My 3 interesting things for you this month…
1. Don’t Tell Them What You (L)earn
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ll probably know my golden rule: never tell recruiters your salary.
Why? Because it creates bias. Remember, recruiters work for hiring managers, not for you. Their goal is to make an offer happen as easily as possible, which usually means adding 10% onto your current salary.
That’s not negotiating. It’s taking the path of least resistance.
But here’s something else you should avoid: telling the market what you’re learning.
A lot of my clients ask, “Oli, what course should I take to show I’m staying up to date?”
Here’s the problem. Learning isn’t a differentiator anymore.
Thirty years ago, going on a course for VBA in Excel made you the office expert. Knowledge was a currency. Ten years ago, you could learn almost anything in 30 minutes on YouTube.
Today, with AI, you can learn in real time.
Saying, “I just completed a course on XYZ” doesn’t make you stand out, it actually does the opposite. It shows recruiters you weren’t already an expert.
What does make you stand out is showcasing your impact.
Instead of saying: “I took a course on Power BI.”
Say: “I automated our month-end reporting using Power BI, cutting down manual work by 10 hours a week.”
See the difference? One is just learning. The other is results.
Hiring managers aren’t just looking for people with information, they want people who create value. If you’re taking a course, apply what you’ve learned and show the impact.
If you need help framing your experience into quantifiable achievements, get in touch!
2. Supercharge Your Job Hunt with the Power of AI
Hiring managers in finance don’t just want AI users, they want AI enablers.
If you’re in a job interview, you might hear their new #1 question: “How can you help our team use AI strategically?”
It’s not enough to say you’ve played around with ChatGPT or automated a few reports. They want to know:
- How have you generated impact using AI in your day-to-day work?
- How have you solved real finance problems with AI?
- How would you help the whole team embed AI into their daily habits?
The real challenge isn’t just using AI yourself (though you’ll want to cover that in an interview too!), it’s showing how you help make it second nature for the whole team.
So, how do you do that? Here are a few ideas:
Stop talking about AI and start using it to solve problems
How can you get AI into other people’s daily routines? Use it to get rid of a problem they’re sick of dealing with.
- Instead of “AI can do amazing things with data,” say: “We used AI to auto-categorise expenses, saving 3 hours a week for the team. We used publicly available, free tools, without introducing any privacy or security issues”
- Instead of “AI can summarise reports,” say: “We used AI to generate quick insights on variances before the leadership meeting when we received a last-minute request, by anonymising sensitive data and providing context. The leadership team took a new course of action as a result.”
Make AI feel like a time-saving assistant, not a vague future trend!
Create an ‘AI First’ mindset
The biggest reason people don’t use AI is because they forget it’s there. You can help them remember. Here’s how:
- Ask before starting a task, could AI help with this? Encourage them to check before spending hours on a task.
- Run quick experiments. AI tools improve with use, so try different approaches.
- Celebrate wins. When someone finds a great use case, shout about it! (e.g. “Did you see how Jake automated that forecasting model in 10 minutes?”)
- Make AI easy to access. Get everyone to put an AI app on the front screen of their phone for quick use.
Empower an AI-enabled team
The second biggest reason people don’t use AI is because they’re scared of using it wrong or breaking a company rule they don’t know about! Here’s how you can help people get past this:
- Create and share an AI Manifesto: Define and communicate how AI can be used safely.
- Build a simple AI playbook: A list of 3-5 daily AI use cases relevant to finance.
- Set up AI buddy systems or a team of AI Champions: Pair up team members to try AI together and share tips.
- Run ‘AI Fridays’: A 15-minute team huddle where people share what AI worked for them that week.
So don’t just talk about what AI can do. Show how you’re making it a habit.
3. The 4 Questions That Put You in the Top 10% of Job Seekers
When clients come to me saying, “I need a new job, but I don’t know where to start!“, they usually have a hundred thoughts running through their heads.
How do I prep for an interview? What should I be saying about myself? How do I talk about my achievements? I hate updating my LinkedIn… do I have to?
The first thing I do? Give them a simple framework (obviously!).
This cuts through the noise and makes job hunting structured, clear, and effective. Here’s how it works:
What problems do you solve?
Hiring managers don’t really care about what you’ve done. They care about the problems you can solve for them.
So instead of just listing what you’ve done, focus on the problems you want to solve next – using past successes to prove you can do it.
If you want to drive finance automation, instead of “I managed financial reporting”, say “I cut month-end close time by 3 days by automating consolidations.”
Or if you want to lead commercial finance, try something like “I’m excited about partnering with business leaders to drive profitability. In my last role, I helped cut costs by 15% through smarter forecasting.”
See the shift? You’re showing up as a problem-solver for their business, not just someone with a list of past responsibilities.
What is your brand?
Once you know the problems you solve, your personal brand writes itself.
Your brand is made up of the themes that consistently show up in your work.
- Do you fix broken finance processes?
- Do you influence decision making, even with challenging partners?
- Do you lead finance automation?
- Are you known for building high-performance teams?
If you don’t define your brand, recruiters and hiring managers will – and they’ll probably get it wrong.
What’s your narrative?
Your narrative connects your experience to your goals. It should be clear, memorable and easy to say out loud.
Your narrative should answer: Who are you as a professional? What impact have you made? What are you looking for next?
Example:
“I help finance teams go from slow and reactive to fast and strategic. I’ve built reporting systems that saved 50+ hours a month, led teams through finance transformations and helped companies move from Excel chaos to AI-driven insights. Now, I’m looking for my next challenge in a company that’s serious about using finance as a competitive advantage.”
That’s a story – not just a list of jobs.
This story lives at the top of your CV and LinkedIn, and becomes the foundation of your intro pitch – before you jump right into their problems.
How do you communicate this?
Once you’ve built a strong narrative, your job-hunting assets become easy to update:
- CV & LinkedIn → Your headline, summary and bullet points should reflect your brand and impact.
- Recruiters → Tell them exactly what you’re looking for and the problems you want to solve.
- Interviews → Answer every question through the lens of the problems you solve. Even better, find out their biggest problem and discuss solutions.
Most candidates ramble about tasks and long, boring case studies. You’ll walk in with a clear, compelling story that makes hiring managers say “We need this person.”
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