, in the city, were you further out? And then it was outside the M25 at Southeast and then it was a, you know, and then how we compared it between the southeast and the north and we split down the west of England and different other areas. How's that been in comparative terms? Have you seen much of a difference there?

Well, those lines really being blurred apart from looking at your main hubs, like, you know, obviously we look at London, we might look at Birmingham, we might look at Manchester and it's all kind of centralized around those locations for the Midlands, the, you know, the north and the south and you know, you're finding as a kind of brief, you know, touched upon it a little bit earlier the same way that the work from home situation and that hybrid working has kind of structured itself out across the UK very similar to how the salaries are being reflected. Just because you're on the coast, down in Portsmouth or Southampton now, doesn't mean that you should be paid 10, 15, you know, thousand pound underneath what your counterpart be paid in London. It's just not the case anymore because there are going to be companies in London who are happy for you to come up once or twice a fortnight and they'll pay you a London wage. And I think that competition that I guess never really existed to anywhere near this degree in the past has really, like I say, blurred those lines on, on the salary front.

We're looking at maybe bringing back, we can do some comparative analysis of, you know, maybe bring it back later on, you know, into Q1, next year, Q1, Q2, see if it is. But we can also be there for individual advice. But now, as we move into that part of the year in 2023, where do you see the market heading, Craig? What are you, you know, particularly seeing? I know that people are starting to get bonuses and things and there's, I'll come back about, talk about recession and things. But what are you seeing?

Yeah, so from some, from our point of view here, obviously a lot of the next couple weeks, especially as we head into December, is going to be understanding how team structures that are going to be changing through January onwards, where we suspect there are going to be those changes. And as you mentioned, obviously bonuses being paid out in December if they haven't already been paid in September or into March. So we are just going to see that kind of shift. And there is a like, as you mentioned, and out of those people who have taken part in the salary survey, there's just a lot more people speculative, you know, open to hearing what is out there because they're not hunting it down. The vast majority aren't hunting it down. Right. But the ones, there's a lot more people now who are willing to have a very open and honest conversation around it, because it is a stress that's in the back of a lot of people's mind. We talk about, like, inflation, we talk about work from home, and not everyone is aware of what their current companies are going to do as they head into 2023. And that level of uncertainty is enough for people to be like, let's see what is out there, just in case, right? They're kind of like, they don't want to put all the rose in one basket. So it's going to be interesting. And I, I, I suspect it'll be like the last couple years, a bit of a bumper January.

I think also, as you say, people will get their bonuses and even if they're not bashing out the door, they're registering their interest. I know that already we started to see an influx of cvs, but I think also there's that lingering chat a lot of the press, you know, whether you believe it or not, about recessionary times. Now, I was talking about this previously again on stage and someone asked me, oh, did I think it was heading to recession? I said, look, at the end of the day, treasury is recession resistant or resilient, if you like. And they were like, oh, well. I said, it's not recession proof. I said, it doesn't mean that, you know, you're, you're in treasury, you're, you don't have to worry, you have to be aware of it. But the fact is, we don't get, you know, we don't get a client coming and said, oh, we want 10 treasurers, please, or, and it's a boom time, you might get that in finance, setting up a new team, new department, everything else. We don't get those calls. We get someone coming and said, we want two people, please. And instead they're coming and saying, we need one, we still need one, you know, because if someone leads in your team, yeah, you might be able to cover internally, we've all seen that. But, and then the second person, oh, hang on, we need some cover or we need another person, so you're forced to recruit. So, as I said, it's, you know, in the downturn, it's, it's more recession resistant, if you like, you know, might take it, you know, might be more challenging to recruit, might be more challenging to get a sign off and everything else, but you still need your treasury folks, so it's not going to stop. If you like 23, what do people need to do if they are looking next year? What, what are the key suggestions we make to wrap up today's episode.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean the first one, we mentioned it a couple of times here is definitely to get that salary survey results in your hand. We're hoping to get those results out in the next week or two, hopefully as we enter into December. So having that in hand, if you are having conversations, whether it would be with us or directly with a company or anywhere else there in the market to have it to hand so you can understand what is competitive, what that looks like both from a, you know, a work from home perspective in terms of salary, in terms of where those things sit out. It's just very, very good to have that in hand. So that's the number one thing I'd recommend. We're very, very thankful and grateful that we very recently had a very successful live of networking event over in London literally few days ago was really fantastic and because of the great turnout there, we're obviously looking to host another couple of those next year as well which will get more details out either end of April, May next year and again in November. So we'll share those details soon. So we'll make sure that gets circulated and obviously mark your podcast itself. Yeah, of course.

I mean we called it Treasury Career Corner Live. So we had the amazing and this will come out on our channels as well. So do sign up to Treasury TV on YouTube and various bits. But we interviewed and videoed live on stage. Kemi Balarin from gxo, Anthony Buchanan from Asahi and Emily Helps from ams. Three amazing treasury professionals gave of their time. A room of over 100 people. It was fantastic. Talking about their careers. A little bit nerve wracking because sort of dash back from Dublin doing exactly the same the day before. We will have that as another podcast as well with Donna and with Keanu to Treasury professionals over in Ireland. That was great but actually we're gonna, it's gonna run a run. We did it at Herbert Smith Three Hills. Great guys there. Kristen helped us. We're going to looking at rerunning it in May as, as Craig says in November next year. So get yourselves on the wait list for that. You talked about the salary survey. We covered that. The other advice, I think the key thing is probably connecting with us Whether it's on LinkedIn or dropping you an email. We know people aren't looking to leave immediately but it's sort of getting the advice about how to set themselves up. When you say, you know, final what takeaways today.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's just getting ahead of things really understanding what could be out there for you. And I say to people all the time, our job is, you know, 50 of. My job is timing, getting things at the right time, both on, on both ends of the coin. But for us to understand and to know what good looks like to someone, you know, to someone who could be listening today, and to know what opportunity we need to put onto their radar so they haven't got to look on the market for themselves. That's what we're here for, right? We're here to offer a genuine good, good advice and to keep an eye on things so you can kind of do, do your day job, focus on that and leave the rest of it to us. So, yeah, you're right, Mike. Connecting to us, giving us a call, probably the number one. But absolutely, like, whether it be on LinkedIn or maybe via email, just good to kind of reach out, even if you're not looking. It's just good to kind of know what's out there as you move heading through 2023.

I think that's right. And just to, just to close off, you know, I get asked sometimes and you made that, that phrase about the talent pool, which becomes a talent puddle in certain cases. But, you know, I've been. I go to the conferences and people say to me, well, you know, why are you any different to other recruiters? I said, well, because I'm not talking to people that are looking for a job. We are, obviously, we're engaging with them, but often you and I, and the UK desk in particular, because we're so well established, we're talking to people that aren't seeking, actively seeking a new role. But in a room like that, I've said to people, how many of you are in the market now? And, you know, five hands go out, about 100, you know, they're comfortable doing. I said, okay, if I was to come to you with the perfect role, would you be interested? You know, it's the right role remote, working couple of days, you know, in the office, a couple of. One day, a fortnight. If it's this and it's the right salary and it's the next company, would you, would you be interested? 99 of the hands go up. And I said, look, for those that haven't put the hand up, I know you're sitting next to your boss, so don't worry, we know it's okay. And the, the key thing is everybody is interested, might not be actively seeking, but that's who we recruit for as well. And who we recruit, we talk to the candidates who aren't seeking a role, any job, they're seeking their next opportunity and that's where we come in. So, mate, amazing chat. I'll let you get back on the, you know, on the phones because I've taken enough of your time and just final closing tips for everyone. Anything else they should do or just quick takeaways for today?

I think to be fair, my feet did a great job there covering all the bits. I think as we mentioned there. And it works on, on both sides. You know, the same way that if someone there is looking to, to bring some talent into their team for next year or just wants a genuine, you know, open, honest conversation with us around, what kind of people are out there on the market now who, you know, passive, not looking. They're always happy to have an open chat with those people as well. You know, if you're planning, you know, for next year, then yeah, we can have a good open conversation around it and see if we can help support.

Great stuff. Lovely chat, mate, and yeah, we look forward to. Guys, make sure you sign up for the podcast. We'll do one next quarter, talk about where we'll have some Q A. So if you've got questions, send them in. We'll answer them either that day and or on the next podcast in the next quarter and we'll keep talking. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Craig and I where we focus on the UK if you're interested more widely. Got another episode separate to this where I talk to Katie about the state of the European treasury market, which I think could be interesting for a number of you if you're looking to recruit out there or looking to move from Europe and want to move around. Also we. She then talks to me about the state of the US market, which is really quite busy and everything else. So good to catch up with her about that and talk about some of the dynamics that. So for any of our US listeners. Otherwise, look forward to talking to you all. Number of conferences, a couple more to go this year, but then see you in 2023. Thanks.

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 on where you listen. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show and maybe whilst you're there you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank and as you can probably appreciate the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great content, career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.