ZOOM GROUP CALL - Week 6_ Developing An Effective Recruitment Search Strategy _ Program Review Week

It.

Hello. Hello.

I made it. There you go. Is it?

Oh.

That mic.

Yeah, just like that. Yay.

Made it.

Let's do that down there. Katie, can you hear me?

I can, yeah.

Cool. All right. Just having a problem with my microphone, but I wasn't 100. Sure. Cool. Smaller group this week. I think people are just bored of us now. There are enough, really. Could we fit everyone on one screen?

I know.

Ramesh Ranganathan where he just has everyone on his one screen. That's it. Cheer up, Carl. Am I ever happen? Carl's got a very serious face on his. One more week of this crap. Right, that's it. Oh, we're filling a screen. That's good£ is there? She's awake. That's nice. Good. Lovely. You're gonna kick this off, aren't you, Katie? You're in charge.

I am, yeah.

Poor people.

Should we wait or should we start?

Give it a few seconds. We've got. Let it wall. Yeah, we're. We're. We literally are suddenly filling up onto. Now. We're on two screens. So I think. So recent out the registration thing, because I think zoom throughout all of this has really struggled, like the, you know, the grown, like 400% or some crazy something or 4,000%. I think we had, like only had 15 registered and then suddenly it's gone 28 and now it's like, oh, you're up at 42. So I think, yeah, minute passed. Yeah. 38 people. So just it's like literally ticking up. 39, 30, 40. Yeah. Do you want to kick off me?

Yeah. So this week was very much about self marketing and your hunting strategy. I think, you know, for those of you who have searched for a job before, which I'm sure most of you have, you know, job hunting itself requires some form of a strategy and action plan. So most job hunters won't wait for adverts. It's common fact that about 80% of the roles aren't actually advertised. So there's a lot that you really need to be proactive about in terms of researching and ways that you can find out about jobs that aren't necessarily advertised. So AMA and I are just going to talk through sort of a couple of sort of top ways to search for jobs. And then Mike will take you through sort of working with agencies and then we will take you through sort of how to really make sure that you do spectrum with an action plan, a weekly action plan. So, I mean, you've got networking, which is obviously the biggest one, and obviously it pulls into what we've discussed throughout this course, and it's really very much around obviously utilising your connections within LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever you've got connections and utilising their connections as well.

So.

So it's very much around a research exercise that can lead you to speculatively approaching contacts within your network. One of the things not to do and what we kind of spoke to you about is, you know, you need to make those approaches very personable and also very much not about asking have you got any jobs there or have you got any jobs that suit me there? So it's very much around sort of researching exercise on the kind of businesses that you want to work in and then finding out whether or not you've got a contact within those businesses that you can leverage off or actually if they could potentially have somebody in their network which could help you with a job search. You're kind of asking for help for names and, you know, you want to be able to really speak to them for a couple of minutes on the phone just to sort of introduce yourself, explain how you've got that person's name and details. You know there's somebody in your network from on LinkedIn and you sort of explain briefly why you're getting in contact with them. So it's around sort of that maybe somebody has suggested that they may be able to help you in your job search. You're looking at whether or not perhaps there's somebody in their own network that you should be speaking to or that they can introduce you to. And if they can't speak at the time that you sort of approach them, then make sure you schedule in a call and make sure then you diarise a catch up call later on. But it's very much around sort of how they can help you is around sort of the company information, their future needs within their Treasury Department, how they're looking for that to grow, putting you in touch, as I said, with other people and just keeping an eye out for any opportunities that they feel could be suited to you and explain to them the kind of job roles that you're looking for and the kind of businesses and the kind of culture that you're looking for as well. And actually, I think you'll find that a lot of people are very responsive. Know that when I was made redundant a few years back, I actually did that exercise. And it's amazing how many people these days want to help or if they can't help there. And then they'll always try and put you in touch with Somebody or they'll sort of keep you on their radar. And actually it's growing a lot more now with people responding. But you, as we've kind of talked about, you have to very much, you have to really make it quite personal and dedicated to them. Don't send out a blanketed approach. You know, there are various different means of trying to find jobs. You know, you do have LinkedIn, you do have Glassdoor, you do for treasury, obviously have the associations, you've got Acct, you've got Atel and Luxembourg, you've obviously got recruitment agencies, but a lot of the time you do a lot of proactive searching as well. And AIRA is going to just talk you through sort of looking at company websites and things like that. And then Mike can take you through sort of picking agencies and talking to you a bit more about that.

Just to jump in there. Oh, God, is that my sound? Wow. I'll redo my sound in a second, you carry on, you guys, and I'll reset my sound.

Ayra, I don't know if you want to sort of just talk a bit about sort of researching companies and doing that. Yeah.

So when you're researching, I think it's best just to kind of start off with a list of companies you would want to work for. Don't just apply for anything and everything, really focus on roles that companies are interested the likes of. If it's a FTSE 100, you want to work for, you want to work for a pharmaceutical, you want to work for a petrochemicals company, really research those areas and those companies that you think you would like to work for. First off, I'd say pick the first one that you really like the look of. So when you're looking at that company, you can use LinkedIn, you can go on the company's LinkedIn page, you can see the team size that they already have. If you click people, it will come up with all of the members of the team or people that work for that company. And if you type in treasurers, you'll get the entire treasury team kind of formed down. You can see what they're made up of, how many back office treasurers you've got, what the sort of structure of the team is like as well. And that will give you a really good idea of where you think you would sit in that team. And also it will come up whether you've got connections, so whether you know people that work there or people who have worked there. So you can ask them what's it like to work for this company, use their company website as well. A lot of the time they will publish if they're going through a merger, if they're looking to build liquidity, look at all that information. If you've got skills that would help them with that area, or if they're trying to improve some aspect of their treasury, and you think, actually, I've done that previously, then at least you know that they would be looking for somebody with your talent. And I think it's sort of just make sure you want to work there and it suits what you're trying to achieve as a treasurer. Don't just apply for anything and everything. Be very, very targeted in your approach. And if you are going to approach people, sort of just either off of LinkedIn or off of company websites, don't go to HR. You want to look for who we call the man, which seems a bit sexist, but it could be a woman.

Come on.

Man works. Go on, just explain authority and the need. So that's the hiring manager. They will decide what money is left, they will decide who comes into the team and they will be the ones that need it. So they're the people you want to target. So if you maybe perhaps connect with them on LinkedIn, drop them a message or you've met them at a conference, say you've got their cards, like Katie said, tailor a lovely email to them. If you don't hear back, chase again sort of a week later and maybe drop them a phone call and just sort of make sure you stay in that person's mind when you're looking, slow down, slow down.

This is for the group just going back a stage. You talk about the need and you zip through some really amazing information there. You said that you'd look on LinkedIn about talking about their structure, talking about the way that maybe their team was structured. And this comes down to the stage of evolution. Why is that important? These guys all in front of you on the zoom call, they're all looking for these different roles and things like that. Why is that important? You think about the stage of evolution of the treasury team. Why?

Just so you know what the momentum is there. I think what developments there of people you can see have been moving on. How big is. Is it growing as well? You can kind of click on people's profiles and see how long they've been.

There and also you see their pain points. This is one of the things that Ava's, you know, perhaps not nailing. You know, she does very well as a consultant. You know, we talk about Sometimes being the paracetamol for some of our clients problems. So you've got. If you look at someone and you see that they're a team of two people, you know that if someone leaves, they're in trouble, you know, because you. You're gonna have to do everything. So that's very different to if you see they've got eight people but they still don't even have a Treasury system, that's a different problem. So the problem with that treasury team is different. So when as then Ariel was talking about targeting their need, Katie was talking about emailing people and approaching them saying, you know, I'm a Treasury systems expert or I'm there and I can be a good all rounder. So target what their pain point is if you like, but carry on. Ayra. Sorry.

Definitely. And I think it's sort of, at the moment you will kind of see a lot of people aren't really holding back. There's not a lot of ads on LinkedIn on the job boards at the moment. But like Katie said, if you're kind of going out to companies you like the look of and you're really doing a targeted approach, people are actually looking to recruit at the moment, they're just being fairly secretive. It might be a case they could be looking internally initially and then they're going to broaden the search out. So be very focused, make sure it's the right companies you're going for and sort of use the likes of Glassdoor. They do. You can kind of leave references about how you felt they were as an employer. So, for instance, we worked with Anglia Walter, Mike and I luckily placed the role today, which is brilliant. And one of the great things that the candidate who we put forward loved about the role is on Glassdoor, you could see recommendations and everyone was very positive. So I'd say that's very important to kind of see if there is negative or if there's positive. It may make up your decision if it's a company you'd like to work for or you think you'd be heavily invested in. And I think sort of just have a bit of confidence about yourselves as professionals. You've done your CVs, hopefully with the workshop, you've done your LinkedIn. So just be very confident in your approach. Resell yourself and make yourself fall short.

I'd say I think it's good. And Katie, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think, I think with anything until a lot of the time. And again, I know I've spoken about it before but especially when I have been in house, I've seen people that have speculatively approached and sometimes line managers have an idea that they want to have a rejig or they want to increase their skill set within the team, but actually they don't realise it until they actually see that person in front of them. And actually a lot of the time people and companies will meet or have a chat with individuals for future. And actually it's not just because they don't have a job there. It's not a negative thing because you're still building up your network, you're still going to be in that person's mind. One of the things I would say to avoid, and I mean it does happen still, is the days of posting your CV with a cover letter to businesses has gone. I think when, you know, in the past when I've had posted CVs landed on my desk, I've kind of had a perception, which isn't necessarily a positive one about that person because these days with LinkedIn and with emails, it's so much quicker, it's so much more direct to actually utilize that rather than posting your CV out. It just doesn't work, in my opinion. I think going to Ayra's point about Glassdoor, I think it's a great tool to see what the culture is like and what people say. But I would just say that if you do see negative feedback, yes, keep it in mind, but don't base your full decision on that because everybody's different. You know, people that do pose negative feedback, you don't know what their situation was, believing the business, etc, etc.

And then, you know, the ladies, they sort of, you know, they pushed across to me about quarter past and, you know, one of the things I was going to talk about was recruitment agency and choosing that stuff and I was quite, I said I'd take this bit on. It's quite difficult really, not to be impartial, you know, to sort of say, you know, do we be biased? Oh, come to us and stuff like that. You know, the main thing I was looking at, I was just looking then a moment ago, the notes we put up online for you guys about, you know, sending an email, following up with a call. But before that, I probably haven't put it in there too much because we didn't want to be too self serving, is about the matching process. I think that's the key thing, you know, whether you match up with us as an agency, consultancy or I think it's an onus on you guys Sitting there that I'm seeing in front of us today to choose the sort of consultancies that you bond with. It might be us, it might be Michael Page, it might be Robert Waltz is in the Europe. You've got Robert Half, you've got different people target different levels. We are very specialist niche on just treasury and even stronger just on corporate Treasury. Our weakness is banking treasury and a lot of guys. Oh, do you not do this? You know, one of the things is we don't really do it, but we do do some. But it's so very much niche within a bank and we're thinking about actually going out and changing some bits on our website just to really explain that to. I keep getting guys from Fixed Income coming to me, don't know why. I've had two in the past two days and I've said, we can't help you. Oh, but I want to make a move to Treasury. You can't. You don't have any corporate treasury expertise in the past 15 years and they're not going to come up and match with any of you guys on the screen that have got corporate treasury background. So, you know, I'd rather give them, or we've given them two or three agencies we know and we try and match them and do that matchmaking service ourselves. And I think, you know, you and I spoke about that as well, didn't we, Katie? We'd rather turn, you know, turn people off or turn them away rather, and say, look, we can't help you, rather than pretend to be everything to everyone, which is a little bit difficult really, you know, and then we were just talking about some of the other bullet points, words of caution, you know, do Chuck in some Zoom Group chats. We'll come back to the question from George in a moment. You know, just, you know, being available, usual stuff. I mean, there's, there's a lot of this stuff seems like housekeeping, I suppose, because we do it every day, you know, professional email, keep in contact if things change, you know, because you might have an offer, you know, we are there to give advice, you know, we, you know, regularly, you know, KT myself, give me advice. When we tell people to take a job. Not through us, you know, we might have two offers, an offer through us and a better job, someone else. No, if we think it's a better job, we'll tell you because we've, you know, we've been doing this 20 plus years. We're not just going to go, oh, yeah, take the job, great, we get a Fee, the fees will keep coming, you know, we're going to still keep on going sort of thing. Let's go to George's question, if we would and maybe thoughts about any cover letter where the option is to add one when submitting electronically. Perfect if there is, but don't make it generic one we've talked before about, you know, I talk about the paracetamol effect, you know, if you like and actually I'll give the practical example if I may. So we. Let me just look, I'm just thinking actually on the screen because he's actually got the interview in a couple of hours, let's just check him. I did say I thought it'd be a good warm up. I think he's a bit. About six o' clock this evening one of the American guys is doing an interview. He did a phone interview, I referenced him about four weeks ago in our class and this was the chat that identified 105 vacancies through LinkedIn, gone, applied for everyone and unlike, as George says, they're a tailored cover letter, been spamming himself out and some of them weren't even Treasury And I just read back through the last, probably 10 or 15. I identified one job that I thought was an absolute shoo in for him. Pharmaceutical consumer goods, FMCG crossover. He applied for that HR person. We did some background reference checking, just looked at what they were, what their interests were. He had a half hour screening with them. He's actually a final round interview today in yeah, 40 minutes time to be picked for that job. Yeah, it's a bit of a kick in the bits because you're thinking I could have done that, I could have recruited that job but I'm pleased to have helped him because it was the right job. He was a tailored application, he's the right person for the job and I think that's the key thing, that if you identify then you're going to get those jobs and yeah, sometimes we would like to come back and try and find that Julie. Oh, here we go. How long can you expect to search before finally next position? How long has me struck and forget Covid. Let's pretend it's not Covid. There's not Covid here. I think it depends on your level of seniority and about how many jobs come up in a certain period of time. I've written about it before so if we take a mid level person, let's say an assistant or deputy treasurer and you know, on an average month in the uk, if it's a typical market There might be two or three vacancies in that month and the assistant treasurer applies for one of them. Straight reject applies for the second job. Actually, they say, yeah, we're interested in you. You decide you're not interested in them. So your third role comes through and you start to go through for interview one in three interviews. So you do it over the next two or three months. You get to offer stage once. So I say, assistant treasurer, offered once. And you say, do you know what? That's not the right job for me. So the process starts again. So I probably say an assistant treasurer, Assistant Deputy treasurer. At that kind of level, you're going to get one or two offers every six months. So if you're a group treasurer, you probably double it because you're the next level above, if you like. So you're probably getting one offer, one or two offers a year. If you're treasury analyst manager, and this is taking lots of averages and things like that, but you're probably looking at treasury analyst, you might be sort of 1, 2, 3, you're going to have. In a typical market, forget about pandemics and everything else, you're probably looking about four or five opportunities. You apply for a couple of them, one of them you go for, one of them you don't. So you're going to be getting to offer stage once every four months. Just in general, Katie, do you think similar sort of levels and Ara?

Yeah, I do. And I think, as you said, it is all very much dependent on the time of year with the amount of vacancies and as you said, with things that are out of the control. Obviously that throws something into the mix that could increase the time that people hire. But I would say that's probably about right.

Yeah, I'd agree to be on, I think so. Especially with analyst levels, even assistants, they're looking at six, seven plus offers. If they were to do it within a year, no working, they'd get quite a few because they're sort of low level and the salary expectations are there. There's some people they can invest in. It is very dependent on seniority.

And I tell you what, Dimitri, you put in here in the sidebar, one month for every $10,000. And I think actually that could equivalent across to £10,000. And I'm totally going to steal that because I think is a great, great way of describing it. Every 10,000, 30, 40,000. Yeah, you're going to get three or four. I think it again, depends on market conditions and a lot of averages. Akos, you said Here you identified a company which may have a requirement. Is there a good way to send in a good treasury headhunter? No, there are no good treasury headhunters to intermediate risk ahead under will send them another better suitcase. Yeah, you run that risk anyway. But if you think you're going to be good enough. I think something Dingham mentioned earlier, I think there are other relationship people that will know the corporates you're targeting. So that's your banking colleagues. So you can have banking colleagues, you're going to have treasury systems providers. All of you guys I'm looking at all know loads of different people within treasury. So I think there's going to be lots of other ways you can target people. So it's not just through ourselves. I think actually through ourselves. You can actually ask us as well. You know, I sometimes get approached and say, oh my God, there's a vacancy at XYZ company. What do you think? And I'll say, well, yeah, if you want the revolving door to hit you on the way out and be like, what? Really? I said, yeah, it's, you know, we can tell you a bit more some of the cultural stuff that's not actually good for our business. So we don't. We try not to. There are some, you know, ARA knows it particularly well. There are some more junior roles where people keep coming in and within two to three months they leave. And actually that does no one any good. So we try and avoid dealing with clients like that, which is, you know, definitely, you know, said there was a private question put here was quite about, you know, banking guys making a move across into some of the corporates. I think there is actually an opportunity within some corporates for banking experts to go into there, particularly if they're doing debt, capital markets or doing a lot of activity at one point. The problem is with that is if it's a massive period of debt consolidation or debt raising or anything else, there's an endpoint. And we talked about a few weeks ago with Kingfisher, where they did loads of debt raising, they did all the bonds, it finished, and then it's back to treasury and back to your day job. And the problem with some of that is a lot of those guys were like, hang on, where's the next deal? There is no next deal. That's it, it's done, it's over. And actually then it's about the cash management, it's about systems and everything else. Okay. You know, again, Katie, you get a bid in Europe as well, because that's one for yourself. You know, you get a lot of applications and a lot of banking guys and we both have to deal with it, don't we?

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, there are a lot of people that do want to transfer over and yeah, you do have to deal with a lot of it. I think I agree with Emmanuel that I do think bankers would be quite happy to help you network in. I think that there are other agencies that are more specifically dedicated to that kind of area that we're not. Yeah, I probably, I think on a sort of day to day basis I always get probably two. One or two.

The dog agrees. Yes. So I mean I think we're at half past. It's been amazing now what we are going to do. We were talking about this today. It's been amazing. Thank you for all this. Oh, one last Jenny Allen. I was quick typing. We'll answer Jenny's question. So what she got question associated with the interviews, the end of an interview and if you ask you email them any questions trying to gauge whether or not you're really interested in the role. Would you send them a question, have an interview, Emailing work in my favor. I'm interested in the role, Always have a question. I've said this before and even if you don't have a question, lie. That's one thing I would say. You know what I don't mean explicitly. Oh yeah, really? If you are interested in a job, obviously I'm joking. But what I mean is you do want to show your interest in a role, you know, and think about it, you know, whether it's, you know, a question about doesn't have to be specifically about the role. It could be about where would you see the role going from here? You know, it doesn't, you know, so it can be, you know, not how many loo rolls you sold last week. You know, it's actually where do you see treasury developing from here? Or it's any of the questions I might ask, you know, at the end of my podcast, a lot of the time when I'm asking people, I am genuinely interested about where they see technology, you know, improving the team and things like that. You might, you know, you know, you say here, is this a way of them trying to gauge whether or not you're interested in the role? I wouldn't know. You'd have to judge it and things like that. I think it's a good way to establish dialogue as well, you know, continue the dialogue. They can then if it's not gonna be right for you, they might think about you. For other things I think is a good way of, you know, continuing a conversation sort of thing.

And I wouldn't try and second guess what their motive is behind it. I think, you know, as Mike said.

I think it might establish dialogue as well. You know, continue the dialogue they can then if it's not gonna be right for you, they might think about you. For other things, I think is a good way of, you know, continuing a conversation sort of thing.

And I wouldn't try and second guess what their motive is behind it. I think, you know, as Mike said, I think it in my experience is always better when people have questions. I think don't have loads and loads and loads of questions. I've done an interview once before where someone had a whole page of A4 questions. You know, that's too much. But you know, I think sort of three or four is fine.

Yeah, just. And even if it's just one. Yeah, I think it's just if you're just expressing an interest and if you have further questions, it's a nice follow up. It's a nice gentle way of keeping communication going with them as well. I was just, you know, I was just going to finish off today and say that we are going to repeat the Bounce Back program. But obviously you guys have been through it, so you've done it. But we want people to, you know, keep engaged with us. So what we're going to do is repeat the Bounce Back program. People haven't done it, so feel free to recommend it to colleagues. But we've built up such a decent community. What we have said is that we're going to get together perhaps on a monthly basis with you guys and all just, you know, chucking questions. You know, some of the issues we're going to come up, you know, we've been asked, for instance, how do we see the role of women within Treasury? What's the latest market update? So we're going to look to do one in about two or three drinks. Again, virtual drinks as well. Mr. Zold, I knew you'd be straight in there about the beers. I know, I know. But just make it a little bit more. We built up. It's great. Some of the guys have questions. You might have interviews coming up. We're coming into a quieter stage of the year as well. You guys are then still thinking about how we perhaps take it the next level. So what we are going to do is schedule the beginning of July. So in about two or three weeks time, around the same time as Bounce Back to start so yeah, just, you know, we're gonna get that back together, aren't we? Keep the band together, doesn't it? Katie and Cannon and your dog. Yes.

Yeah.

Cool. I'm glad everyone found it. So if you have Emma, feel free to send us some lovely words of love. Some of these, the format. Thanks every because we want to pass this on more to the other guys that are going to do it just to show them, you know, we did it because we knew guys were needing some support in this crappy pandemic. And don't worry, the pub's open on the 22nd. That's all right. 13 days, not them counting. I am counting but yeah. So thank you for all the chat. So drop us some emails.

Thank you guys.

Yeah, it's been amazing.

Thank you.

Thanks very much everybody. Love you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.