Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast, where each and every week I normally talk to treasurers about their treasury careers as I have done now for 410 episodes. And occasionally, yeah, just occasionally we do an episode, a solo episode. Usually, actually we don’t.
Mike Richards: We do it with the compliment of the team, but I’ve decided. Because Kevin Michael, my podcast coach, he said, you need to do more solo podcasts. Now, I don’t, I, that’s not me. I’d rather interview treasurers, but having done so many of these, I and I was in Amsterdam last week, people said, Mike, we love you talking to people, but I need some advice.
Mike Richards: What are you actually hearing out there? So I thought rather than give it to you as like a LinkedIn post or quick coffee conversation, let’s do it on the podcast.
Mike Richards: So welcome to this week’s podcast. Let’s get on with the show. So, you know me, I’m not short on conversation. I send a newsletter every single Tuesday now which lovely Deirdre Martin encouraged me to do because then that also became into a video which we shoot every week, and that has got bigger and bigger.
Mike Richards: I was recently approached by a podcast. Video coach who said, oh, we can help you with your LinkedIn videos. I was like, I’m doing all right actually. Obviously there’s a bit of blurring as you can see here. But I said, no, I’m, I’m doing all right there. Well, okay. Well, how, how many video, how many impressions are you getting?
Mike Richards: I went quarter of the million, a quarter. I went, oh. Okay, so yeah. So actually you guys are liking this advice, and if there’s specific advice you want, let me know. Drop me an email and I will. But I’m gonna answer a lot of these because I, this year I’ve traveled across the us, uk, Europe our treasury career corner, live events Now.
Mike Richards: Well, the number over a thousand people a year that we sit down with, come and join us. We’ve got two coming up in New York. We do two in London, then we do it right the way across uk, us right across. Yeah, right across.
Mike Richards: Now do the events right the way across the us, the UK, and Europe. And I also speak at a lot of the conferences. So spoken this year at EuroFinance, spoke this year and got one of the highest ratings. Actually. Thank you very much for the guys at A FP Boston. There was obviously three amazing ladies that joined me, summer, Sandra and Meredith.
Mike Richards: They were incredible panelists. So but when I walked off stage. I get the same questions. Mike, can you gimme some advice about my CVL resume? Yeah, no problem at all. LinkedIn. What’s, you know, what do you think of that? The job market? Can you tell me what’s happening? Salaries what, you know, what’s happening in the uk, you know, how do they compare?
Mike Richards: And they don’t, a lot of the time compare to the us, but taxes are different. I’ve done that in one of my, my things about how you coffee taste well cost different you know, right way across the Atlantic. So, yeah. And the other one as well, the classic, Mike, you got any roles for me? What should I be doing to make myself most attractive and stuff?
Mike Richards: So I’m gonna give you some of the proper answers. So this also ties into something we’re building on our website, which you will start to have more and more access to the, we put our blogs on there, which are all very well, but they’re not very bite-sized. Some of them we try to keep ’em sure. But we’re building something new for you guys. We have built a candidate and what will become also a client content center, a website, proper one. So it’s got frequently asked questions, videos, guides, answer the questions that sometimes some of you guys don’t want to ask publicly. But it will be an amazing.
Mike Richards: Comprehensive treasury career resource, but I’m gonna give you some of the answers to the questions today. But you can think of that if you like a download to the past to 2025 with lots of the questions and it will continue to develop it into 2026. Everything you need to know for 2026. So let’s get into some of the big themes, shall we?
Mike Richards: So first one, CBS and Resumes. That’s what I get asked about all the time. Mike, can you have a look at my cv? What do you think about it? Look at my resume. Is it long enough? Is it too short? What should I do? So get asked about that. Now, most treasury resumes that.
Mike Richards: Top question I get asked, what do you think of my CV or resume? Well, I’m for the sake of it. I’m gonna call it CVS as we go through this. Most cvs. Look identical and nothing really stands out. They often focus on responsibilities, not achievements. So that’s something you hear me talking about a lot of it, a lot of the time being their headache being their No.
Mike Richards: If you’re a candidate, the top question I get asked by a can.
Mike Richards: The top question I get asked by candidates is, what do you think of my CV or resume? So say, I call it cvs from here. People say, what do you think of? Why is it not getting results? Because most of them look exactly the same. They’re identical. Nothing stands out. Lots of list of res responsibilities and all the things you’ve done, not the things you have achieved.
Mike Richards: Not where you’ve made a difference, not where you’ve gone to your employer and you’ve saved them money, or you’ve de-risked the, risk profile of the company, not where you’ve made life a lot easier. The wording is too generic and could belong to anyone. So what do I usually suggest? Right? How do you solve that?
Mike Richards: I said, right, take yourself, take the job description for a role you’re applying for. Oh, okay. Yeah, take that look through it. And ask Chat GBT. It’s a great thing you can do now, you can actually just talk to it, which is great, and say, I see the top three issues on this resume, on this job description rather being this, this, and this.
Mike Richards: Great. Look through my resume and tell me or summarize for me in three sentences. Three bullet points where I’ve done that. So I remember doing this with Jim years ago, and one of the key thing, key things Jim said to me was applying for all these roles, not getting anywhere. I said you’ve run international teams?
Mike Richards: I said, yeah, yeah, no, I’ve run them across four different treasury centers across the world and everything. I said, where does it say that on the resume? Oh, it’s right down here on page two. I’m like, okay. Nobody gets to page two, nor certainly they don’t unless they’re interested. I said that needs to go top of page one.
Mike Richards: Why didn’t they promote someone from within? He said, well, I see there’s a bit of a gap between the number one person who’s resigned and this role, and they should have been succession planning. Have you done that? Well, yeah, of course I’ve done that. I trained people. Great. Now, he then went ahead and did, did really well.
Mike Richards: He didn’t actually get that job. He got the next one. That was the great thing with it. So make, you know, give it, feed them if you like. So that’s the thing. So what does it actually need? As I said, it needs a snapshot at the top also. It needs evidence, it needs numbers. You guys are greater numbers, right?
Mike Richards: You, you’re res. If you’ve released X amount of trap cash, you’ve cut your bank fees, you’ve reduced FX exposures, or you’ve used the systems that they might be about to use or implement and things, tell them. It’s really simple. Just tell them length of cv, probably two pages, maybe three. Anything more than that.
Mike Richards: You can have a longer CV to use just to, to help you when you are structuring a shorter resume. But no one gets paid. There’s no four page cvs. Why bother? Should you tailor, you know, your CV for everywhere? No, don’t bother. Just send a generic CV and just see if you get the job. Yeah, it’s not gonna work, is it?
Mike Richards: No. You need to tailor yourself. It’s like, I dunno. It’s like, I dunno why I get asked that question. Yeah. Shall I just send my generic cv? No, don’t be silly. That’s, one word I’m thinking of. It’s the difference between being rejected and interviewed. It’s between being shortlisted and not shortlisted, rejected lead with experience that matches their job.
Mike Richards: Remove any detail that people don’t need. Also, you know, sometimes people put on references and stuff. Don’t, get rid of them. You can have references or testimonials on your LinkedIn profile. That’s another thing we’ll come to later. Thanks.
Mike Richards: So next area LinkedIn visibility. People ask, what do you think of my LinkedIn profile? Most profiles massively undersell you guys. I do this at all the conferences where it just says International Treasury Manager, international Cash Manager, global Treasurer, and tells me nothing. Your headlines, do nothing for your visibility.
Mike Richards: Show me in there what you’ve achieved. Your sections are usually below that are far too corporate. Your achievements. I’ve just talked about some of your achievements. You can, and they get asked in New York about actually, but one of the guys said, well, I don’t want to give confidential information. I said, well, there’s an easy thing.
Mike Richards: Don’t, oh, I said, yeah, just put on there that where you’ve made a difference in your job. You don’t have to give specific numbers or you know, specific details for it to be breaching confidentiality, you know your activity if you’re consistent on there. Just, and people said, oh, do I need to update it daily, weekly, and, no, probably not.
Mike Richards: You can probably do it once a month. Just put a quick note in your diary and just saying about how you, you know, doing it once a month. And people have said to me, well, I don’t really do my LinkedIn profile that much. I went, okay, so you are throwing your calling card, your business profile, but what if they pick and they, you are not looking for a job?
Mike Richards: They’re like no, I’m not looking for a job. What if a job came looking for you? Oh, okay, because I’ve said this before, it’s room fulls of treasury folk, and I’ve said, right. How many people in this room are actively looking for a job? One in 10 hands goes up. Okay. If I came to you with the perfect role in this room.
Mike Richards: Would you, any of you people in this room answer my phone call Nine outta 10 hands went up, went fantastic, and I said, look for the one in 10 of you that hasn’t put the hand up, I know you’re sitting next to your boss, so you’re not allowed to do it. I know. Okay. But the fact is, when I then tell people about nine outta 10 would answer the phone call, you guys are open to it.
Mike Richards: We’ve done this in our salary survey. It’s really blown me away this year that lots and lots of people are more open. I think that’s also down to the fact they trust us. I don’t underestimate that. So thank you for trusting us. But if you wanna be more visible on your LinkedIn profile, do some posting.
Mike Richards: Do some commenting, answer if there are topics on there or someone’s, you know, reaching out for advice about they’re gonna look, look at that. Implementing this treasury management system. Put it on there. If someone, one of your team members has done something for charity, if they’ve got a small win in their job, if they’ve got promotion.
Mike Richards: Comment on it. Congratulations. It’s relevance that matters rather than just a deluge. How often do I post now? I post every week ’cause I’m a recruiter and I try and give it. Not just, oh look, we do really well. Here are some jobs. Now what we try and do is give some advice about this. This is what I do, so I comment on things.
Mike Richards: Consistency. You don’t need to be an all round thought leader. You just need to show up and be present. Actually get present there because it’s doing your job for you. It’s selling yourself if you’d like.
Mike Richards: Okay, so this is a question I get asked all the time. What’s the state of the treasury job market now? Why have we got this? Because. You’re gonna love this gag. It’s been a bit chilly. It’s been a bit cold. 2025 has been a tough year, and I will actually put this on because it is quite chilly where I’m sitting.
Mike Richards: Yes, there have been some recruitment needs, but they’ve been very specific a lot of the time. I was just talking to a couple of candidates recently, they’ve, it is been, what’s the word? A tough market. The tariffs in 2025. All the unsettledness. What you want in recruitment is a sort of steady flow of activity.
Mike Richards: You want you want people, you want the economies to not be all over the place. ’cause that’s when people don’t move. Treasurers, as I’ve said before, are risk aware, not risk averse. They’ll take a move if it’s the right one, but actually. People aren’t moving, you know, they’ve been holding on. I think though 2026 will be a much better year because.
Mike Richards: I’m seeing we’re seeing more operational stuff. Katie’s been recruiting across Europe. We’ve been doing some stuff in the US actually that’s been very busy. But when people are, then clients when they try and recruit direct for instance as well, they sometimes go on LinkedIn. They’re allowed to, but then they’ve been coming back to me saying, oh, we’ve got lots of people, but they’re not the right people.
Mike Richards: They’re the people that are looking for any job. They’re not looking for a job with us. There you go. So yeah, we, we are starting to see things and I think it’s definitely an improving market. The events that we’re doing, which I’ll come back to in a minute, are really helping. So lots of people are getting to meet us.
Mike Richards: They know that we actually have roles. Many of the roles as well. If I move on to the senior market, a lot of the roles we’ve had this year, we’ve not been able to advertise. So it’s been very much more headhunting been good for us because visibility, we know lots of you guys again through, you know, doing all the events that we’ve done and everything else.
Mike Richards: Actually, for some our rivals, I think they have suffered because they don’t know treasurers like we know treasurers. We did a round table session just a week or so ago with our London audience. It was incredibly well attended. Through the round table. Before we did our treasury career corner live, we had 24 treasurers in the room.
Mike Richards: It was incredible sharing their stories and it was about sharing their problems. And we’re gonna repeat that for our next session in June, which will be fantastic. And then from there then did our Amsterdam event and things like that. But we’re gonna do more round tables with you guys. And then we did our main London event.
Mike Richards: It went brilliantly and we did amp. We’re gonna do New York, we’re gonna be back in Texas. We’ll come back to those events in a minute. Why has it been higher, harder to get interviews? That’s another question. Pete, I’ve actually said, because you need to be the, the perfect one if you like. I think there has been a pressure on clients, if you like, you know, if they’ve got someone in a role, had someone in a role, and they’re then replacing them and things like that, they’re saying, look, I want the bar up there.
Mike Richards: And they said, well, I, I’ve got someone who’s here. They said, don’t care, don’t recruit, keep looking. I think, you know, I’ve seen recruitment process take that much longer, but when you have found the person, boom, they’re straight in there. So you do know what makes a a, good hire, if you like. What has that then meant?
Mike Richards: Salaries. There’s been a big downward pressure in previous years. Actually salaries are starting to catch up. Certainly the UK market has really started to improve. How do I do that? Oh yeah, let’s do that. So that’s improved. It’s funny, someone a asked me the other day, they said, oh, I looked on this website and it was related to Glassdoor and then they looked at one of our rivals salary surveys and they went, well, that’s a load of, I said, I told you it’s a load of baloney.
Mike Richards: They just take a finger in the air and they look on LinkedIn sometimes, and I saw a job t treasurer in the US paying $200,000 yes, to $450,000. That’s not a range. If it is, you can’t even see my arms. Just too crazy. Treasury is too niche for those guys. That’s why you have our salary survey. 1600 people.
Mike Richards: We’re about to rerun it actually. So go to treasury salary.com if you haven’t taken part already. We benchmark all of the different levels of salaries right away from treasury analyst to Global Treasurer, and it’s real. Ours isn’t made up. It’s built and built. If you’ve already done it before, take part again.
Mike Richards: 30 seconds, you updated salary. Two minutes start to finish. And we don’t give generic ranges. We give you ranges of salaries of which group of each of the groups we’ve done. But we don’t actually just go, oh, boom, we give you averages. We tell you how many people in the group. Oh, and yeah. And if you need individual, individual advice.
Mike Richards: We aren’t gonna hopefully do some more across Europe, do some, you know, regional surveys if you like, for Benelux and you know, Switzerland and stuff. We don’t do them yet because we haven’t, we need to increase the numbers again. We used to do them but that now we have a global focus and we have us, we do the UK and Europe.
Mike Richards: So yeah, look on those. So take part another question that came from that is Mike. I want the pay rise and we’re coming into that season as well. How do I ask for one? Well, the first thing is don’t just walk in the door and you can actually find this out. If you sign up for our newsletter. It tells you how to sign, how to ask for a raise professionally.
Mike Richards: So focus on your outcome. What have you delivered? When you are going in there, bring your data that shows where you’ve made a difference. On saving bank fees, on, you know, aggregating risk on whatever it might be that you’ve achieved, link your contribution to those business results, how you’ve helped the profitability of you, your team, your company, and relate it to the whole.
Mike Richards: So focus on the outcomes, not just, I’ve been here and I’ve been here another year. That doesn’t get your pay rise. Well done for showing up. That’s called your job. And actually, if you want a pay rise, you want a bonus show where you’ve made a difference. Also, time it. Now, if you don’t know when your pay review is or for you, but if you’re just into a new job or something like that, go in there calmly ask, when is the next pay review?
Mike Richards: What do I need to do in your mind to get myself up to that next level? Ask the question. If you don’t ask the question, you’re never gonna get the answer. Also, knowing your expectations before you start, be open and honest, and this helps both when you are in your role and also going for a new role. So I often do it where we’ve had this, where we’ve placed a couple of people, this, well, a couple of very senior people this year, and they said to me, what do I do?
Mike Richards: I said, what do you mean, what do I do? What? What do I ask for? I said, well, what is your minimum? What would make you happy? What would exceed your expectation? And they’ve told me. And then we’ve gone in there and I’ve done that. I’ve given that feedback to my client and in every case, thank goodness we’ve they’ve got ’em over the line.
Mike Richards: So I think it works as well. I could talk a bit more about right times to move on and stuff. Gimme a call about that one. I’m not gonna do that. Other themes AI speaking up. Can we also, is AI gonna replace treasury jobs? No. AI and technology, um, and data and things like that. They it AI automates tasks, not judgment if you like.
Mike Richards: So it’s get rid of the basic manual work. It gives you more time to do the strategy stuff. Forecasting a data better decision making. Treasury Enha becomes enhanced in its value. Treasury becomes more valuable, not less. So the skills you need to develop are, obviously, keep working on your data. You guys have always done this.
Mike Richards: You’ve always been as treasurers great. Translators if you like. So you, you know, you are able to work with power BI with systems. You’ve able to been able to convert that or a lot of the time or translate that into a clear defined picture. If you haven’t, and that’s a skill you’re gonna need to develop that scenarios about curiosity.
Mike Richards: You don’t need to be a coder all the time, but you need to understand the coding if you like. So so yeah, again, one of the other things I did this year was one of my newsletters about do you need to be a Python program? No, but I met, a guy I met the other day, was really good at it, but I said, okay, what does it tell you?
Mike Richards: He said, ah, that’s it. I do this and it tells me this, and then I’m able to go to my boss with it. I was like, it’s how you interpret the numbers, how you translate them. So that’s enough from all of that stuff. I know it’s a lot. Sorry. But content have a, you know, go to the content center that’ll start to grow and grow and grow.
Mike Richards: 2026. Yeah. 2026.
Mike Richards: Strong demand for treasurers continues. I think the market’s getting back on its feet. AI and technology has already, you know, there’s already blockchain before, now it’s, you know, stable coin now. There’s all ai, there’s, you know, the fact is.
Mike Richards: Change is the norm if you like. Change isn’t know, just change for change’s sake. It’s actually the norm. If you don’t, you know, if you are not comfortable in that, I don’t think treasury’s right for you. But I think keep on working in visibility and personal brand. We as a company. Oh, well, yeah, we’re going around the world again.
Mike Richards: We did an amazing tour this year. Now net for 2026. Some of the things that are happening, we’re doing two New York’s, two Londons, and we’re gonna be doing round tables before those as well. So look out for those coming up. March 19th, New York, we’re gonna be heading across to Austin, Texas. Then we’re gonna do TPO and Kyriba live in April.
Mike Richards: Then we’ve got Dublin. And then we got back to London. Then we’re gonna do Chicago in New York in October. A FP. We’ll be over there in November, back to London, then another Amsterdam. Now, we may also be looking at another Amsterdam sooner because we had such a successful event last week talking to the sponsors about maybe putting on one in the summer a bit earlier.
Mike Richards: Plus you are a finance Barcelona treasury, 360 in Luxembourg. It’s gonna be a busy year. I love doing these things. So what do you need to do now? Check out our, the new center. You’ll be able to see some of it. The candidate center’s already there, so you’re starting to see some information. Do the salary survey, treasury salary.com.
Mike Richards: Sign up for the newsletter, go onto my LinkedIn profile. You’ll find it in the show notes here as well. Listen to the latest podcasts. We’ve got 410 of them and they continue to grow. We’ve got a load more of the live sessions coming up that we’re just editing now. If you want some advice, Micah treasure recruitment.com and or if you want to come and meet us in person, there’s nothing like it.
Mike Richards: So thanks very much for all your support and we return to normal programming next week with some other great interviews of treasury podcast guests. Thanks very much,
