Why You Should Use a Treasury Recruiter to Grow your Team with Stephen Long

Hello, it's Mike Richards here from the treasury recruitment company. I hope you're enjoying the Treasury Career Corner. If you are great news, perhaps you give us a rating on itunes or wherever you consume your podcast content. This means that even more treasury professionals can benefit from finding out or by finding out about how treasurers have achieved their career goals. The link to rate our show will list at the bottom of our show notes. And please remember as well, the show itself is as much about you as it is about us. There are specific questions you want us to ask or there's feedback you want to give. Please drop me an email. My direct email is mikeresuryrecruitment.com inventibly enough, but anyway, that's enough from me. Let's get on with the show.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. I talk to them about how they got started in treasury, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going. Next this week's show. Delighted to be joined by a good friend of mine, Steve Long, Group treasurer Williams Lee Tag. Williams Lee Tag is a global company that offers business process outsourcing to large companies. I just spoke to Steve briefly before we started the interview to say what does that mean? How do you want me to describe it? Well, we agreed that Steve would explain. I mean basically there are marketing and digital services coming company and it's a broad title but it's fascinating nonetheless. So I'll get Steve to talk that through. Steve has been within treasury for many years now and I've actually been helping Steve with some of his career moves over that time. Enough from me, I don't want to waffle on too much. Steve, talk us through how you first ever got started finance, then progressed into Treasury.

I mean, I think Mike, I think your audience knows that we love to hear your voice. However, I started out in Solbank. I wanted a steady job that would pay well over time. I went through a bank for five years, working my way through to front office where I was doing all of the good things that treasury dealers like to do, but from a bank side. So I was doing all your foreign exchange, all of your money markets, all your securities, enjoying myself immensely.

And then how did you hear about treasury or how did a Treasury role come about?

After spending five years of a supposed five year plan, I saw the light and decided that corporate was more to my speed. Had a chat with Nigel Hopkins, excellent Treasury recruiter of the day, got my first corporate treasury interview and that was.

At where Trafigero and talk through those guys. I know them, but again, a lot of our audience won't know your first role in Treasury. You walked in the door.

Exactly. Now, Trafigura was a burgeoning new enterprise. It only been going for two or three years after the senior leadership had left Mr. Rich and gone to pursue their own oil trading career. Obviously they've gone from strength to strength now and they're huge. One of the big names all over the world, it was myself and my treasurer, Paul Oland. The two of us basically forged ahead, building our relationships with our banks, getting our processes correct, generally having fun.

And then you did that role for a couple of years. Moving on, then. So, English China Clays.

This is an example of why you should always go to an interview. English China Clays were based in Reading and I lived in Essex. It's one of my favorite sayings. What's 100 miles of good road when you get down to it? I went to the interview thinking nothing of this. It was just experience for me, just the chance to sound out what the market was like, meet some interesting people. But I went for the interview and I loved it. I loved the niche business that it was obviously being chemicals, paper, coating, some mining elements down in Cornwall. And the head office function, being in Reading made for a nice environment. Reading being a university town, it's quite young and I was at the time quite young. Really nice people. Paul Outridge, the treasurer, fantastic chap, and really just got on well with them. And when they offered me the role, I snapped it up. Now it led to me living away from home for a while, living locally in Reading, beer and breakfast, while I looked for a home again, that's an experience. Things that you have to do when you're starting out a career with a new company, you have to take the leap, as it were.

Why did you make that leap? Why did you think it was worth it? We spoke to Mark Van Den Benp from Johnson Controls recently and he said, don't turn anything down. You know, he was saying, just make that leap. Every time it sounds like you're repeating that advice that you're not going to. These chances are going to keep coming up, so grab it and then see where it takes you. And it sounds like you did the same.

I wouldn't always say take every leap. Sometimes you have to gauge where. Yeah, exactly. Within reason. You have to gauge your future and what you want to do. And at that point, I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a fairly Decent home life and Inga Shai clays. It was a seven minute commute. I was working with some brilliant people, learning some brilliant things about treasury system implementation, working on some really interesting things for a business that was under threat of takeover all the time. So there was almost like a gallows humor. But the staff, the head office function, I think there are only 35 of us in the office, so we'd meet up at weekends, we'd meet up in the evenings. Everyone knew each other, everyone knew each other's partners. It was just the kind of home environment I wanted to sort of mature into treasury in.

And that worked. And then you moved on.

As I said, the threat of takeover finally reared its head. I chatted to a well known treasury recruiter who shall not remain nameless, who told me what I need to do next. And I moved on from there to kpmg. I was the treasury function for the consulting company. It was very much similar to the role I'm doing now at Williams Re Tag in that it was a green field. They were being prepped for sale past all of the scandals around the consulting companies at that time. And I basically was brought in to set up the bank relationships, set up the processes, hire a team and get us to a point where a prospective buyer could come in with a fully operational treasury team. As you can imagine, that sort of entrepreneurial consultant vibe was very different to a traditional corporate. So dealing with people who are on one job for a week and then on another job for six months and then onto common somewhere else made a real sort of impact on me, showed me a different side of Treasury.

In what way?

Just that sort of flexibility, that sort of willingness to go somewhere and envelop new processes and just be part of a different team for a short period of time and then go and be part of a different team for a short period of time. It showed me that sort of consultants make a real impact because they come with no preconceptions. They obviously have favored banks, favored systems, they know what works. They go into a company and assess what they're doing and see if what they're doing works for them. And if it doesn't, they prefer suggestions.

That's sort of been a theme of your career as well. You've done someone with a look, you know, and perhaps people will look at your LinkedIn profile and things they can see, oh, hang on, made a move, made a move. But as you say, it's in. Make an impact, change things, get things to a really good steady state, improve state, everything else and then you've made a move on. Would that be fair, would you say?

Yeah, no, it would. I mean, one of the, one of the roles I enjoyed greatly was when I was at Informa working for Michelle Dovey. When I went in for sort of the final interview, she said, okay, I expect value out of you week one and it's like, well, that's why I'm here. So to go in, develop the process that we wanted to put in place, move the project forward, but also mentor young staff, that kind of is where I am at the moment. It's built not only my own career but other people's.

But added value straight away and measuring your value, which I think some people have said to me that within treasury sometimes it can be difficult to measure from day one. If you're trying to look at that, where am I? Adding value gives a different ethos to it as well.

Yeah, no, exactly.

So taking us through some of the earlier moves, English China Clays, as we said, we then moved on and kpmg, just give us a quick whistle stop tour of your background from there because you did Genworth, which was XGE and various other bits, but give us a quick whistle stop of some of those moves.

After kpmg I took some time out of Treasury. I basically did finance project and had a really interesting sort of dynamic understanding. Six Sigma Prince 2 and working on my project management skills so that when I decided to get back into Treasury, Genoa Financial and Charter were two short term contract options I was looking at Genworth Financial passed me over for someone with more insurance experience. And so I went to work for Charter to help them rebuild their treasury function. Six months down the line, Genworth Financial came back for me because an opportunity had arisen and they liked me enough that they came back and said, would you come on board now? And I then spent six years at Genworth as the Treasury Project Manager. So utilizing everything I'd learned so far, all of my treasury skills and my project skills to really be sort of the treasury business partner for growth and.

Drawing it all together and using all the different bits that you'd. All the bits of your treasury toolkit, if you like, that you developed over the time.

Exactly. You need skills to anchor you in the role. Taking a short term second to do something like project management may seem a lateral move, but it actually all builds back so that when you're looking at a large scale implementation, when you're looking at an RFI RFP for a bank, when you're looking at implementing a system you speak the project people's language. It's all very well. Knowing your bank accounts or knowing your risk structures, knowing your foreign exchange situation between two of your counterparties and two of your subsidiaries, it's all knowing that. But if you don't understand how project people work, it's almost valueless.

And how do they work? You know, what's your. When you're the sort of conduit, if you like, between treasury and those project guys you're sitting with, those project guys, are they just totally gold driven? Got to get this done. You're going to help me. Thanks very much. Or, you know, what's. What's been your. How have you approached it?

There are various methodologies that you learn over the years. Some. Some of them, like the many. Hat is an interesting one, where you go into the meeting. Meetings are where everything is solved. Or rather that is the traditional way meetings are done. I find it's better if meetings are done to a firm and project people appreciate that because as you say, they're very goal driven. And if you've already resolved the problem or you have the solution, you've shared the solution, you go to a meeting and it's at that point you say, this is where we're going forward now. So next step, move on. Traditional treasury people, I think within Finance are the most able to make that sort of leap because we're not so focused on the past, we're very focused on the future. And project people appreciate that.

Yeah. And you were there six years at Genworth and then things changed there as well.

Yeah. No, this was a sign of the times. Not long after the financial crisis, everyone was more cued in on reporting, but obviously times were tight and they wanted to get a reporting member of staff in. So they looked at what they deemed to be luxury. Kind of took it as a compliment that I was deemed to be a luxury. And it gave me the opportunity to move on.

You moved on to the lovely Invensis.

An opportunity to do it. Carl Fenlon and Claire Moore, two of my favorite people within Treasury.

Mine too. Gotta say that, because they are legendary.

Being in a situation where you're brought in to right the ship and given free reign and then being able to surprise them with the amount of delivery, the amount of results that you're able to put on the table, the whole situation with Carl, when I would present my goals for the year and he would say, steve, you don't understand this process. You're supposed to have three or four. And I'd go in with a list of 13.

Yeah.

And I'd say, well, no, this has to be done. I'm gonna do this. He said, well, you won't. You won't get it all done. I said, well, let's see. And to achieve that and more, because given support, encouragement and having my back, that was just so freeing to be able to just run with everything that needed to be done knowing that they had my back.

They're all stretch goals as well. I remember them all being, you know, the. That was Carl's default as well. He, you know, told me some of the ways that he approached management and the way that he managed things, it was, well, if you want to stretch yourself, you know that that was what he was all up for as well, wasn't he?

Yeah, yeah. Sad day when he moved on. Yeah, from working with me, but allowed me to work closer with Claire and build a really good relationship with her. Still talk every so often now and then.

Two and a half years there and then move on.

No, exactly. From there to Hyperion, another insurance company. Again, a situation where I was brought in. The treasurer needed someone with more operational skills. Treasury workstation implementation, all of the good things. And getting a handle on the operational side of Treasury. So, again, embedding myself into the purchase, to pay order, to confirm sides of the business, to really understand the forecasting and making a real difference. As I said, with the whole contracting base, you have to make the difference.

And when you do that, do you literally walk in the door before you were at interview, say, right, these are the differences I can make for you, or what's the way you approach it? Or do you say, look, this is what I can help you with. Once you're in the door, you sit down and say, right, let's agree the project goals and let me run.

Predominantly, you want to get an understanding of what they see as the goals, because they may or may not be on the right path. And even at interview, you have a chance to steer them. Now, obviously, with William C. Tagg, when I came in here for Interview, my first interview, they laid out for me what the project would be, what the intention was, where we were going. At second interview, I then told them where they were wrong and what they needed and how I would get them there.

They did get the job. So it was a good plan. No, exactly.

Exactly. It was what they needed to hear. They needed to know that the person coming in not only had the vision, the shared vision, but understood a way to make it better.

So when you walked in, what did that first Interview, what did they, you know, without, you know, company secrets as it were, what was their intention for Treasury? And when you went in second interview, how did it differ? Just give us a bit of granularity to it maybe.

I suppose from the first interview perspective, the selling company conducted interview and laid out what their vision was and they needed someone to come in and remove their obligations as quickly as possible, remove links with their systems without really giving Williamsley Tag a system to work in a replacement structure for the obligations. It was very much a one sided approach. And also the bank in question, they wanted to give us as our partner. They hadn't spoken with that bank about whether or not that bank wanted to do it. I came in second interview and said that's not the bank, they won't want to do this because they're not in these countries, their footprint doesn't match that. We need to get a system in place as soon as possible. We need to work out the obligations on a time scale that suits us, not necessarily the seller. And we need to agree that with them because the finance team here, the CFO and the group controller were being pushed down a path by the seller because they didn't know any better.

Yeah, from that perspective.

No, exactly, exactly. And it was that brief short shot education that convinced them I was the right man for the job.

And you went in there, tell us about, as I said at the beginning of the show, Williams Lee Tag, you and I talked about how it's a sort of marketing digital group but, you know, tailors messages for clients and things like that. If you look on the web it says business process or outsourcing and mailing and stuff. But it's very different to that now. So give us a quick sort of sketch if you would, of the company.

Well, we're very much a one stop shop. A lot of companies, I mean I've worked for media companies in the past who outsource a lot of what they do, be that the digital content, the managed print services, the outsourcing, some of the marketing materials, et cetera. And that's not what we do. We provide everything. We provide full campaign support, we provide all the managed print services. The best example I can give is, and similar to something Michael said before, we have advertising campaigns that if you go in one country, say in the uk, they'll be talking about, I don't want to name a client but let's say toothpaste. Toothpaste, everyone uses toothpaste now in some countries like the uk, they'll talk about gum disease and they'll talk about decay and they'll talk about what the toothpaste is going to do and they'll show you pictures of before and after. In some countries that we deal with, we have to edit the campaign to remove any sight of blood. So our digital people have to sort of get involved, edit the pictures. So the campaign, the stands you'll see in the supermarkets will be markedly different between the UK and let's say Turkey or the UK and the United Arab Emirates or Thailand or. This is where we're trying to get to. It's having that global view of global understanding, local view. That's what we're really good at.

Global group acting locally. Because I remember when I first came to the offices and I was shown that the sort of three stands if you like, for the, as you say, a well known car brand and you know, we're showing that this is the Brazilian stand, this is the UK or the US one, and this is one in Japanese. But each of the adverts were quite similar that were being shown on the TV screens above. But they're all quite different because they were saying, well actually they wouldn't like this ostentatious show in such and such, so you need to tailor your actual entire. And it was audio, visual, you know, so. Oh, wow, okay. And then they were saying, and the brochures are slightly different but all tailored, you know, by, you know, acting very locally as well.

Yeah, no, exactly. And as I was saying, we've expanded even subsequently to being purchased by Aztec International. We've now conducted three acquisitions of our own to enhance and expand our brand offerings in regional markets across Europe, across America, across Canada, across Australia. We're growing all the time.

I was going to say, where do you see that growth coming from? Is that expanding into developing markets like that or is it existing markets where you're growing? I mean, I know it'd be maybe a combination of both, but what's the growth plans for the group?

When our new CEO came on board, he came with a very, very detailed plan. He'd already identified multip targets globally that he thought would be something that would provide us with opportunities for cross selling, to enhance our offering and to really make the most of our footprint. So yeah, we're seeing growth in all regions. Even in mature markets such as Europe, we're seeing growth.

Looking at your career, you've come all the way through a number of different roles, lots of consultancy, lots of different things. How have you seen treasury change, if you like, and if you sort of sit back in your armchair for a moment, as I'm sure you are in that office, just, you know, sitting back and you think, right, treasury started here. This is where it's got to now, where's it go from and to. Where do you see it progressing sort of thing?

Well, treasury, when I start, is very much a mature finance role. So your average group treasurer was a lot older than they are now and they'd worked in the market and obviously the financial markets were very different back then. When I worked at the bank, I dealt with brokerage houses all the time. Not something I have ever done as a corporate treasury person. The act has empowered treasury and enabled people starting out in finance to move into treasury, whereas Treasury. I think when I started with something that that wasn't the case. You've had to have 5, 10 years experience to move into Treasury. Now it's more opportunistic. The chances are there for people to take.

I think it's also, you know, when I first started as a Treasury recruiter, people saying, oh, do you recruit for the government? Then I'm like, no, not that kind of hm, treasury, not mine. And I'm like, and then the financial crisis came along. You know, perhaps be at a dinner party or, you know, having a couple of drinks with someone, and then you'd say, oh, I'm a Treasury recruiter. And they'd say, oh, you know, before their eyes glazed over, they suddenly said, oh, that's about liquidity and that's about why we've had this recession and there was this big gap and then everything else and there was a run on the banks. What suddenly became treasury went from being nowhere to being more mainstream, you know, and people were just like, oh, okay, this, this is what you do. Then I was like, yeah. And it was, it was a very strange sort of change over sort of 15 years. You know, it took 15 years for people to understand what I did and probably. Well, it probably took me longer as well.

So, no, I still get asked those questions now.

Yeah. You know, you've recruited in the past and you recruited not just even in this role. What's your recruitment methodology? Obviously, we're a recruitment podcast and all that malarkey. But, you know, what's your, you know what you like when you're looking to recruit? Because you just mentioned there about the Act. You look at the qualifications or you look at attitude. What, what are you looking at when you're reviewing CVs and resumes and interviewing people?

When I look at CVs, I obviously look for skills. Yeah, because that's all you can really tell from a cv. You look for the skills, you look for the experience. And then it's a question of speaking to people like yourself, Mike and Danielle and saying, okay, this is good. This person on paper is what I want. That fits the niche that I'm looking for. What do they like? And then it's a conversation between myself and yourself over, is this person going to fit with me? Because they might be the best treasury analyst or treasury manager in the world and if their personality doesn't fit with mine, we won't be efficient. Yeah, I can take someone with the right skills and experience and enhance them, but need to know that I'm not going to be wasting my time. And the interview process tells you so much about people, it gives you a real sort of firsthand snapshot into their personality.

You and I, we've worked together for 20 plus years. We knew a lovely guy called Nigel Hopkins and he was back in the day and some of the people would barely remember there was a thing called a fax machine. So when you used to send CVs when I first started, you would actually feed them into a machine and the client would stand by them and pull out the fax and Then read the CVs and then call you say, yeah, I'd like to see this person. That all changed.

Exactly.

But then also now that sort of methodology for finding people, your LinkedIn is predominant and you and I have talked about this and profiles, what other things you as an employer and then also employee job seeking. How have you seen the world of treasury change in that sense in recruitment world, sort of thing?

To take it even further back, obviously, when I started out at the bank, I was adamant I would never have a mobile phone because why would I need one? There's a phone at home and there are phones on street corners. Why do I need a phone? But communication is so important these days. LinkedIn and the other recruitment apps are so prevalent and so easy to use. But even with all that technology, I still come back to the relationship with the recruiters and I've got good relationships with most of the treasury recruiters. Those are the things you leverage. I still think it's a people driven business. I still think recruitment relies on people and knowing people and I think that's where the value is for me.

When I've had discussions with people, they said, well, aren't you worried you're going to be replaced by machines? And it's both on the flip side with Treasury People have said, I said on the last show, no, not really, because what we do is a machine. They're learning. What we do is actually relate people to people. All the machines do, and all those APIs and, you know, recruitment systems and things like LinkedIn, they make my job easier. Now, I wouldn't have been able to recruit globally before LinkedIn, or I could have done, but really struggled. Whereas now we moved a candidate that we accessed, he was a guy from Finland that was in Paris that we moved down to Munich for one of our clients. We would never have been able to make that move or never known that, that breadth of people without these recruitment tools. And it sounds like, as you say, that impacted you as a candidate for a client as well.

No, exactly. I mean, we're not. I hope we're not moving to the treasury equivalent of Tinder. I think that you do need the people rather than. Rather than machines. Machines have their place and obviously, as you say, they expand your reach, expand your awareness of things. I was talking to the tax director before I came in here and he was talking about the earthquake in Indonesia. He said, are there more earthquakes now? I said, no, you just know about them?

Yeah.

Are there more good treasury people out there now? No. You just know about them?

Yeah.

Knowing and being able to have the relationship I have with you enables me to find these people, to find the hidden gems.

Looking at treasury itself, how's that developing? Where do you see treasury going in the next few years again? I've talked to some of the guys that sort of said it's more about the people. Some people say, oh, more about technology. Each person has a different view on it, which is fascinating to me. But where do you see treasury developing in the future?

I do believe technology will have more of a say. I think the more we move to virtual bank accounts and machine learning to speed up finance elements of it, I think there'll be much more integration between treasury systems and ERP systems as we move forward. Even down to everyone becoming bank neutral, which I know banks don't like hearing, but I think it's the future. I honestly believe that treasury teams will have to. It comes back to adding value. Treasury teams will have to. To maintain any amount of size will have to add more value. So making yourself more visible to the cfo, providing him with solutions and things of which he has not yet thought or had time to think of, those are the areas treasury needs to move to.

Want to wrap up today's episode a little bit with, you know, looking back at Steve and say, you know, someone listens to this podcast today and they say, actually, I want to. I want a career similar to Steve. I want to do this sort of consultancy roles have a wider breadth rather than just step, step, step. I want to do lots of different things which treasury has provided that great variety of stuff. But if you were to look back over your career, as we wrap up today's episode and someone says, right, I want to be like Steve, what would you suggest they do?

I would say be confident. Take the opportunities that arise that are right for you. Don't always go into a situation because there are some horrible situations out there. Learn from everyone around you because everyone has something to add. They wouldn't be there if they weren't.

On those final words of wisdom, we wrap up today's show. Thanks very much, Steve. As I say, if you want to connect with Steve, do so via LinkedIn. I'm sure he'll have some other wise words for you. And you'll always entertain a beer or three. We've done that before. Thanks very much for today, Steve. It's been really good one and very different as well. Some good added value there. And thanks very much for your time.

Thanks very much, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

Great stuff.