Treasury Recruitment Company Update, Jan 2023

Foreign to all of you lovely listeners to the treasury career corner, this episode is a little bit of a different one. This is a Treasury recruitment company. Update TRC Update, if you like, was asked a while ago by Tom Baelish, who said you need to do more of focusing on you guys telling us about what's happening in the market, what's happening on the podcast, what webinars conferences are you going on? What's the state of the market? So I thought do what he told us. He's one of our listeners. So a big shout out to Tom there. What did we do last month? And you have been listening to this month. Amazing podcast this month. It's gone through. So we had Leanne and Joel, who I interviewed over at the AFP conference in Philadelphia. We talked about personal branding. So if that's something you guys think you need to listen to or work on, go Back to episode 246. Back at the beginning of Jan, I missed it with your what's your Christmas? Then we moved on to Patrick McCarten, corporate treasurer at Caterpillar. Amazing story. He's been with the group over 20, 30 years. And we went through how you can spend your entire career at one company and yet still grow through all your different treasury roles and your treasury career just developing. So it was really great. Then we caught up once again with the amazing Eddie Trahan. Eddie, when we talked to him originally was in a different role, different company. He then switched to GB bank more recently. So you've got the original podcast, then one of our revisited ones that was episode 248. Look that one up. And we're just approaching 250. So this will actually be episode 250. But 249 going back to my very good friend Toppy Yokokaranta, the now CFO at RETIC. Now he's up in Finland. What is interesting for you guys listening is that he made the move, the shift from treasurer to cfo. And I know a number of you guys all ask me and ask the other ask Katie, who will join us in the call in a minute. And also Craig, how do I make that move? What do I do? Listen to that episode that's going to tell you. And coming up this month in the rest of February, we've got Anel Patney, treasurer of an instacart in the us, Barish Goldcap at Sissy Camp, or Sissy Camp in Turkey in my Turkish is getting better slowly. Chris Corner, a revisited episode. He is now the interim head of Treasure at Kingfisher. So we're going through his old show, how was it? Thomas Cook, really interesting. And then now he's got this interim role, so we talk about that. And then we got Adam Richford again. He is still at renewing actually, but his role has evolved and so it's got bigger and bigger. So that's about the podcast. Let's move on to. First of all we'll do the markets. So everyone asked me what's happening with the markets and I'm tired of my own voice really. And I hope you lot aren't so lots of you. A thousand thousand per episode. So a thousand people listening to. So hopefully you're enjoying the podcast but if you have feedback, let us know. Hopefully this episode will actually address some of those concerns and actually make it a little bit more interactive. But again, I don't want to hear my own voice. I'm going to bring Craig on the show in a moment. He's going to talk us through the state of the UK market. We'll then pass it over to the microphone, across to Katie. She'll talk about the European market, what we're seeing there, and then back to me and I'll talk about the US market and what Holly and I are seeing there. And then this week we're going to do the features on conferences, webinars and then each month we're going to focus on one specialist topic and this time we're going to talk about the Saturday, Sunday big topic. But we'll talk about that later in the show. Let's get back to markets. So Craig, Hope she's out there. Craig, the UK market, it's obviously one of our home original markets, quite a mature market. What's the state of the market at the moment? A few bullet points. Some of the guys out there and what they should be doing. Over to you, sir.

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, no, it's good to be here again. It's been a very busy January as I would call it, the battle of the analysts, especially from most of our clients perspective and other ones we've been speaking to more specifically on that kind of front office fx cash management side the coin there, it's very much consuming large parts of the time. We've been bracing ourselves in the market and I think a lot of that also comes down to a lot of people in strategic positions. We were speaking about this the other day, Mike playing put in their current companies, which I think is why finding a lot more stuff at this level, especially a lot more than we had last year coming through, we've Been able to do a great amount of work, but a very high demand. We've been seeing a lot of opportunities around the up and down the M4 corridor, Thames Valley, that whole London loop. It's. Yeah, it's been, it's been busy and.

It'S an interesting one. We've studied this in the salary survey and we'll come back to that later in the show. What's the UK market doing in terms of return to work? Working remotely. How's hybrid? Is it everyone back in five days or is it completely remote in the uk?

Yes, certainly not back in five days. Although there are a few exceptions, the vast majority is still very much hybrid. Two to three days, three being really the top end for most. What we are finding, most of the London based clients we support continue to adopt the 2 to 3. The clients who we support, who are, as I said, outside that London loop predominantly are going on the lesser side, the one to two days a week, and they're actually attracting, or even sometimes a fortnight to attract that talent who otherwise in the previously wouldn't have looked externally from going in central London. So that's always been quite a big dynamic change. It's certainly not had any kind of hit on salaries, which has been fantastic and I actually think because of the demand, and once again, I won't mention it too much, but going back into the analyst side, there you're finding what you're getting for the experience of what the market rate is. And that's why so many people in the UK, over 420 UK professionals took part this year, which is the highest ever uptake, which is fantastic. And that's very telling. Although I wouldn't say analyst was the biggest category, I think the biggest was actually more at that treasury manager, Assistant Treasurer level, the biggest kind of uptake. And I think once again, as we mentioned, where a lot of people are staying in their strategic position doesn't mean they're not interested to know how competitive the market rates are. So it's very telling.

Before we go on to the advice we're going to give clients, I'm just going to touch on the senior market. I keep getting asked every week, oh, what's the market like? If you've got a new role? For me, and a lot of the time I'm saying to these candidates, treasurers or deputy Treasurers, and I said, are you moving? They're like, no, I'm waiting for the next role to become available. Exactly. And why are you hanging on? Because I'm waiting for my Bonus. Exactly. So the other person, you're what is in front of you that is more senior than you, that's another company as a group treasurer, they're waiting for their bonus. So I do think we're in the first quarter, the first month of 2023, I think it will improve. I think there is going to start to be some movement. One of the other things I'm seeing at the senior level is a number of senior treasury professionals are being made. As you touch on there, Craig, they were two to three days a week in the office. Now they're actually been pulled back in more, three, maybe four days, more strategic, more getting involved in the business again. But actually some of those guys, when I'm talking to them on wanting to go back and when I say not wanting to go back, not wanting to go back to their jobs, but also not wanting to go back to their companies, I. E. They're at the end of their careers or latter half and they're saying, I want a bit more balance, I want to maybe do interim or step out of it, which is going to leave some gaps. We've also got, despite recession looming and everything else, treasury, as I talked to a client yesterday, is recession. Treasury is recession resistant, not recession proof resistant. We don't get phone calls saying, oh, I want ten treasures, please. We get a phone call, we want two treasury people, please. And it's oh, okay. And that's a boom for us rather than. And someone said, is that really the case? I said, well, yeah, if you've got a team of say five, five to eight people, call it five and one person leaves, you can probably spread the workload amongst the other four of you for a period of time. But then if another person leaves, maybe a maternity or actually just leaves, leaves actually just like great touches on there about the analyst level, that work needs to be done. And if you're the treasurer, oh my God, I've got to get back and step in and get on the desk. So, yeah, that's where I'm seeing. And Greg, you've just talked about it there, where people are being forced to recruit sort of thing. But when they are being forced to recruit, what's the advice you're going to tell you to give to them? Because we've seen some mixed results when people are trying to go through interview process. We saw one actually, which was a LinkedIn advert and my comment to it was go back to the 1980s where they said the first screening will be with our talent team, second screening will be with Two members of the team and then another three members will be the third round and then at the fourth round they'll meet this person. I thought, hang on, you're saying great in a way because it shows this is the. All the hoops and obstacles people have to get past for this. It was a 12 month interim role maybe, but you're saying they're going to go through all these hoops just to get an offer. Whereas your next door neighbor or the company across the road from you is going come in two rounds of interviews, we accelerate it and we'll make a job offer and do what the job and stuff. And maybe if you want more to get to know us, that's fine. We saw that. Great. What's your advice to clients? If you like, they're out there.

Two words, positive pace. Given the, the speed in which things are moving on the market, we'll always do our due diligence, we'll always know the situation going into this and where the risk would be on all side. But I would say from the first moment we would be discussing and really breaking down what you're looking for. We would want from that initial conversation I would call like the three best people within three weeks. So the moment that we put people in front of you, if, and in a lot of cases we will identify the, have lots of great conversations, will identify the best three people within the first week. You've then got two weeks, really get through that first stage, which will be likely like a team's remote, that the final stage, sometimes the back end of the same week, it very much depends on how the market but certainly that at the analyst level we're supporting a lot at the moment. That's the pace it needs to move. If this thing stretches out a month, there's a very strong likelihood because the moment we start having that initial conversation with someone, even if they're not actively looking on the market, as soon as we let them know their salary no longer probably stacks up in the market, it opens the door for them a little bit quicker to see what else is out there. So as soon as we put the idea in their mind that there's other things out there that could be of interest, the pace picks up. And that's the thing, that's what we've been advising.

Amazing. We'll keep you on the show there. Just to put you back in your box for five minutes. Craig, we're going to hand over the microphone to the lovely Katie who joins us us dialing in remotely. Actually sound quality is not too bad. But, Katie, European markets, I know you've had a easy end to the year, done a lot of work with some of the clients. We can actually talk about them. So you've got Chanel and got a couple of others who. What's the. What's the state of the European market? Over to you.

Hi, thank you for inviting me on. It's busy and the job roles are spread quite widely across all the different markets. So sometimes we have roles that are in one specific location for the first sort of few months of a year, but actually these are across the board, just pulling on from sort of what Craig said over the last kind of quarter. And going into this year, it's been very much a battle for treasury analysts. What I'm finding in Europe is the demand for treasury analysts is very high in comparison with other years. But what's happening is that the candidates have got their choice of where to go and it's pushing up the salaries quite significantly versus the experience level. So that has.

Sorry to dip in there as well. I just thought I'd add. One of the things you and I talked about recently is someone said, what is drive? How come there's suddenly this boom at the treasury analyst level? You and I said that it was so. We've never seen so many promotions on LinkedIn throughout Covid. Coming into Covid, people had a year's experience then they had Covid working two years from home. We're a year out of it now. So you've got treasury analysts and they're either getting promoted internally unless you give me a senior treasury analyst title and pay rise, and the same with a. And or treasure Analyst. I want to be a manager now. Great. Can you backfill my old role? Because there has been movement or given more responsibility. We were seeing that was driving things as well, but then also that came into the sort of the flexible working or two to three days. I think you said it was a little bit more. The word, more concrete in Europe about which days is it one day or is it five or what is it?

The maximum is three days in the office. So it's two to three days in the office. And that is quite consistent across all clients, across all markets. I think also that has opened up an opportunity to be able to widen the talent pool, if you like, because candidates are more willing to commute that little bit further if they've only got to go into the office two or three, or they've got to do that journey two or three times a year. I think one of the, the things that I've been finding recently and definitely at the end of last year is that because of this, this drive or this talent war at treasury analyst level, companies are actually looking at their structures over the next sort of 6 to 12 months. And one of my clients was only looking for one treasury analyst, but because it was such a tough find, getting the right level with the right salary, they found, they identified two people through us who were very good, slightly different levels and they fast tracked sign off to be able to take on that extra person because they had, they knew this year, towards the end of this year they were going to need another person and because of the recruitment being so tough for them, they decided to get that done and dusted at that time and that's what we're finding.

And advice to clients, that's you talking about the market, but advice to clients, if you know someone's listening, they're a bit more senior, they are recruiting at whatever level treasury manager might recruit their replacement. What are you saying to them to attract people? What's the hook? If you like.

I think you do need to look at the hybrids that you're offering. I think it's very important to just look at the salaries and the benefits that you're offering because actually they have changed quite significantly over the last year. So obviously it would be good to get your teams to do the salary survey. I think you need to look at the leadership piece. It's something that you and I, Mike, picked up on when we did the training at the ATTIL conference in Luxembourg in December, that actually a lot of people with these promotions are becoming first time managers. But not only that, they are also having to manage effectively through hybrid working, which is completely different than face to face. My advice to clients is make sure your leadership training's up to scratch and again similar to Craig, very much around making sure that you've got a robust recruitment process. But I think I've spoken a lot so I think it's now my turn to get my own back on you, Mike, because people will be interested in the US market as well.

Yeah, it's, it's been fun actually, you.

Being kept busy with Holly on the.

US market, the end of 2022 was exceptionally busy. We'd had some interesting roles throughout last year. We did streamline media, we've been doing some work with darling ingredients. We, we're right the way across and if you think about that Magnite based in the northwest of the US but actually a remote role, dreamland based in la. But again, a remote role. I think, again, that's the key thing. If you put a remote role up out there. I've seen clients getting 100, 200 applications, but then we then get the phone call a couple of weeks later. So how are they? So they're all remote people, but there's a reason sometimes they're not always the best quality candidates. Not all the time, but a lot of the time it's just, oh, I can work remotely from out of the country. You can't. You need the visa. Because at the end of the day, you have to be employed by the US entity itself. And so you have to be a US citizen or have a green card or whatever. So I think that's one of the things. But they. The roles are spread evenly across the us. West coast is obviously pretty busy. We cover more the central regions and east coast in particular. We have done the west coast, but a lot of the time people have there and they'll be able to recruit direct themselves. What we are seeing is throughout, say, Texas, very busy. In fact, we've got a couple of roles just coming up there at the moment. East coast and throughout Chicago as well. Midwest, very busy, more central city locations. If you're putting up a Treasury manager role, you're probably getting 30 or 40 responses. And this is not through us, this is going to LinkedIn. But then what they're saying is, oh, but actually we need the specialist skills. And then I'm saying to them, did you get any of those in this generalist response, no. And that's where we step in. We've said that we are a specialist treasury recruitment company. We identify what you need and actually that's why we exist, otherwise we wouldn't be here. One of the other bits we're saying to clients, we were recruiting for a client up in the Midwest and they were saying, oh, it's a hybrid role. Okay, that's hybrid. Yeah, but we. The person must come in the office three days a week. It's not really every single week. Yeah, every single week must be in three days to supervise the team. That's not a hybrid role. Hybrid role is one to two days with flexibility that one week you might be in two, three days and the next week you're not in. Whereas them it was must be in. So actually wasn't. So I thought it was quite false and actually it meant it very difficult and noticed the roles come back on the market three times since then. And also the other way, we've got the amazing Leanne Perkins, as said, she was on our podcast a while ago. She with her role. She actually, she actually works three weeks a month from home remotely and then one week in the office. So she travels to the office. She's based down in Texas, they're based on the west coast. So she spends. Does a blitz week if you like. So meets everyone does very well. The other thing to think about, salaries. We're going to come on to the salary survey in a minute but the US market itself really asks salary. Let's just move on to the salary survey. This each month we're going to do a feature. This month we're going to feature the salary survey because I've got to give some credit. Oh God, it's making me feel sick. The amazing Craig Perkins. I was pushing the salary survey back at the middle of the year. We'd done our Q2 update and it was really a struggle to get everyone to update themselves. So I then gave the responsibility to Craig and Katie and I, we swung off to Euro Finance, put our feet up. I didn't. Went to Eurofinance Conference Austria. It was amazing. We had our photographer. 300 people had their LinkedIn photos done, 5,000 photos later and two and a half, three days of standing on a feet. Both Katie and I were quite broken. But we got back to the news that Craig in then in October, November, wanted to AP Craig, you took the survey from I think about 250, 300 to over a thousand, didn't you? Cheeky.

Exactly that you.

No, you've gone very distant, Craig. You're miles away from them. What?

Exactly that, Mike.

Hang on, I'm going to read. I'll redo that because you start off reading backgrounds. So it was amazing that you took it up to over a thousand. What was that about? How did you get that, Mr. Perkins?

Oh, force a habit, Mike. You ask and I just deliver. Same day delivery service.

What was it like? Because we've done the salary survey now. In fact we are. End of January. Amazing. It's gone out. Went out yesterday to over a thousand people. We've seen salaries. I'm just trying to think. I'm a bit salary survey blind at the moment. I've done so much on it past few days, it's amazing. If you want the survey results, go to treasurysalary.com take part. For those of you that did take part, thank you very much. I think you'll see now where the salaries are strongest and if we just look at the markets, the uk pretty good. Europe, I would say probably on A par. You're looking at some of the salaries, Katie. How are you seeing salary stacking up just in general terms and working highlights?

Yeah, no, I think they are sort of what we expected. Obviously, we touched on it just now in regards to treasury analysts, I think there's a slight movement on the benefits, the additional benefits that are on offer, especially when it comes to car allowance and things like that. And obviously one of the key things as well that we forget about is the softer side of things, not just the salary, but in terms of how happy people are in their role and the different elements there, which we obviously also capture on the salary survey.

Yeah, And I think that's an interesting one. One of the stats that both Craig and I was noticed talking to you, Katie, about this, that when we looked at that, we talked about hybrid a lot through this episode. Uk, Europe, it's got this happy medium of two to three days in the us. I think they're still getting used to it. And I can say this because the figures tell us this. We ask people, how many days are you currently in the office? How many days do you want to be in the office? How many days does your company want you to be in the office? Now, it was a bit weird, actually, some of the results, because people working remotely, that's fine, but then there's actually 25% of our respondents were in the office four to five days. Now. I thought, oh, crumbs. Maybe this is because their client, the clients were asking them to be in. Actually, they weren't. Only one in 10 clients was asking them to be in four to five days. But I think the workload maybe is driving that. That's from some of the conversations we've had, but in actual fact, when I've looked at it, how many of the candidates want to be in the office four to five days and say, yeah, I'd like to know this. Four to five days a week. Only one in 20. So only 5% of the entire survey of the US wants to be in the office, say, five days a week. So it means. It's an interesting one that it seems that clients have got used to it, but whether they're providing the support for those treasury professionals in the us, I'm not sure they are at the moment. That's one of the things I've seen. Any final bits before. We've got a couple of conference bits coming up. I know that I contributed, I did about the. With Matthias from Cobase, covering hidden gems. So we've got that content piece I've got another bit with the iAct, so look on our website. We'll send that out to you on LinkedIn as well about young talent. Everything else. Anything else, you guys, we talk about next month. We're going to do the same. The review of the podcast. We've had that month podcast in the future and then I think we're going to do resumes and CVs next month. A very popular topic. Anything else you guys want to chip in?

I would say Treasury Career Corner Live, 13th of April in London and absolutely fundamental to the diary for everyone listening.

Thank you very much. He actually did one, it's on our YouTube channel. We interviewed Kemi Balarin from GXO, Anthony Buchanan from Asahi, Emily Helps from AMS. Three amazing treasury professionals talked about their treasury careers for about 40 minutes. Really interesting. Had 100 plus people in the office in 100 plus people in the audience rather. That brage worked really hard to get. So again, just be cracking the whip. No, well done, Craig and well done, Katie. We were there and she was gonna be my standing if I didn't get back from Dublin. But great event. We're gonna re run it and we're also going to do one in April. We're going to also do another one later on in the year again in London. But in November we've got other conferences. We've got Windy City Summit in the us Then you've got AFP towards the end of the year. We've got Euro financing in Barcelona, but we'll put those on our events page as well and we'll put links to those in the show notes. Amazing to chat to both of you. Thank you very much, guys.

Take care.

Bye.

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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