Four Parts Of A Successful Treasury Search 

AI has made it possible to write a job description, publish it, search online profiles, compare CVs and produce a shortlist in far less time than before. For straightforward roles, that may be enough, but treasury tends to demand more.

The question is whether the process identifies the person who will perform well in your organisation, with your stakeholders, systems and pressure points. In my eyes, a successful treasury search has four parts: defining what success requires, reaching the relevant talent pool, making an informed assessment and prioritising the candidate experience.

1. Define what success requires

A strong search starts before anyone writes the job description. The hiring manager needs to explain why the role exists, what the new person must achieve and what could make the appointment difficult.

Job descriptions usually focus on responsibilities and experience. They may list cash management, funding, FX, banking relationships or TMS expertise. Those details matter, but they do not describe the full assignment.

Three Treasury Manager roles with similar job descriptions can require very different people. One organisation may need someone to introduce structure and controls. Another may need a strong strategic treasury manager to challenge senior stakeholders and drive change. A third may have the technical foundations in place but need someone who can build trust across the business.

Before starting the search, hiring managers should answer:

• What must this person achieve in the first twelve months?
• Which relationships will determine whether they succeed?
• What is difficult about the role that does not appear in the job description?
• Which skills can be learned, and which behaviours are needed from day one?
• What kind of person will work well with the team and leadership style?

This changes how candidates are assessed. Someone may meet every technical requirement and still struggle because the organisation needs a more hands-on leader, stronger commercial instincts or confidence in challenging a CFO. Another candidate may miss one listed requirement but have the judgement and adaptability to perform well.

AI can help structure the brief and identify gaps in it. The hiring manager still has to provide the answers. They understand the work, the pressure within the team and what success will look like.

2. Reach the relevant talent pool

A job advert mainly reaches people who are actively looking. That group is useful, but it is only one part of the market.

Some strong treasury professionals are performing well in their current role and have no urgent reason to move. Others have not seen an opportunity that gives them a reason to start a conversation. They don’t often enter a process through an advert alone.

A search based mainly on applications may produce a shortlist quickly, but the choice will be narrower. Reaching the wider market requires knowledge of where relevant professionals work, a network that has been built over time and direct conversations based on a credible opportunity.

The right candidate may also be difficult to identify through keywords. Their job title could be different. They may work in another sector. Their experience may be relevant for reasons that are not obvious from the wording of their CV.

A cash manager may describe their responsibilities differently from the job description. A treasury professional who has worked through a refinancing, acquisition or major systems change may offer more than someone whose CV mirrors every requirement but whose experience has been gained in a more settled environment.

A specialist recruiter adds access to people who are not applying, knowledge of the treasury market and the ability to explain why an opportunity may be worth considering. This matters most with passive candidates. A generic description will likely not persuade someone who was not planning to move. They want to understand the business, the mandate, the leadership team and the room they will have to make a difference.

We see this regularly at Treasurer Search. Many of the candidates we eventually place were not looking for a job when we first contacted them. They were already known to us through our database and previous conversations, so we could call them directly and discuss the opportunity in the context of their experience and ambitions. The process begins with a conversation, often before the person has decided whether they want to become a candidate.

3. Make an informed assessment

Finding candidates creates options. The next part of the search is working out which option is most likely to succeed.

Looking purely at a CV you can identify whether someone has worked with a TMS, led cash forecasting or managed banking relationships. It can compare evidence against agreed criteria, prepare interview questions and point to gaps that need further discussion.

Some evidence only becomes clear through conversation. A structured interview process gives you a good basis for comparing candidates against objective requirements. Asking candidates to explain specific situations in which they demonstrated the desired behaviours in the past, using the STAR method for example, provides more insight into both their expertise and their ability to communicate it clearly.

Useful questions might include:

• Tell us about a time when you improved the quality or reliability of cash forecasting. What was happening before, what did you change and what was the result?
• Describe a situation in which you had to challenge a senior stakeholder on a treasury or financial risk. How did you approach it?
• Tell us about a banking relationship that was not working as expected. What did you do?
• Give an example of a treasury transformation, refinancing or systems implementation you helped deliver. What did you personally own?
• What would your first three months in this role look like, and what would you need to understand before making changes?

The point is not to create an unnecessarily long interview. It is to ask questions that reveal how a person thinks and behaves in situations relevant to the role. A candidate can have impressive experience but be unable to explain their contribution. Another may have a less familiar background yet demonstrate sound judgement, curiosity and a clear understanding of how to work with others.

A specialist recruiter can help by providing market context and an independent perspective. They can probe areas that may not be covered in an interview, explain how a candidate compares with the wider market and identify any concerns before they become surprises. They also give candidates a confidential setting in which to discuss motivations, reservations and the type of environment in which they do their best work.

We have worked with candidates who did not tick every box in the job description but became strong candidates once we spoke with them. A CV could not show the full relevance of their experience, how they approached problems or how well their working style suited the organisation. Because we knew the candidate and understood the assignment, we could explain why they deserved to be considered. Some of those less obvious candidates went on to be placed.

4. Prioritising the Candidate experience

A good search can still lose its strongest candidates if the process is slow, unclear or too detached from the hiring manager.

A lot of the time people underestimate how important it is that the hiring manager actively participates in the recruitment process, and is not passively leaning on their HR department. HR can provide structure, protect consistency and coordinate the practical and legal requirements. The hiring manager is the one who can explain the work first-hand, assess how the candidate thinks and give them a credible view of the team.

While you are assessing the candidates, the candidates are also assessing the organisation. Slow decisions, vague feedback and limited access to the hiring manager can weaken an otherwise attractive opportunity. This is especially true for candidates who were approached directly and were not already considering a move.

Strong hiring managers make time for candidate conversations, give clear feedback and decide quickly while good candidates are still available. They do not need to become recruiters, but they do need to own the appointment.

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The four parts work together 

These four parts are connected. A weak definition of success leads to a vague search. A narrow search limits the quality of the options. An unstructured assessment makes it difficult to distinguish between a good match and a polished interview performance, and not prioritising the candidate experience can lead to losing out on good candidates.

The opposite is also true. A clear brief helps identify people with relevant but non-obvious experience. Access to the wider market creates a stronger choice of candidates. A structured assessment then tests not only whether someone can do the work, but whether they are likely to do it successfully in this particular organisation.

This is why speed should not be the only measure of a search. AI and digital tools can make parts of recruitment faster, and they can be valuable when used well. They can organise information, improve consistency and reduce administrative work. They cannot replace the conversations needed to understand the assignment, reach people who are not actively applying or judge how someone will operate in a complex treasury environment.

A successful treasury appointment is not simply the person whose CV contains the most matching keywords. It is the person whose experience, judgement, communication style and motivation fit the work that actually needs to be done in the environment it needs to be done in.

That requires a process that starts with the reality of the role, reaches beyond the obvious candidates, assesses evidence in context and is managed with pace and ownership. Those are the four parts of a successful treasury search.