Interviewing for the role of Corporate Treasurer in a company can seem daunting. As the custodian of the organization’s financial health a corporate treasurer holds tremendous responsibility. Your interview is your chance to showcase your technical expertise as well as your strategic thinking and leadership abilities.
To help you put your best foot forward we outline six of the most common and critical questions asked in corporate treasurer interviews. Understanding what skills and qualities interviewers are assessing with these questions will help you formulate impressive responses. Use this guide to get a leg up on the competition and land your next leadership role!
1. What’s key to a healthy investment?
This open-ended question tests your fundamental investing philosophy. The interviewer wants to understand your risk appetite, priorities and overall strategic approach to investments. Some key points you can touch upon in your response:
- Diversification across asset classes, sectors, geographies to minimize risk
- Balance between higher risk-higher yield and safer investments
- Regular portfolio reviews and rebalancing
- Clear investment policy aligned with company goals
- Focus on long-term growth rather than short-term gains
Emphasize your methodical approach while demonstrating ability to take calculated risks when opportunities arise. Outline how you evaluate new investments on their own merits as well as portfolio fit. This will highlight your technical know-how along with strategic thinking abilities.
2. How would you explain liquidity risk management to a non-finance person?
Here the interviewer wants to assess your understanding of liquidity and risk management as well as your ability to explain complex financial topics in simple terms. In your response, cover:
- Definition of liquidity risk
- Significance of adequate liquidity for company operations
- Methods of tracking cash flow forecasts
- Building cash reserves and credit lines
- Strategies like staggering debt maturity to manage liquidity
Use layman analogies around personal finance and having emergency savings to put the concept in relatable terms. Provide examples of potential business impacts if liquidity risk is not managed properly. This demonstrates you grasp the technicalities as well as the “so what?” that will resonate with non-finance leaders.
3. When would you issue a debt and how?
This evaluates your knowledge of debt markets and financing options. Share examples of situations where you would opt for debt issuance, such as:
- Funding large capital expenditures
- Refinancing existing debt at lower rates
- Supporting expansion into new markets
- Leveraging low interest rate environment
Then discuss your approach including:
- Analyzing market conditions and company credit rating
- Considering different debt instruments – bank loan, bonds, commercial paper etc.
- Getting approvals from Board and regulators
- Hiring investment banks to structure and distribute the issuance
Demonstrate your expertise in debt markets while outlining the strategic considerations behind issuance decisions. Emphasize your multifaceted approach covering operations, legal, compliance and strategic aspects.
4. What information do you need to measure interest rate risk?
This question tests your proficiency in risk management, specifically in relation to interest rate fluctuations. Share the key data points you would analyze:
- Company’s current debt structure – % fixed vs floating rate
- Any interest rate derivatives like swaps currently being used
- Historical interest rate trends and forecasts
- Future financing needs based on growth plans
- Cash flow forecasts and reserve levels
- Potential impact of rate changes on profitability
Outlining the information required reveals your technical grasp while explaining how you would use the data demonstrates strategic thinking. Highlight the need for continuous monitoring and forecast revisions based on market changes. This shows your risk management approach is dynamic rather than static.
5. What’s your experience in hedging?
With this question, interviewers want to understand your hedging knowledge and hands-on expertise. In your response, cover:
- Types of hedging instruments used – futures, options, swaps etc.
- Exposure risks mitigated – currency, interest rate, commodity price etc.
- Example transactions where hedging helped limit downside
- Challenges faced in design and execution of hedges
- Importance of aligning hedge ratios to underlying exposure
- Monitoring hedge effectiveness overtime
Providing specific examples illustrates practical application rather than just theoretical knowledge. Share key lessons learned in hedging different exposure types. This demonstrates your ability to educate others in the organization about complex risk management strategies.
6. What cash management software do you prefer and why?
Here the focus is on your knowledge of technology solutions for treasury management. Share your preferred software and highlight functionality that makes it effective:
- Cash positioning and forecasting
- Liquidity dashboards and early warning systems
- Cash pooling, sweeps and intercompany loans
- Bank fee analysis
- Customizable reporting
Emphasize aspects like automation, integration with banks and accounting systems that improve efficiency, controls and visibility. Comparisons to manual processes or legacy systems will further highlight the benefits. This showcases your ability to leverage technology to enhance treasury operations.
Handling the wide range of questions thrown at corporate treasurer candidates requires technical expertise, communication skills and strategic vision. Use this guide to rehearse responses highlighting your multifaceted qualifications for this critical leadership role. Demonstrate both impressive financial acumen as well as business savvy to position yourself as the prime candidate ready to take treasury management to the next level!
With meticulous preparation covering key question areas, you can walk into interviews with the confidence to persuade hiring managers that you are the right person to optimize the organization’s financial health and growth. Use these examples to craft your own unique responses, incorporating your background and strengths. Soon you’ll be putting your treasury leadership abilities into action in your next chief corporate treasurer role!
Common Behavioral Questions for Corporate Treasurers
In addition to testing your technical know-how, corporate treasurer interviews will also assess your soft skills and behavioral traits. Here are some of the most frequent behavioral questions asked:
Tell me about a time you influenced senior management regarding a financial strategy. What was the outcome?
This reveals your influencing abilities, communication style and how well you can engage senior leadership around finance topics. Share examples of when you had to convince them on strategies around capital allocation, funding structures, investments etc. Discuss data presented, concerns addressed and outcome achieved.
Describe a situation where you had to simplify a complex financial concept for the Board. How did you ensure they understood the implications?
Demonstrates your ability to educate non-financial experts. Share the financial issue, your method of explaining it simply like using analogies and examples and how you drove home the business impact.
Tell me about a high-pressure situation you handled as a treasurer. What made it challenging and how did you respond?
Proof of grace under fire. Share a situation such as liquidity crisis, economic volatility etc, the challenges posed and measured, decisive response that helped resolve it. Emphasize calm, focused demeanor.
Discuss a time you anticipated a financial problem before it happened. What mitigating actions did you take?
Highlights analytical and foresight abilities. Share an example of early warning signs you spotted through data analysis, risk management framework you had in place and proactive mitigation steps taken as a result.
What is the biggest misconception you feel senior executives have regarding the treasury function? How have you handled this?
Demonstrates your education and influencing skills regarding the treasury function. Discuss inaccurate views like treasury being a back-office cost center, common pushbacks experienced and how you have positioned treasury as a strategic function.
Tell me about a time you had to negotiate with bankers or investors. What negotiation tactics did you employ?
Proves your negotiating savvy in dealing with external stakeholders. Share examples like negotiating credit facilities, strategic investments etc. Discuss leverage points identified, benefits secured for the company and relationship management aspects.
Highlighting soft skills like critical thinking, communication, influencing and relationship management differentiates you from purely technical finance professionals. Use these common behavioral questions to showcase your well-rounded leadership abilities.
Technical Questions to Prepare For
Along with the behavioral competencies, corporate treasurer candidates must demonstrate in-depth technical know-how across a range of topics:
Cash Management
- How would you optimize cash management to improve working capital?
- What metrics would you track for cash flow forecasting?
- What are some key considerations in setting up a global cash pooling structure?
Capital Markets and Funding
- Compare the benefits and limitations of bank funding versus capital market funding options.
- How would you determine the optimal capital structure for a company?
- What factors affect a company’s credit rating and borrowing costs?
Investments
- What factors would you consider when developing an investment policy for a corporation?
- How would you assess performance of a treasury investment portfolio?
- What types of money market instruments are suitable for short-term cash investments?
Financial Risk Management
- How do you determine appropriate hedging levels for different types of risk exposures?
- What are some common strategies to hedge foreign exchange and interest rate risk?
- How would you design a financial risk management framework?
Bank and Vendor Relationships
Common Behavioral Interview Questions
- Spend five minutes and walk me through your résumé.
- Tell me about yourself and why you’re a good fit for this job.
- What sets you apart from other candidates?
- What three things did your manager like about you in your last review? What three things did your manager want you to work on?
- What do you really care about most about your job?
- What do you do when you don’t want to do or find boring work?
- Treasury departments typically run lean. How do you organize and prioritize a lot of different tasks that keep coming up?
- What do you do when you’re not sure how to do something? How can someone help you?
- When you needed to make a big choice but didn’t have all the facts, tell me about it.
- Tell me about a new skill, procedure, or hard problem you had to solve. What were the steps you took, and were you successful?.
- Describe your communication style, both written and verbal.
- Tell me about a time when you had to work with others to reach a goal.
- Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a disagreement or a letdown. How did you get back on track?
- Tell me about a time when you had to deal with people who didn’t want to accept a change you were making.
- Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a tough customer or senior management
- Tell me about a time when you had to convince a group of important people to see things your way. Describe the situation, your actions and the outcome.
- As a treasury professional, tell me about a time when you had to teach someone else how to do their job and make them understand how important it is.
- Which activity or project did you lead that went the best and was the hardest?
- What kind of leadership do you use, and how do you like to run teams, whether they are formal or casual?
- How do you handle it when someone on your team doesn’t do their job?
- Which of the following do you think are good ways to help the team improve their skills?
- What risks do you see in the field that you would deal with if hired?
- What is your 30/60/90 plan for this position if hired?
- What is your personal perspective on risk management?
- How do you approach safeguarding the company’s assets?
- What is your definition of success for the treasury department?
- What are some of the fraud services that you might see on a bank account for accounts payable or payroll? What about accounts receivable or treasury accounts?
- Describe a smart way to add or remove users from bank platforms.
- What is FBAR?
- How do you approach cash forecasting?
- Explain what “free cash flow” means and how to use the direct method to find it.
- To understand and get around in a new country, how would you go about banking there?
- We have three projects for the treasury department. Projects: A, B, C. We want to automate tasks that used to be done by hand in project A. What is the best way to go about this?
- For Business B, we want to cut down on fraud, raise the number of days that payments are past due, and speed up the flow of payments. What do you suggest?
- We want to lower overall costs for Project C, bring in more interest income, and spend less on interest. What do you think we should do?
- What are the three most important financial statements? What do they show? How do they compare to each other?
- What makes a business receive cash from a customer in month 1 but not count it as income until month 2?
- Let’s say I buy a piece of equipment. Walk me through its impact on the three financial statements.
- Imagine a company whose EBITDA has been going up for a few years and then all of a sudden files for bankruptcy. How might this have happened?.
- Big company X has a lot of debt that comes due next year. Since it’s still hard to get debt, what choices does the company have?
Questions to Ask in an Interview
At the end of every interview, candidates are always given the opportunity to ask the interviewer some questions. Make sure to prepare your questions to ask the interviewer ahead of time. Pick questions that show what’s important to you and give you more information you need to see if the job is a good fit.
To help get you started, here are questions suggested by treasury professionals in the AFP community:
- How do you communicate and deliver information?
- When I ask for help, how do you handle it? How will you get rid of problems so I can finish a task or project?
- Why did you agree to take the job? Why do you stay?
- Have you ever had to deal with problems you didn’t expect?
- In what ways will you help me gain more experience? What kind of training do you offer?
- How do you motivate, engage and inspire employees?
- What makes someone a valuable employee in this company?
- Do you think this company values you? If so, how does it show this?
- What are my career goals? If I get the job, how will you help me reach them?
- Does my education or work experience make you worry or have faith in my ability to do well in this job?
- How do you train your employees to use these systems? Is the training done in-house or by someone else?
- How do you plan to make the treasury department more efficient through automation and resource allocation?
- How does the company manage liquidity — domestically and globally?
- What is the company’s approach to hedging risk?
- How does treasury impact EPS in this role?
- What does the company think about ESG, and how important is it to it?
- How do you deal with both internal and external stakeholders? Can you talk about how the treasury department works together to make sure the partnership works?
Typical interview questions asked in Treasury interviews | FLIP Mentor Talks
FAQ
What questions should I ask a treasurer in an interview?
What are the strengths of a treasurer?
What questions do interviewers ask a corporate treasurer?
Interviewers may ask this question to learn more about your skills and experience as a corporate treasurer. They want to know what you consider important in the role, so they can decide if you are qualified for the job. In your answer, explain which skills you have that make you an ideal candidate for the position.
How can a corporate treasurer help you prepare for an interview?
Leveraging decades of experience, they deliver valuable advice to help you feel confident and prepared for your interview. Common Corporate Treasurer interview questions, how to answer them, and example answers from a certified career coach.
How do I prepare for a treasurer job interview?
If you’re applying for a treasurer role, you might want to prepare by reviewing some typical questions that hiring managers may ask you in a job interview. In this article, we outline 35 typical interview questions for treasurer roles, with sample answers to five key questions.
What questions do treasurers ask?
Most interviews will include questions about your personality, qualifications, experience and how well you would fit the job. In this article, we review examples of various treasurer interview questions and sample answers to some of the most common questions. What experience do you have with managing finances?
