Treasury Recruitment Club July 2020

So chaps, chapesses, ladies, we've been asked. Thank you very much for turning up. Welcome back. Hope the first Bounce Back program worked for you. 175 people on the first one when I expected 30. The second one we've got about to run, starts tomorrow actually. They've done their homework for the first week, sent it out and we've got about 35. So it's a bit more like this group sort of thing, a bit more, not exclusive, but actually quite nice. But I thought we'd reconvene and talk about the markets and everything else. And I've had a number of questions that come to me past well before the weekend. People were asking about it, stuff like that. So I was just going to give you a bit of an update really on where we've seen stuff. People have been asking me what's happening in the market. My first jokey response is usually, look out the window. But there's nothing happening, is there? It's in lockdown, you know. But actually, joking aside, it's actually improving the market or was improving. But now we've got to summer, you know, so this is traditional quiet down period between anywhere from well throughout July, August, everyone's taking holiday, whether in the uk, you're taking your two, two weeks, two, three weeks. If you're in Europe, as Katie will tell you in a minute, you're taking your five stroke, six weeks. It seems like a lot of people. Where do I predict it? I predict it coming back in say September. I do think it's going to improve. One of the things I was doing, I was talking earlier to someone about more junior recruitment and they were sort of saying, where have I seen that? And I've already seen that actually, you know, pre lockdown it was very busy, went into lockdown, carried on for a bit, which I'll get over to address. And then, you know, started to get busier. So Ava, what have you seen sort of happening.

So sort of prior to lockdown and Covid, the market was really picking up. There are a lot of roles that I was speaking to clients about and that we were working on. And then sort of beginning of March, a lot of them kind of decided, oh, actually we're just gonna go on hold for a moment because I think everyone kind of anticipated what's now happened happening. But during lockdown, sort of. It was a bit bizarre, if I'm honest. I wasn't kind of expecting to recruit certain positions, but we had a maternity cover that I recruited on a temporary six month basis. We also recruited. Well, I recruited the Treasury Risk Manager for Anglian Water. She's there. And the senior treasury dealer for Petrovac also. So we had roles on and I think it was kind of companies that necessarily needed those positions. They needed these people to come in.

At that point, do operational stuff and actually get things doing.

Absolutely. And now I think we're starting to see the very junior market, the treasury analysts again, the operational side, that's starting to come back through in the uk. So I think it's going to be quite nice to sort of get back on the phones and get harassing clients in a nice way.

I'm going to cut that out now.

But just sort of getting to know what it is operationally they really do need because as sort of every day I'm seeing about 10 positions that are coming through. So we're seeing the junior market pick up. But I agree with Mike, sort of normality will hit again September time. So for the mid level and more senior roles as well.

And I'll talk about us in a minute. Katie, what are you seeing, Europe wise?

Well, prior to lockdown I had a couple of more kind of senior level roles on. One went on hold just because the particular industry that it was in was completely flatlined. The other one we continued to recruit for, but it was a very, very, very slow process. And then I did have a couple of positions more at sort of the junior to mid management level, but that was very much due to the fact that there wasn't anybody in that position because it was a newly created team. So it was the need rather, you know, which was really important for them to continue that journey. What I've seen since then is obviously we are going into August, which, you know, most of Europe tends to close down for the entire of August. I do have a couple of more junior positions on in France, but what I'm finding with a lot of candidates that I'm speaking to and reaching out to is very much. I'll get back in touch with you when I'm back from vacation, which tends to be four to five weeks time. But you know, some of the, you know, there's more job roles coming up, tends to be more mid management level. Some of the markets are a bit more buoyant than others. So there's. There seems to be more activity across Germany, whereas Luxembourg and Belgium is slightly quieter. What was quite a buoyant market for me prior to lockdown was Switzerland, but again that is relatively quiet. But they. There's stuff coming through but I think as Mike touched on, we're kind of looking more towards September through to sort of Christmas which will then see sort of stronger levels. I think again it remains more at the operational level but actually what I'm finding with a lot of my clients in Europe is that they want people with all round experience, people that can do the operational day to day but also has have the mindset to be able to do the strategic side and get involved in a lot of cross departmental projects as well.

But how have you contrasted that with UK recruitment? Would you say because are they. Because would you say it's, you know, Certainly maybe a can comment as well that they're looking more act must have that. And do you see that from your clients in Germany or France? Are they saying oh must have this qualification or not?

Not really, no. For them it's very much more around the actual experience, very much around the background in different corporate environments. But it's not so much about the qualification as it is about the experience.

In the uk. It's definitely qualification led at the moment. I think they're kind of thinking it shows dedication and I think that's what they're kind of looking for if they are going to recruit at this time. They're looking for somebody to join the business and stay and develop and grow or someone who's looking to study so that they can buy into them a little bit and I'm sorry. Yeah, Leah agrees.

Well again, you know, one of the other things. By the way guys, if you've got questions, put them in the chat. I know that there were some other questions for ebay. You had a question as well, which I've got written down here, so don't worry. But you know, one of the things I think is also interesting, let's just do the US for a minute. US has stopped US is on hold. They're in semi second lockdown if you like. We were looking at a couple of positions over in California, I was looking at Chicago, just reached out to the guys there. There's a couple of New York things that's starting to get back to normal a little bit more. But I think they've been harsher in the lockdown if you like. They have much more stricter regulation. But then the roles that are coming out, they're saying yes, you can work from home, but is the new norm going to be everybody working from home? I don't think it is. When I'm talking to clients and things we're talking about, I think there will be a working from home element. Maybe people. Again, I'm talking to people that are doing Friday and Monday, the working from home, Tuesday, Wednesday in the office. And you know, just like I do a lot of networking on Thursday. We meet clients and candidates and so if ever you guys are free and fancy, you know, coffee and catch up over beers, that's when I tend to dedicate people. It seems like where I've led, other people are following. But, you know, you go out, you meet your banks, you meet your network, do your networking on a Thursday. But it's like, you know, dedicating different days to different things. And the Tuesday Wednesdays, you know, when I've talked to people or whatever day it might be, that's going to be coaching junior members of staff or flip side, if they are the junior members of staff being coached by a senior member of staff sort of thing. So it's, you know, it's a mix between the two sort of thing to say, USA closed down the other bit. But I was talking to Canada earlier and they were saying, you know, what did I predict from September onwards? And one of the key things. And again, I discussed this with Katie. If you guys look at it, I mean, you know, I'm sure all of your businesses have suffered, you know, it's, you know, I was talking to Sally Ding, the treasurer of Heathrow, and she's on. I'm on a panel session with her tomorrow. I'm moderating it. You know, this is Heathrow, you know, they, you know, they're not going to build another Runway. There's no planes to land on it. You know, it's, you know, 95% drop in, you know, air flights. Massive billions. 31 billion or something crazy, I think it was. They're not getting any bonuses. There are no bonuses anytime soon. So those guys in previous years, when you got post summer, and particularly September, October, November, you would be in a situation where people be hanging on for their bonuses. They say, well, I'm not going to move yet, Mike, this year I can see it being fluid because I'm not going to ask you to put your hands up and stuff like that, you know, but maybe if you think back to your jobs now, how many of you guys are going to be getting a bonus this year? You know, the CFOs, I'm sure you're talking to, or your treasurers, they're going to say, hang on, be grateful for a job. You know, this is, you know, you can be lucky to keep it sort of thing. And Katie, we thought the same earlier, didn't we that we don't think it's going to be the same. I think it'll just be a steady turn, a more strategic sense of the senior levels.

Yeah, no, definitely. And I think, you know, now things are getting back to some form of normality. I think, you know, people will, you know, over the next few weeks definitely know whether or not they do have a job role or not. And as you said, we'll know whether or not it's likely that they are going to get a bonus. And I think that's, you know, in sort of four weeks time. That will be when we start seeing more movement or people that are more interested in, you know, hearing about new things that come up.

Yeah, but I think there will be more. And ab, you were just saying there about operational stuff, there's a lot more stuff coming through, isn't there?

There is, yes. When I look sort of. When we were kind of in the midst of COVID on jobs boards, you were seeing sort of maybe two to three jobs a day, but they were the repetitive ones. Whereas now there's sort of up to 10 new jobs coming through a day. So we're starting to see a real comeback. But that is more in sort of your treasury assistant, accounts payable, treasury analyst, that level. So the very sort of paymentsy, more back office side of things, I'd say it's positive because look, where we were a couple of months ago, it was bleak, whereas now we're starting to see everything come back slowly, but it is coming back, which is positive again.

Yeah. And then I was asked, one of the previous questions I was asked a little bit was whether or not, you know, is age factor in relation to possibility to get a job after Covid. Now, if you're, you know, perhaps a more, you know, lower level, say analyst, manager, does that make your chance of getting back to work lower compared to, you know, younger guys who were perhaps earlier stages of their career and just out of college ready to start? I think it's going to depend on the job, firstly, what you're going to want to deliver insofar as when we get some treasurers. We recently recruited a maternity leave role and we had some candidates who were, you know, they were quite happy to sort of recruit more junior level, if you like. But in actual fact, the client said, I want someone with a few more gray hairs. I want someone who's not going to be thrown by something because of maternity leave. And he said, if I'm out of the office, I don't want them to be panicking I want them to be able to handle stuff. And so I think, yeah, there's no doubt it could be an issue that you're going to be in competition with someone doing amct, just coming up the ranks and really keen to do everything. But you can also have the flip side of things where you can sell on your expertise, you can sell that to the treasurer and say, look, you could take that person. But what happens if this is a situation I've dealt with in the past, this is how I've done this. So that's certainly something I've seen as well.

I think also it goes back to what we were discussing throughout the program, is that it really depends on the problem in hand that the actual company has within their treasury function. And actually sometimes you said it takes somebody who's a little bit more experienced and has had sort of a bit more exposure to various different elements that will be the person that they trust to be able to fix that problem. So I wouldn't be put off by it.

So, guys, what other questions you had? I mean, the only other bits I was being asked before, and I don't want to sort of jump in with loads of orders, asked this question and just come up with, you know, falsities and stuff like that. The only other question some, you know, since the program and what we'll do is this time next month we'll get together and what I said we'd do is we'll have already been through our bounce back to and those guys will be, you know, what questions and problems they're having. But the one that was coming up to me quite a lot since the program as well is, Mike, can you have a look at my cv? And I think, you know, with the greatest will of the world, I have the pet hate, which is about where someone says they're a flexible, motivated individual. Get rid of that chuck in the bin. And also it'll put you off. People have said about personal statements, I said, it's like flipping a coin, I hate them. Some people don't mind them. And I've said, well, if it's a 50, 50 split, why are you taking that chance? Take away the coin, get rid of the personal statement, leave that out. I saw a good one today where a guy sort of said about his top three achievements. You know, he talked about putting an Isler together and did some stuff and I thought was really well written. And then he asked me, said, oh, what do you think about the rest of my cv? I said, I think it's good There are some bits of. It was a bit patchy if I'm honest, but I said, and I said the sort of thing. I said, but we'll change it, you know, he'll change it when we get a specific role. I said there are some bits which he's sort of working in financial, semi financial services and corporate. I said when you go for a specific role, we'll give you, we'll look at the pain points of the client. Be the paracetamol now, are they struggling with cash management or is it foreign exchange or is it that the PRA are saying, oh, you need to be doing this da, da, da. You need to be looking at your liquidity buffers. I said we'll just get from you being their paracetamol what their problems are and so that, you know, the CV feedback that you know. I said just have a basic document, don't write three CVs, just have one and then we'll give you the advice sort of thing. Katie, what have you had since and Avra, what have you had since the program since we've done it?

Or any other bits more around the advice on CVs? I did have one person who was actually going through a process with me actually and so there was more around sort of coaching on interview practice prior to that, which they found helpful. But a lot of it is around the current state of the market and how we see it going forward. I know I've had different chats with different clients who are putting different measures into, as you touched on, in terms of working from home, they're writing a policy around how best to manage that to give everybody the option if they still are unsure about COVID But most of it is actually, you know, am I going to be able to find a job or you know, how quick is the market going to recover in X industry? I was speaking to one of my clients about the aviation industry and they were saying to me that it's going to be about a two to three year recovery period for them until they get back to where they were prior to lockdown. So I think people still have tough times ahead, but I don't think it's a terrible situation now. I think it's coming back to normality.

I was just going to actually talk about virtual interviews, actually. I'll come back to that in a moment. Ayra, anything else you've seen since we did the program?

I've seen people trying to improve their LinkedIn and kind of messaging me saying, what do you think? Sort of does My photo look good enough. Have I got a decent article? What do I need to be doing to get some more engagement? So I think it's. I've been sort of coaching a couple of people on how to use LinkedIn to the best of its ability with commenting on other people's articles or stories or just a bit more engagement on that side of things. But I kind of like keeping that up to date with people's LinkedIn and having a little bit of a spy and see how they're doing. So hopefully there'll be a lot more.

And a couple of people. Actually, I've noticed just on that you mentioned about photos, it's worth all of you guys going on to your LinkedIn connection. I'll try and find it. Actually on your LinkedIn if you're a second or third connection, you get the gray circle rather than the photo. If you choose to just display that there's a privacy setting they changed a while ago or maybe try and email it out to people as an article. There's a few people not here, but they need to change their grayness. There's a couple of people second connections of mine still that have done the course, done the bounce back and they still come up as a gray circle. If you think you're 23, 24 times more likely to make a connection if you've got a photo. But the thing is you've got a photo up there but it's not showing to people. So I think there's a little bit from there. Faribi, you've just put up this. And also you can unmute yourselves, guys, so you can speak to us. Yeah, lots of people on Zoom network. Over 80% of jobs don't get posted, get filled by networking. Is it true? No family through people I know or through posting now that could be. Is that through one of our rival recruiters? Because there's a guy that's doing a load of YouTube, the guy from Australia. Some of that stuff he's doing is baloney. They are talking about networking and stuff like that. Networking is a key part of it and building a network. Yes. But actually you get the whole host of things and someone you say here about 80% of jobs get through networking. What I'd love to do is find out how they found that out because I looked out myself the other day and I can't find it proved. And I don't think 80% of jobs get filled by networking. I think it depends on levels. I think it depends on the job. I think to just say 80% of all jobs, maybe treasury jobs get filled by that. I just don't know where that stat comes from. I mean, what I would say is I think it depends on the time of year, depends on, you know, that's why we do this. On this, on this calls about being an active networker and you guys are doing this by building a network. So I think, yeah, a lot of it's just sort of getting out there and meeting people and you know, building, you know. So I said before when we did the. Your job search strategy, get to know your banks, get to know your relationship partners, get to know us, make sure everything's up to date, get to know you got passive messages like LinkedIn and everything else. I mean, Katie, other ways of getting jobs, other things get on LinkedIn, register for alerts.

Yeah, no, and I think the majority of the time if you are building up your contacts and things like that, some companies, and we've seen it may do a LinkedIn post rather than posting a physical job. And actually that's why it's so important, more people you're connected to, the more visibility you have of that rather than just relying on LinkedIn jobs particularly. But I personally have always found from in house and from agency side that nowadays people will always do something on social media and it is the majority of the time it is on LinkedIn. The only other way is obviously sometimes they avoid that and they go direct to. They use their company websites because a lot of companies will invest, put money into their company website. They have applicant tracking systems so it makes the whole process much smoother. So I think if you're interested in a particular company, it's always good to LinkedIn but also look at their own and webpage as well. Under careers everyone will have a career section and you'll be able to see it from there.

And people may know this already. But if you go onto LinkedIn and search for some of the jobs that you might be interested in, say that's treasury manager in London or be that treasurer in Italy or whatever it might be once you've had a, you know, if you find a couple of jobs like that on the LinkedIn search, it says do you want to be alerted for similar jobs to this? And that's a really good way because it will automatically alert you each time to each of those jobs. Say again?

And all the new ones that come.

Through, whenever it comes through, you get the alerts and stuff like that. One of the things I would say then, and this, I was helping this guy in the US Which I think I'd said on the networking chat on like week two of the last conference, the last, the last zoom calls we did. One of the times I was helping this guy when I. Then he identified one of the jobs he really liked and I said, oh, there's another job like that and there's another job like that. And it was much more targeted search. This was the same guy that applied for 110 jobs and he got to actual final round. It turned out after our call last time we had he got to final round interview. He didn't get the job unfortunately and stuff, but he got close to it. But getting to the final round between him and one other, that's pretty good from a targeted search. So it's not about wasting your time sort of thing. Right. We can do another one of these in a month. Anything else? Any closing questions from anyone? Feel free to unmute yourselves or I know it's the end of a Monday, you're like, enough of this. It's nearly holiday time.

Actually, I have one more quick question.

Yeah, go for it. Good.

What do you feel about. Again, I'm in US and I go to lots of these networking events and something that I keep hearing is have a target list of companies. And if you don't have a target list, what it means is that you're not looking for a job, you're not searching for a job, you're sitting at your home waiting for a job to show up. And again, honestly, all my life that's how I have found my job. I never had a target list. I may have a specific thing that I like, manufacturing more than like servicing, for example, but not necessarily something as a target list. What do you feel about that?

I think that, you know, trying to target companies and industries doesn't exist in treasury recruitment, it general recruitment in finance recruitment. Because if you want to go and work for Merck. For example, I was talking to the guy from Celgene earlier on. They have 20 guys in FPA, but he went from Merck treasury, where I think they had 36, 40 people. He went to Celgene, they had 12. But in FP and A at Merck, they had nearly 100 people doing the program, moving around and things like that. So say you wanted to go and work for a pharmaceutical or something like that. Yes, that might be applicable if you're a general financial accountant, but you're a Treasury person. If you're in treasury, you know you're going to go to those groups and you know your Maximum, you're looking at three to six people in a Treasury. So if you walk around a room, that's not going to work. But, you know, if, you know. So I go. I do the Windy City Summit in Chicago. When I'm going there, I'm meeting lots of different treasurers. So I think then, you know, using things like Treasury Management association of Chicago, you know, TMac, they're brilliant guys and stuff like that. T man in New York, they're really good people as well. And, you know, so they've got their own membership pages, they advertise some of their jobs. You know, they go up there. I was noticing that they got some really good job. That's. Actually, they've referred a couple of the New York jobs to us. They've said, oh, you could probably speak to Mike, he can probably help you with some good candidates. If they're more generalist treasury jobs, yeah, they're going to get people. But what I am seeing is that people are, you know, so if you're going around a general finance conference, you'll probably be the only Treasury. You could be the only treasury person in the room. It's never going to work. So it's like when you. What you need to be doing is going to, you know, and in the UK you go to the ACT conference, you know, that's why I spoke on the ACT panel last week. You know, we were in front of, you know, a thousand people that were tuning in and talking on the. I was talking on the panel things, you know, targeting your audience. I think that's the key thing. And when you are looking, you know, don't forget to have your elevator pitch. You know, we talked about it the, you know, the other day and it's like when you're meeting someone, you know who you are, what you do and, oh, here's my card. If you hear of something like this, you know, please keep me in mind. Or do you know someone that might be interested in sharing, connecting on LinkedIn and things like that? So does that answer the question a bit?

Yeah, it did. Thank you.

Pleasure. Cool. We all done for the day? See you in a month. Stay on the beach, Charlotte, I want to see in your Speedos. I'm watching you. Yeah, I'll be in my Speeder, so it's all right. Right, thank you very much, everyone. Speak to you soon. Bye.

Bye.

Bye.