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For what audience is the Treasurer Test developed?

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The Treasurer Test has been developed with three different audiences in mind:

  1. Actual Treasurers; those who are already active treasurers
  2. Pre Treasurers; those who have the ambition to become one and
  3. Non Treasurers; those who will not but deal with the function.

Their goals might overlap but there are differences. In this blog we will elaborate.

Actual Treasurer
Taking the test, already being a treasurer, can be useful in many situations. First, wanting to show your hiring manager you are fully capable and have the right personality for the position you want to step into. This is an obvious one. Second, planning your career. The result report will show the candidates treasury knowledge gaps and personality, helping in education and coaching plans. Third and last, as a treasury team you want to be ready for the future of your organisation and prepare. In order to achieve this, you want to know your current status in order to build a development plan with a focus both on skills as well as on personalities.

Pre Treasurer
Aspiring treasurers might have the aforementioned goals and some extra. They might not have done the job, but know a lot and want to prove this. Automatically, the Test will show where development might be started best and if the potential is enough to pick up the position. Taking the Test will also lead to insight what the job is about. It is not intended, but might lead to a candidate treasurer steering his career in another direction. Finally, we are talking with educators to deploy the test at the start and at the end of a program in order to objectively measure progress of students.

Non Treasurer
In finding staff or helping them in development, HR, recruiters and educators will play an important role. It is not to be expected that these specialist benefit from taking the Test. They should know about the Big5 typology and understand how the Test measurers skills.
On the other hand, CFOs, CFO team members, auditors, bankers and other financial specialist and their organisations will benefit from them taking the Test. Many of them consider themselves (unjust) knowledgeable in corporate treasury. Insight in their actual knowledge level is a good starting point. If the non-treasurer knows a lot and can prove this with the Test results, treasury specialists will better accept input. If not, the non-treasurer will better appreciate the expertise of the specialist and put treasury higher on the priority list.

Are you interested how the Treasurer Test can help you? Contact Kendra Keydeniers, Community & Partner Manager.

You can find more relevant information here.

You can be one of the last peer group members

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Under 20% of the treasury population completed a formal treasury education. And over 50% of decision makers in the recruitment of treasurers does not know about the discipline.

We are one of the launching partners of the Treasurer Test that can bring an objective measurement that can tackle problems resulting from the described issue. Others are the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), the University of Applied Sciences of Utrecht, software & assessment developers and law experts.

Key element of the test is the comparison with peer groups. These groups are defined by number of years of experience in treasury of its’ members. Our role as launching partner is asking 100 relevant peer group members that will create the benchmark that future testees will be compared with. Peer group members do not pay the €595 the test will cost when ready, but only €1,21. We carefully invited most, but there are still a few places left, especially in the group with under 9 years’ experience.

When the number of 100 is reached, reports will be sent out and the Treasurer Test is ready for use. We expect a lot. At Treasurer Search we will use the test in our committed searches and many other situations, when relevant. First expectation is to further improve the match making process. Also in choosing education, coaching, outplacement, team formation and salary benchmarking the test can come in handy. Perhaps even showing a CFO about the complexity of the discipline can be done. There is a peer group “no treasury experience”.

We look forward to the analysis that can be made after a bigger group of people completed the test What will we see in the correlation between age, education level, nationality on one hand and treasury skills level on the other? We expect to further contribute in raising the level of corporate treasury and hope you will join us.

Pieter de Kiewit

Owner of Treasurer Search

 

 

How to prepare for the Treasurer Test

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We recommend to make the test in a quiet room where you will not be disturbed. There are more questions than you can answer in the time that’s available. If you don’t know the answer on a question, move on to the next. The Treasurer Test measures knowledge, speed, productivity and accuracy.

Technical Treasury Knowledge part
Complex calculations have to be made. We advise to use a scientific calculator and a pen and paper to take notes.

Personality Profile part
There is no right or wrong. This section consists of statements in which you must indicate whether or not this applies to you.

Here is a short summary of preparation advice that will help you in advance of making the Treasurer Test:

  • Take the test in a quiet room where you will not be disturbed
  • Make sure you have a scientific calculator, pen and paper at hand
  • You need to finish the Technical Treasury Knowledge part in one time. Same counts for the Personality Profile part. However, you can take a rest between these two different test parts.
  • Move on to the next question when you don’t know the answer. You have limited time (this only counts for the Technical Knowledge part).
  • The test is intensive, take this into account

Greetings,

Team Treasurer Test

 

Treasurer Test development: huge investment, great result!

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It all started a few years ago. The desire to better assess corporate treasurers led to a group of us wanting to build a test that did not exist yet. Together with various experts we invested time, money and expertise.

First, a project team was put together and Merel van Geel was appointed project leader. Other team members have a background in education, science, corporate treasury, assessment psychology, IT and treasury recruitment. Quite a diverse group! The goal of this project group was to investigate whether the concept could lead to a feasible business plan.

We quickly found that the cost of the software and its customization plays a vital role in this plan. The software should be able to test both personality as well as treasury knowledge, be able to work with various peer groups, include sound statistical research methods and generate reports. It should have a client friendly interface. In a few months, many systems were tested and demos have been viewed. After long consideration and negotiations, a software manufacturer was chosen that already developed tests and could be integrated into our existing software. This manufacturer has many universities and other research institutes as their client.

In parallel various personality models were considered. As the Big Five model is widely accepted, well known and, different from many others, accepted in academic circles, that is the model we chose. The Big Five assessment that is integrated in the Treasurer Test is offered by other parties separately and integrated in our solution. In other blogs we will elaborate on the model.

A team of experts from the Hogeschool Utrecht and the Vrije Universiteit took it upon them to develop a library of questions in various treasury sub categories and complexity level. The Test holds a lot more questions than the average candidate will answer.

Integration of various components was led by Merel and the results were screened by an advisory board that, together with a group of close friends were the first ones to do the Test for the first time. In parallel, we started to expand the treasuryXL website so that the test could be integrated and you can place and pay your order. Components such as a logo and a GDPR privacy statement were developed. Finally, the report of the Treasurer Test was designed, developed from the various above described components..

At this moment we are further testing the results. A selection of testee candidates has been made to fill the peer groups which are essential in the concept of the Treasurer Test. After the test has been made by these persons and feedback has been processed, the test will become available. We are very excited about this and will keep you up-to-date!

Greetings,

Team Treasurer Test

 

What is this Treasurer Test that we will launch shortly?

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The Treasurer Test is mainly created to give treasurers, their current and future employers and recruiters insight into the skills and personality of the treasurer. To achieve the foregoing, the test consists of two main parts.

Treasury technical knowledge

In this section the treasury knowledge level of the testee is tested. The questions in this section are developed by De Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and The University of Applied Sciences of Utrecht in cooperation with industry experts. The four categories tested are Cash Management, Corporate Finance, Risk Management and Treasury Miscellaneous. There is limited time available for each category. The questions get increasingly more complex: the first question is easier than the last one. Harder questions are rewarded higher than easy ones. The results are reported in absolutes (like a GPA), but will also be compared with a peer group that has about the same experience. As a hiring manager you can compare your potential employee with other candidates in the labour market.

Personality Profile

Twelve personality traits are tested in the personality part of the test. We have chosen for the Big5 model, in a later blog we will explain why. The outcome is compared with the general population and with the treasury population. We do this under the assumption that the personality of an average treasurer is different from a member of the general population. For example, the treasury testee might not be good at making contact in comparison with the general population, but at the same time be better at this than other treasurers.

As mentioned earlier, the test gives an insight into the skills and personality of the treasurer testee which can be used to decide whether he or she fits the position. The test can also give an indication whether the testee fits the company culture and if there are areas where the treasurer needs training or development.

We are currently testing the product, fill the benchmark and keep you posted about the progress of the test in the next weeks.

Team Treasurer Test

 

Getting ready to launch the Treasurer Test!

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Roughly 60% or more of the hiring managers we work with does not have experience in corporate treasury. Less than 20% of people working in corporate treasury received extensive professional treasury education. The rest did not. How can we measure whether a candidate has the knowledge to be able to do the job? Currently this is done, also by us, by looking at their experience: screening CV’s, checking references, etcetera. I think there is room for more thorough measuring.

After talking with many experts the idea of the Treasurer Test arose. We created a group of enthusiasts and started building. The core of the group consists of:

  • academic treasury experts of VU University (Vrije Universiteit) Amsterdam, responsible for the Register Treasurer Program, and The University of Applied Science (Hogeschool) Utrecht, organizer of the Minor Treasury Management;
  • assessment psychologists with a degree in test development;
  • IT experts using software and methodologies also used by dozens of international universities who can build an on-line assessment environment;
  • treasuryXL, their and our network of corporate treasurers as well as professional bodies.

Within a month we will start with the first test of a new and I think exciting measurement tool. It combines measurement of treasury knowledge & skills with a Big 5 personality test. The results of the treasury part of the test are presented both with absolute scores, as well as with a peer group comparison. Peer groups are formed upon experience: up to two years, three to eight and over nine. The results of the personality test are compared with a general population as well as the treasury population who already did the test. This way we can make statements like “he didn’t answer a lot of questions correctly on the topic cash management but others with less than 2 years’ experience score even worse” or “she is an introvert in comparison to general population but in comparison to other treasurers she is quite extroverted”.

We are close to asking the first peer group to do the test and expect a larger scale introduction around October 2018. I am quite excited about this project and think it can all help us in making career / recruitment decisions, choose proper education and shape treasury teams. There is a lot more to tell about the project, I will keep you updated and am available for questions or input.

On behalf of Team Treasurer Test,

Pieter de Kiewit
Owner of Treasurer Search