Mike Richards gives an informal recap of a Treasury Careers event in Amsterdam: he thanks the local audience and hosts, reflects on honest recruiting (warning against overselling "perfect" roles and advising realistic expectations), and highlights excellent networking and speaker sessions. The Amsterdam meeting drew a full room (about 65–70 people), featured multiple speakers (including Engin Dortepe and Mania Campesi among others), and was hosted at Baker McKenzie with sponsors Chatham Financial, TIS, and State Street. The session was recorded for video and will also feature on the TreasuryCareers podcast; Richards says similar events are planned for 2026 in cities including New York and London.
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Good morning to a lot of my US audience and happy Thanksgiving. Want us to get that one in there. And good afternoon to a lot of the UK and European audience. Thank you very much to my European audience in Amsterdam in particular, and my Dutch orders for an amazing event. But we'll come back to that in a minute and you can see some of the bits over here. Firstly, our newsletter that was. We were talking about perfect treasury roles that turned out to be anything but perfect. This is one of the key things now people in the past that were, is it a salesy pitch? It wasn't actually a sales pitch. It was one of the things that I've said before that you. I can act with honesty and integrity in all things. If. If there's a tough role that we need to recruit, tell someone if you're recruiting it. Because there's nothing worse than putting someone into a role. They go there, they say, actually it's not what you did. Behind the scenes. We have this picture that actually shows. They open the door and it's absolute mayhem. That's why we did it. We created it to show that when you do that with people, it's just not fair. People are going there and saying, hang on. You said, this is going to be great. So what you want to do is set a realistic goal because also if someone goes into that role and they're not right for it, they're not going to enjoy it and they're gonna, they're gonna fall out. Now the flip side is a lot of people that I've placed in roles like that have said, trust you, Mike. It's not as bad as all that. Oh, okay. They said no. And actually I've learned a lot from it. Got on with the cfo, got into the business and really enjoyed it. So that was one of the key things. And this is also the other thing I would say is based on some real life experiences with some of the candidates. There's a couple that have said, actually, do you know what we're up for this channel? There's a couple of that said. The other, you know, said actually time for me to go and we're here to help on that. Other things. Amsterdam, you can see here on the video here. So there's me, yeah. Engin Dortepe from Savik. Yeah. Icha. Get that right, yeah. From Bungi and Mania Campesi now with Lionel Bazaar. Amazing. She three incredible speakers. And then up there you got. Yeah, the networking was off the charts. That was everyone. Just before we went in the room that was the before and you should see the after. Yeah, probably you don't want to see those photos. I've got to say thank you very much. And I asked a few people whilst I was there. I said we had a full room, actually. We. At one stage, we were worried we're gonna. Weren't gonna have enough spaces. We had 65, 70 people in the room. And I said, why? Why didn't you? So look, the. Actually, before I say that, want to say a big thanks to our hosts. Firstly, Baker McKenzie. Amazing offices, great hosts. Also our sponsors, Chatham Financial, TIS and State Street. We couldn't do it without these guys. But they actually were saying to me, mike, one of your best of the year, in fact, if not the best for Europe. And I was like, oh, thanks very much. We did our London one last week was pretty good, but it set the bar high. And I was asking people why and they said there aren't many events like this. We get to hear from three incredible treasures. This will come up as a video. We did video this session. It's also going to come up as a future podcast. Lots of people hadn't heard about the podcast. You need to Hear about the podcast. 405, 108 episodes. Treasurycareercorner.com Head over there. But yeah, so a lot of people saying they don't get events like this necessarily in the Netherlands. So much the lesson learned there was. They were saying there are lots of bank events. In fact, there were two bank events going on last night. But they said actually also they're sponsored events. But you gave us something we want as treasury professionals. We want to hear from other treasury professionals. So we're definitely doing it again next year, so look out for that one. And we're going to carry on with 2026. So look out on our website. Put a link in there. We've got most of the events up on there. If you're. Wherever you might be. We're going to be doing it in two in New York, two in London. Texas crumbs. Doing it everywhere across what? Have a look on the website. All right, thanks very much.
