Global Employment Marketplace Ep – 17

Hello and welcome back to the Skills Provision podcast. On today's call, there's myself, Francesca. I'm Pete and actually we've got a new edition joining us today, which you may well hear in the background. New little puppy, Willow. I'm not going to ask her to say hello because we're hoping she'll stay in sleep. On today's episode, we're discussing a bit about skills provision in the global employment market. I just want to take this moment to remind our listeners out there if you are a new listener and you're viewing this or listening on any sort of platform, so it'd be that. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. If you can like it, share it with colleagues, friends, anyone you think could be interested. Equally. If you are an employer and you're looking for recruitment support, don't hesitate to contact us. Today, we can support many employers globally with various different industries, skill sets, types of workers, be that CEO's down to shop floor. To find out more, you can view our website. Please do check out our support pages as they detail thoroughly a bit about our processes and how we can support you. We like to make sure that we're transparent with employers, ensuring they understand where their value for money is coming from. Equally, if you're a job seeker and you're looking for opportunities, please do view our job board where you'll find all of our vacancies. We ask you then to create a profile of which we'll come on to that. More on that later. Register for any opportunities and make your application known. Perfect. We are going to crack on with today's episode. So, as I said, skills provision and the global employment market. Now, Pete, feel free to interject at any point. My maths and things may be off slightly, but a little bit about, and I'm going to speak about it from where we are from a job seeker perspective, because dealing with the recruitment side heavily, it's something that I'm seeing, obviously a lot to do with currently. Now we have amalgamated candidate profiles along with our new user registrations. And feel free to interject at any point, Pete, there are about 65,000 workers registered on our database and these 65,000 workers come from all over the globe. So we've got candidates from both countries, I would say. Pete, wouldn't you agree? Well, yes, definitely looking for opportunities, be that in their home countries. But a lot of workers are looking to that international opportunity in that next career step that they can take to better, further develop themselves and equally to just look for new opportunities. On the flip side, we support employers across the globe with various different skill sets and industry requirements. So be that. Currently, for example, we're looking for design managers for roles in Dubai, but at the same time we're looking for a general manager for a position in Ghana. So we've got a various different opportunities. Some are open, unfortunately, due to restrictions, and this is something we'll come on to a bit later. Not every opportunity does come with that benefit of being able to offer visa, sponsorship or a work permit. So unfortunately, not every opportunity is open to candidates beyond the local or national market. Would you like to interject Pete about a bit more about any stats or data, if you've got anything else, with regards to us in the global employment market? Not this time, no. No. Okay, so countries currently covered. Now this is as of today's date and I'm hoping I can count correctly, Pete, 48 countries are currently on the map. Yes, that's correct. And do you want to explain a little bit about the map and its functionality and the purpose of it? Yeah, well, we'll get on to that. First of all, I'd just like to touch on the subject of skills provision on the global employment market, where we are more of a generic snapshot of where we're at, how we get, how we got there, where we're going. So, first of all, we're well on our way to becoming a massive global employment network. And the market needs this, as we can all see. And you'll agree with this, Francesca LinkedIn is, and has been for a long time, is simply turning into a spam fest of sellers and very little, probably apart from contractual work which does well, I know my own son gets a lot of work from that side of things in the oil and gas is as an employment network, it's not performing well and the market needs something else. Yeah. What I would say from an observational point of view is I think there's been a real trend from where its purpose was originally of being more geared towards professional employment, all of those sort of things, to naturally gravitating towards the other social media platforms, if you will, of being more one size fits all for everything and people sharing other things, of which there's nothing wrong with that, but it can make the employment aspect of it become second fiddle to everything else. Yeah. And that can become a consequence of popularity and opening the systems up to the general public. So it becomes more of a social network, and the social network then sort of steers itself and then those that own and run the likes of LinkedIn, Microsoft find it very difficult to change direction and to add elements into it. They're more driven by their customer base. We won't be doing that. We won't be having mass discussion, although not discussion groups. Everything will be monitored and everything will be professional, and there'll be dividing lines between employers and job seekers and it will not be turning into it hasn't and nor will it into more of a spam fest where people probably think by having 500 profiles all saying the same thing, that they've got better opportunity. Every single thing that goes on to the site is validated and it's not easy to pass validation. So every so this 65,000, which is a fair, accurate number of where we're at regarding profiles, which is, and not everyone completes a profile or has completed a profile in the past, is probably, in comparison terms the equivalent of? 1 million on CV library because one, they're just collation of old CV's. We have 65,000 database strong of international people that are actually looking for employment, which makes it a very powerful database. So moving on internationally, we're putting businesses on the map. Now, this shouldn't be as difficult as what it is, but with the way online works and having to work within specific boundaries makes it fairly difficult and long winded. One of the reasons why we've not had a podcast for a while is because we've been busy working in these areas. We have a strong commitment to the delivery of cost effective or free employment solutions. Because we don't rely on digital adverts as a form of advertising, we can pass on value, monetary value, to our customers. A very important element to note, I was doing some research yesterday, South America market, where recruitment agencies were charging 25% to 30% the annual salary. A lot of this is happening because people are heavily weighted in on digital ads. The cost of that is continually spiraling upwards, which means they need to make their own margins. So, and everything falls back to the customer, the clients pay more. Once you become reliant on agencies to get your manpower, it becomes hard to, a bit like digital ads, it becomes hard to get out of that game. So when the prices start going up, you either get don't have the manpower or you pay the prices. So it's almost like there's blackmail type games being played in all subsets of employment. We don't play those games. We like to pass on well, we do pass on value to all our customers, regardless of the sector they operate in. We continually see diverse inquiries coming in from many regions. Naturally Covid, and you probably expand on this. Francesca. Naturally Covid and the hiring spike that followed that. And then retrospectively, visa changes and restrictions have all played a part in this. Peaks and troughs that we're seeing, have seen, and all the majors have reported. You know, a year and a half ago, two years ago, it was fantastic. Everything's great. Europe, some fantastic hotbed of placements and employment, and now it's, no one's looking to move. So everything's cyclical. You just got to play these games out. Yeah. May I interject that? Certainly, yeah. Yeah. So 100% the post Covid boom. Anyone who's in recruitment knows that there was this massive increase because the world was at a standstill for a period of time. Obviously, many people across many countries lost their jobs. And so then there was this, when things started increasing, this change, this sudden openness, and also, I think the increase of remote work opportunities because people weren't sure what was going to happen and other things like that. And obviously we're now seeing the counteraction of that now with most recently, Amazon announcing the return to office for many of its workers. Starbucks is obviously the well known one in terms of the office staff returning to work with the CEO doing that short commute of a few hundred miles by a plane or helicopter or however he was getting there especially, obviously, on the uk side, the visa changes. There was the positive impact of the visa changes post Brexit, which did allow for companies that were struggling to find people and had heavily relied on, say, the european workforce, pre Brexit, to bring people in. Obviously, those changes now, the increase in the salary from the minimum threshold of 26 200 to the 38 700 has wiped out a lot of opportunities or for a lot of companies that we're relying on this on a personal opinion, I think the justification for the 38700, and this is just my feeling, I'm not quite sure if I think it was fair. I do think, unfortunately, there has been some abuse of the use of it and going down the route of this route where there possibly is the talent within the UK. But we all see things about skill shortages on a daily, weekly basis, that there's got to be some truth in it. And by now reducing this, it does mean that some businesses, and in some ways it's still too early to tell because these changes only took effect in April. Itll be further down the line and we see what the impact of these are. Obviously, the intention is to increase higher skill level people coming in. But I think by a byproduct of doing the way and the way that they did it, it sort of felt like they didnt sell themselves very well. The UK, in terms of being an attractive option for people on the international front, the UK is not the only country that are experiencing skill shortages. So people are going to go where the opportunities are and the UK is not the only one looking and reviewing their immigration options. Again, a personal opinion of mine is that I think it would be great if there was no restriction on where someone came from. Obviously reality, that's not going to happen. But again, similar to conversations we have on a daily basis, Pete, is that if there was a clear process to follow and of which there used to be much more, and I'll take the UK as an example of the justification for a company, the reason they are looking outside is they cannot find this. So they have to prove it. Then they can use the outside option. I think somewhat the salary or the threshold should be somewhat irrelevant. Providing whatever is being paid is going to be sufficient for the wellbeing of that candidate and they can actually live. So not just paying minimum wage when they're having to relocate, pay all these other fees, but it's also these people that are coming over and there will be exceptions for anyone who goes anywhere, in any country. You'll get a few bad apples that don't then either follow through with their work or they. Some people will skip out and various different things, but all of these people generally are coming over for the betterment of themselves, the betterment of their lives, their careers. And by taking that opportunity away, it just. Yeah, it just. I don't know, it feels wrong. And I think. I think if there was the option that I think, again, it comes down to the monitoring of that these people were contributing to society. They're paying all these costs and then they're still also paying towards national insurance and tax and other things like that. So it's not like they're getting a free pass when they're here. I don't know, it's. Again, that's a topic for another day, maybe, but just. Yeah, just echoing what you were saying about the challenges, the peaks and troughs and recruitment is always cyclical. It is that, it really is. And it's great when it's going well. It's not obviously frustrating when it's not, but you just have to keep going and hope. And by following processes and processes that work, things should always come back around. Yeah, I don't know that I agree with all of that, but certainly some of it, the positive part of the skills provision is the fact that we operate internationally. So whilst you have cyclical downturns in some areas, then in others you see an uplift, which it could be in Asia, South America. And the policies that they have, whilst appearing to be more restrictive in South America, are actually more conducive to fairness and corporate expansion than what we see in the western hemisphere. So it's. They have. All workers have to have some form of visa, temporary, short term, permanent. They are not just get. So it will be dependent on the areas that people are looking to take employment into. So if. Is there an opportunity, what are the numbers? If there are half a million people unemployed in the construction industry, then the government's not going to allow many ex foreign skilled workers coming in into those areas. But where there's shortages, they most certainly are. And also they make it known that they won't let employers hire more than 20% of foreign labour within their company. Well, that's quite a high number. And these are good practices to have policies that you can consider. In the west, the very low levels areas, they can be at 80 90% of foreign workers. This is the areas that's causing the disjointed element to the whole of this sector. And you can't generalize. That's the problem. People trying to generalize with food production, it skilled engineer, high skilled engineers, you can't. They're all different and they've all got their own specific challenges, just like to move into Europe. Europe's a great example on the demand of international. For the demand of international skilled workers here, countries within the union have the luxury of employing workers from within, from within the block, however, we still see massive shortages. We still generate a lot of inquiries from european companies, which is unusual, but it shows on the grand scale how demographic changes, the introduction of IT and information technology, automation, AI, etcetera, the widespread scrapping of apprenticeship schemes, poor employment, treatment and pay have all led to what we see today, which is companies in Estonia, for example, find it, which has got a thriving expat community, find it very difficult to generate, to find foreign skilled labor, to fill good positions throughout the whole of Europe. And then you start to understand, and then we see the similar kind of thing in Germany. So it's not where the workers have migrated to the more popular areas. Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, moving away from traditional poor areas in the, in the east, the whole of Europe, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, they're all. It's almost like there's a pot of skilled workers. Let's say in the artisan trade that the blue collar brigade and the pot of workers, this is all workers, is too small on an international scale for the actual positions that are out there. Which would give you thought that the change has to come in terms of cross training, just training in itself, increased packages. But it's difficult. It's almost like people are adverse to move. So they may take less money, but they want to stay in a certain area. They've lived there all their lives, so there are changes, challenges. Francesca works a lot in the UK, so she naturally talks about that market maybe a little too much, because we're covering the whole of the world and the global problems that are out there are vast as we're seeing. Exactly, exactly. And you're totally right. And that it's not just a UK problem, it's a global problem of certain skill sets. And artisan is a good example. Trade skills. Healthcare is another good one of where there is only so many people in their first choice pot, should we say, of people that have the right to work in whatever country it is, or equally, if you're in the EU, they have the freedom of movement that when that pot is exhausted, what are the other options that they are a willing to consider and be able to consider due to restrictions that maybe are in place or costs is another. Obviously one factor for companies is what is the cost to them of bringing someone from further afield? Yeah, it's a universal challenge. It's not an isolated one for one particular country. Right. So that moves me back to where we. The original question about the map. Yes, you're correct. 48 countries listed. It doesn't actually mean we only support 48 countries, but that's the areas that we have that we're currently advertising because it takes the time to integrate these into the online model that we're targeting visually, factually by search. Online website means 48 countries in the world, which is growing weekly. The systems are putting in place within the map element is based on fairly simplistic. Simplistic to verbally explain, but complicated in terms of development and expansion. And that is big box, little box system to explain that, quite simply is the big box would be Peru. And the little boxes that fit inside the big box are international job board covering Peru. International workers from Peru seeking employment. International workers looking for employment either in South America or Peru. I'll post a job services that are coming soon in Peru. Visa support in Peru, copywriting services, recruitment services, directory services, all for the peruvian market and this thing of so big box and then the continuation of it could also be HR based services. A whole raft of either free paid services will be generated internationally in a sort of virus spreading type manner where we just soon as we've got our big boxes in place and we're probably on for tune from stage one of the finishing off of that and then the small boxes will start to be implemented and a virus type spreading throughout the entire network. This is just going to continue and grow contextually. My team at the moment has enough work probably for a decade, which is for frightening of an unbelievable. So in terms of the work that we've got in front of us to develop a functional employment network, but that's where we're going, that's where we committed to this journey of continually developing the network, the services within, but most importantly, providing professional support to employers and job and job seekers alike. So we are the turn to organization for assistance with a cv, assistance with a video presentation. I need 900 workers tomorrow. This kind of thing. We're going to be the global first employment network that is fully functional, fully functional today, but it's just a matter of spreading, developing and getting bigger. We have no bias or discrimination. Many areas of the world suffer from conflict, sometimes armed conflict, natural hatred. We do not get involved or judge any area. So we, for example, we provide our services to russian companies as well as Ukraine as well as the areas in the Middle east. There is no bias whatsoever, and nor will there be, because we're not here to judge, we're judging jury over anything. We're just here to provide an unbiased professional service in terms of the challenges. And companies that I'm not going to obviously work in a similar area, have made the mistake and continue to make the mistake of producing their content via bots. And all this is doing, which, face it, makes everything quicker, simpler, easier. Copy and paste on, bang, get it out. There is the production of meaningless content that doesn't actually have any soul to it, meaning, or it's not even written by people, it's just words. And this is also having an effect on SEO, visibility and such like which, naturally we're in the game if we want to progress quickly, but then there's a quality element as well to take into account. So that's my. When probably my biggest challenge comes in terms of the balancing act of growing this whole thing at a speed that's derived by quality, not what any individual wants it to be. So there you go. That's where we are with the map. And if you go to the website and look under worldwide, you'll see how the country is covered in green, how we're spreading, how we, how the pages have been produced, quality pages, fantastic AI videos, which Francesca is part of and her team putting together, which is really making a strong difference as well. So it's going well. It's difficult, hard, but everything worthwhile is. And yes, if you keep doing, if you keep doing the right things, even the hard things, the right way, and constantly, the competition are never going to follow. They're going to fall by the wayside and just want fast. We want fast. We want digital ads, we want to kill ourselves because this is what's happening is, yeah, companies are making a billion pound, producing a billion pound revenue per year, but they're loss making. That's because they just, they've swallowed themselves in terms of the cost of recruitment and they can't pass any much more on to the customers. And their own wages are so, so increased over time. Everything's gone up, every single thing. And once you become loss making in on that scale, you don't. There's no commitment. How would you ever turn it back? So it's, it's almost like the mistakes are made at the beginning and we not mind my team, know this, and we, we make sure we go steadily and clean. Absolutely. And I suppose that leads us on to various different highlights and challenges that we're seeing. And of which, again, feel free to interject at any point when discussing and discussing what we're going to talk about in this podcast, I don't know whether I've taken it in a slightly different direction than the intention. So we'll see and tell me if you want me to look at it from a different angle. One of the areas we've kind of already touched on is just the challenge of the markets, of where people or companies are willing or able to look at when it comes to trying to find talent to fulfill their needs. Now, obviously, recruitment agencies, the reason that people come to us, so company a comes to us is for our reach and with our network that we've built up over time, that we will have access to certain candidates that maybe they don't in our case, obviously we've got access to a lot of candidates, but if they are restricted within a certain pool and be that they're looking for the perfect candidate or geographically restricted, being honest and transparent is that the results are not necessarily going to be much different. Or if you're coming to market with a below market offer and your competitors are offering significantly more. And I'm not necessarily, and this is something I think, especially in a post Covid era. And even before that, I do think there has been this change from workforce perception or the way the way the workers feel valued. It's not just about the salary, it's about everything else that the company brings that support, mental health, maybe additional company benefits, physical wellbeing, the other things that are outside of just that pure salary aspect. But I always see these trends and stuff online of things of like, well, the company, they offer Friday pizza. What good is Friday pizza going to be when they're paying? Pittance that the person then can't afford to do things. And I also think this misconception of and where pre, I don't know, I don't have a timeframe on it, but this misconception that by going for workers from certain countries, regardless of where the company is based, or if the company's based in the Middle east, if the company's based in Europe, of going for workers from certain areas, that they think that they can pay less just because they're coming from a different country, when the work that they're doing is still going to be of the same value, that you can't just suddenly be like, oh, well, we're getting this worker from here. Therefore we can pay €2, $2.02 pounds less than what we would pay if we were getting someone local. So I think that is something that we find quite challenging when we're trying to also promote, looking outside of just the local market, national market, where is that option to hire from? Abroad, is that your offer has got to be internationally competitive, especially in those skill sets where there is the real shortages, your trade skills, healthcare. I'm sure there are others, but nothing, I can't think right now because I would assume, say, for your son, for example, Pete, is that there's probably disparity between maybe what he's earning versus what others are earning, but they're doing sometimes the same job. And also, if people are moving from another country to another, just the costs of living where someone has come from, I don't know, say they've come from Thailand and they're moving to the US, the standard and cost of living in Thailand is obviously going to be significantly lower. And them thinking just because they're coming from those places, that therefore you can be paying them less, because their perception of what all that money sounds like a lot. But then if they get to the US and the position is in an affluent area or a high cost area. You can't be paying someone lower just because of where they've come from. Apparently when he worked in shipyard in Singapore he was on just shy of 600 pound per day. And the people in there working just as hard, less technical I guess they were on 40 half of doing the same work and no amount of cost of living variation can take that into account. It just doesn't exist. And maybe looking at Asia versus the west by times three, times four, times five. But you know, my son, my son could be operating in the times ten to 20 difference between what he's been paid and what others have. Now he's not now surprisingly he's on the other side of the coin where he's now working for a service company. So he's employed direct instead of being a contractor. And he. He's paid now he's not been there long months, but intends to stay there for many years. Where he's paid, his base rate is probably the lowest it's ever been since even when he started after leaving school. But he's paid. So I don't know what it's called. There's a set rate that he's paid which he gets regardless if he's working or not. So he thought there's two elements to his pay. There's the working on the rigs or platform refineries or added to this standby rate or whatever it's called and produces probably in the. At the end of the year comparable amounts. But he can be on the rig now working and be earning 250 and the people that he's working with are on 450. So it's quite amusing the way it's all turned round. But I think because the contract is the amount of days they get to work per year is a lot less. Yeah. That it sort of balances out and the cost of living thing, it's just, it's. It's almost like what the employer can get away with. Employers are generally the financial biased towards themselves and their companies and if they can get away with pay, it's almost like they start at the bottom, don't they? You know, let's say that if you paid everyone in this factory 15 pounds an hour, you'd fill it with quality workers. Never like. Yeah, but we wouldn't be making hardly any profit. So we'll start at the minimum wage. 1111 pound 2011 pound 50. Just keep going up. We're up. Yeah, we've got them. They're no good, they're not good workers, but we've got enough of them. We can now, yeah. Pay the supervisors more now, don't they? So it's like, pay the managers or supervisors more, pay the workers less, and just, it's nothing new. It's been, it's been this way for a long time. But it is, I think it's becoming more and more, especially when we're talking more and more or more and more. The pool of people is getting smaller and smaller. I think it's people being, and it depends, obviously, how often someone is hiring. And I think this is the other thing is that you've got some companies that are constantly hiring, so should have more of an awareness of what is going on. You've got some companies that maybe they've not had to go to market for a period of time, and they're still thinking that they can offer a rate of two, three years ago. And the reality is there, it's just not there. So that is a challenge that continues, and I don't see it alleviating, but it's something that when we have our discussions with the employers, is that just being transparent about the fact that, okay, based on what you're offering, of course we can go to market. And what we try to say is that we'll go to market and generally we know the response within a period of time, and we'll be transparent with the employers and say, look, we don't believe that your offer is going to be now competitive enough in the market. We can see by the level of response. What else can you bring to the table? And like I said, it doesn't necessarily just have to be the salary side of things. It's the other things, and it's factoring in a lot of different aspects. And then on the other side of that is you've kind of, I suppose, touched on some part of the fact that employers and recruitment agencies are like or any business, generally one of their main things is obviously to make money. So they're wanting to pay out as little as they can when it comes to any cost or investment into something, be that a piece of equipment or equally a worker. And so when they turn to recruitment agencies, the price aspects and the price differential. And you were talking about, was it Peru? You were saying where they charge, was it 20% to 30%? You were talking about Peru. Yeah, I think it was $25 to $0.35. Yeah. And the aspect of people, employers saying that, well, we're not willing to pay that now, then going for the lowest, the lowest rate possible. Now, this is a generalization. Obviously, I can't say what every single recruitment agency is like, but just because you're paying less, there's often a reason why you're paying less. Is that what you're getting? Value for money is maybe not there. And that's something that I think is a real highlight from our perspective. Is that our protocol, our way of processing and inquiries that we'd like to guide towards having a demo demonstration. And Pete's team has been doing a really good job in terms of honing this experience and getting content out there. So if you're an employer, you can see there's a page on demonstrations which does highlight some of the areas we covered and. But it's a 15 to 2030 minutes, depending on, obviously, how the conversation goes, explaining exactly where the value is coming from with our service. Because to think it's just right, we do this, that's it done. And in some cases that will be what agencies do. But there is a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes and we want to make sure that employers know exactly what there is. And that's something that I believe we do a really good job of vocalising and showcasing exactly where it's coming from. And one of the positive byproducts of that is the perception from our clients of the tools that we use when given the opportunity. And don't get me wrong, I understand employers are busy people and it can't always work. So more than happy to tailor things according to what our employer wants, the employer comes first. But when we get given those opportunities to showcase it, generally everyone comes out with a positive feeling. And it may well be that when we get to the price aspect, we can't dictate that. We can't change and say what the company can and can't afford when we give our quotations. But when people see the tools, particularly say, like our client zone, everyone says, wow, this is amazing, this is impressive. It shows that it's more than just right. Here you go. Here's a person. I don't know if you've got anything you want to add, as far as that goes, Pete? Yeah, yeah. If you go back to my, to my son's situation and more, his network of friends, he obviously has a disjointed lifestyle, living as a young boy moving around Europe quite a lot. Excuse me, but he's settled in an affluent area in the north of England ish, and there's a group of friends from school, he was out with them, they came back and he was out with him yesterday and never considered it before, but looking at the work that those young men do. So you've got my son in the oil and gas. There's a school teacher, two people that work in the brand motor vehicle industry, Audi, BMW, that kind of thing. There's a graduate that's now working in the factory system manager level, someone that's just returned from a year in Australia, work holiday visa type schemes. Australia, New Zealand. And one person who's probably called the fortune, one of the group whose father owns a builders merchants type system, carry on. Now, all of them have got decent jobs, so it's not like 50% are at the lower level now, you'd say with these, like, a few of them went on to university, but not many. 75% of his friends network didn't. Probably all physically capable and motivated. They meet up and playing football somewhere yesterday and they meet or get football, go for a meal, chat, all get together, see how everyone's getting on. It's quite nice that they've probably from being Lewis, they've been friends from twelve. My son's 25 now, so. But the develop. But the whole group as a whole, no one's really struggled to find employment. No one struggled to find decent employment. Whilst obviously the. The earnings vary dramatically, which is normal. You know, the people are moving into the housing market, those are looking to go back abroad and do some more traveling. It's a good snapshot. So what would be fair to say is that in areas of. This is not down here, it's a fairly affluent area, these areas, there's massive opportunity. I would imagine there's more opportunity than anyone even imagines, but it's probably at the lower level. And as we move into areas where artisan trades, people who needed more leads, for example, and needed more in higher numbers, where it then starts to become, they're just not available and the market needs them from somewhere. So it's an interesting snapshot of what it's actually like on the. On the ground. As such. I'd like to take just a quick moment to throw out one of our advertisements and to say to all employees out there, regardless of the sector you operate in or your location, we have the capability, the visibility and the available resources to provide employment support at a cost effective level. If you're struggling for maps, skilled workers, which is the main area that we operate in, very quickly and efficiently, we can provide the manpower that you need. So on that back to you, Francesca. Okay, I've got one more challenge, if you will, that I think that I'll cover today, because I also don't want it to just be a list of negatives or it seemed like I'm being that way because there are positives, is levels or other challenges that we're seeing again. And please don't think that I think I'm reinventing the wheel here, that these challenges are not new, but I think they're becoming more and more prevalent. And highlighted is rounds of interviews and feedback. So from a candidate perspective, the levels and rounds of interviews that are needed for jobs is becoming in some cases quite ridiculous. If a candidate has an opportunity to go with company A versus company B, company A is two interviews, they're all organised within a week. And company B, whilst it may be offering more money, it could be a more well respected, let's say an internationally known organization. If you're going to put them through five levels of interview and it's going to take two months to complete that interview, depending on if that person is in a job currently or if they are out of a job now, this can obviously dictate. There are various variables that can dictate, but what is the need for all of these levels of interviews now? Obviously, depending on the seniority of a position, we totally understand that some will require further and deeper investigation, but for most positions we don't personally believe that there should be anything beyond three levels. And it's also this perception from employers of if you think you found the right candidate, why then continue to do interviews just to do a comparison. Now if we're talking about that, you say, I don't know, it's a Monday and you think you found the perfect candidate and you've got another interview lined up on the Wednesday. Well, that's a reasonable time frame to wait. Have someone wait for a decision. But we're seeing some people where, oh, I've interviewed this person on the 1 September, for example, we've got other interviews lined up for the 28 September, so we want to wait and see what the other options are. The likelihood is that someone's, and obviously there are variable factors, but the likelihood is that someone's not necessarily going to wait around for that period of time. There needs to be consideration on the can about the candidate and their well being in the process. And also just think about from an employer's perspective, the reputation that also puts that into the marketplace. If people can say they've had a good experience through the process, they've been kept informed. If they weren't successful, they get the feedback as to why not this ghosting, as everyone is saying, and keeping things moving along in a concise manner that makes sense and is necessary. I think that in itself is one of the biggest challenges that we're seeing on a daily basis. And I don't know, for example, say, your son, I don't know how many rounds of interview he had for his last one. Obviously, it's been a little while since I personally have interviewed for a position. I can't speak from first hand experience of going through the process, but it's not something that anyone should be put through unnecessarily. He went through three, I believe, where probably only one really counted or mattered, and that was the final one with a senior engineer, wherever he had to verbally, which could take 2015, 2025 minutes. Explain a process. And there was multiple processes to explain as to how he would say, strip down Christmas tree, I think they call them some of these things, in on the wells and then test using nitrogen pumps and all this kind of stuff. So complicated, you know, elements, and verbally explain. Bear in mind, it wasn't a job that he was. He'd done before, which. Which brings me on to a fascinating subject, which is he's a perfect candidate. A perfect candidate, 100%. And we've talked about this, haven't we? Probably nothing in detail where a perfect candidate on paper. So an actual perfect candidate has a very strong value in the marketplace, which means their longevity imposed their progression in terms of a bit like the football player that really is the messi of the Premier League, Gordon and a few others like him, that are so good that they're hard to keep hold of 100%. And in the workplace, if you look at this and think, I don't really. We don't really want the perfect worker that's so good, so powerful, so experienced they can do these jobs on their head because they may be gone in a few months, whereas, like my son, from the area he went into, and he hasn't his ass and touched the ground since, he started flying out daily from Humberside at the moment to a unmanned rig to do X, Y and Z, some decommissioning task, and then after that, he's probably going to Southampton for a year or two years. So it really hasn't had. Had a moment's break. And that's fantastic for him. So they're all young, keen, they want the next BMW, the money and the bank and all this kind of stuff, which is all understandable, but it's when he was interviewed, bear in mind that they've got a good idea. They've read the cv, they've done the background checks. There's been phased discussions with the call interviews prior to that. The guy that the person at the end of this line, he knew my son, was not, on paper, a strong candidate for this particular role, but with training development and because he has the right characteristics and personality, Andy could answer the questions in areas where he hadn't had official training. So he could talk through 25 minutes of how he would strip something down and reassemble, test and reassemble. Then he very much impressed at that level that he was given the job. Now because of his. Probably just his personality and he's engaging and keen. He's getting. He was told something that he might get 180, 60, 80 days work per year. The rest will be on standby. He sadly had any time off days, even then, that he's getting paid fully for the days he does have off. So it's like this thing of. It's all down to personal qualities. And if you take the. And I had this myself in when I was in the military. In an engineering environment, where you take the salt of the earth rafters, they've got the right characteristics and you get them to do something else that's outside their scope of comfort, training, whatever it is. But you explain exactly what they need to do, how they need to do it, then they will do a perfect job and they will do it time and time and time again. Whereas the person does probably got a bit more ego about them. He's done it for 20 years. Piss poor attitude. It's. And probably more thinking more about their own personal worth value in the marketplace. Oh, I can get five grand down there. I'll just wait. I'll wait. And then soon as that next opportunity arises, I'm gone. Because everyone, or the vast majority, are selfishly biased. This is where. And as you understand, Francesca, this is what we're looking at, where the perfect candidate isn't necessarily the perfect candidate, but the difficulty is explaining that to the employers because they see it as well. You're just trying to palmers off with someone that's not that suitable. It is a challenge, and I do think there's certain areas where there has to be a bit more alignment specifically for, say, more senior position. You're obviously going to want someone that has. If they're bringing something into a company that's being new and wanting to be established, then they're going to want someone who could do certain things easily first time, not. Not necessarily learning on the job, but it's 100% that you for a lot of roles, you want that sort of 80% fit with the 20% to grow, because also, depending on where someone's coming from, there's a lot that they can have left to learn. And the company that, and the way that one company does something is not necessarily the same way that another company does. And not. And to say which way round it is as to who does it better, well, that's down to interpretation, down to every circumstance, but it's also the transferable skills. And especially in a time where we are having those transferable skills and we're not necessarily just talking about communication or listening skills or stuff like that, it's also that, okay, someone can do this, can that be transferred into a different area or can there be the training that's put in place to help bring that person? Because if they're coming with the right attitude, and that's something you can't, you can't teach, is it's something that's so important to not overlook and not just also, and I think it comes down to the CV, and that's why we don't necessarily guided by our employers in terms of what exactly they want. But just presenting a CV gives an isolated snapshot a picture. It doesn't tell you about the candidate, it doesn't give you a sense of feeling of the candidate. It just is words on a page. So that's why we get video introductions and supporting, we give our supporting benchmark scores and other things like that, that give a more well rounded view of a candidate to the employer because could show them two candidates, and this candidate has, oh, all of these perfect things and then this other candidate has, as I say, 80%. But actually the way that the first candidate who was a perfect fit was during the interview, they couldn't care less. They've taken ages to come back to me. This other candidate got everything back to me. Within 2 hours. They were really engaged, asking lots of questions, wanting to know more about the company. Who would I recommend? Well, again, every circumstance is different, but it's being open minded. I think that is the biggest thing that I say to employers or my team says to employers is that can you consider other options? Will you consider this by having more options on the table, there is a higher chance of success. And at the end of the day, your reason you've come to us is for our expertise, our suggestions, our network, our connections, and us being able to find you a person. The more closed minded you are. Across variable, the variables of experience, location, skill set, the less chance of success. And if you really need someone, excuse me, in post for your business, then you've got to be more open minded. It probably comes down to mathematics. And if you look at our CEO, Chris, for example, and the work he did previously, there's probably very few people in the world that could do what he was empowered to do and capable of doing funding for, like, the channel Tunnel, which is like, couldn't, you couldn't even get to like, the starting point of something like that unless you were like, massively experienced and you knew exactly what you, you need to know exactly what you're doing from start to finish. Very few people doubt, very few people in the world were capable of doing what he was successfully knocking out. But then you got, you know, but not many, you know, minimal in terms of those job positions. And you go, and it's right, you look at, an employer needs to probably know before they start down the process of the mathematics. If you want us to rigidly stick to your job description, the exact qualifications, experience, everything detailed that you want. Bear in mind where we are globally with skill shortages, then the mathematical, the people that we're going to put forward into the client zones is probably going to be x, for example, 30 people, something like that. Now, if you broaden this. So it's bear in mind, and this is where probably I don't, because my area is more logic based. It is logic based, technical, that not understanding the mindset probably is this. You may as well go with the broad. So take advice from the recruitment specialists in certain areas where there's, there is shortage and the shortages exist everywhere, near enough. And go more broader and just see who gets pushed forward because you're not hiring in the first instance. You're collating people into the, into your own bespoke client zones to then make your decision. And then you might be like, wow, I'm really impressed with this person, this person, like my son, this person really impresses me. He shouldn't actually be in here because he doesn't, he's only got two years experience and we specifically say we want five. Exactly. Exactly. So they may as well go abroad. And this is probably where the, our specialists, they've got to be more probably forceful and explaining it better to the clients of, we, we're not, you don't hire. We, we're not going to hire. We're just going to collate people into your client zone for you to decide. And then they may have their eyes open. Probably some do have their eyes open and maybe some don't. You know, maybe they just preconceived, or maybe they're happy to go with whatever. It's. It's probably. Yeah, exactly. It's case by case basis. Yeah. So I'd like to move on to our final discussion point. May I just. There was one other point on what I wanted to say, which actually, then I do think leads us on to the next thing was a highlight for me, obviously, because I'm seeing, and I'm involved in the work that is contributing to it. Alongside yourself, Pete, is the visibility of everything with regards to the business. Now, jobs being one thing, and it's fantastic to see that our job board is being visible and our adverts, and you touched on before that we're not using ad spend or things like that. The visibility that our job board is getting in the marketplace and that they're finding their position above major job boards is fantastic. And it's crazy to think for a relatively small team, what we've managed to achieve. So credit goes to you guys in the technical aspect and obviously some of the work that we do together to get there. And not only the job board, but also other pages of which I can't remember exactly which page it was. Pete. So you will have to interject about the performance of the world map, the visibility in search, and also now being in featured snippets. So I couldn't quite remember which page it was. Yeah, we have quite a few changes and grows. You can drop on and off that roundabout very quickly and. Or stay on there and it's. Yeah, probably got something like 3% of the structured pages are appearing as featured ads in Google, which is insane. We even have job adverts which are picked up at the top of Google in their featured snippets. The AI summary attached, which is also fantastic and leads to strong conversion. The elements of all this, which is very complicated, and we could probably have a whole podcast on this particular area, and I've touched on it in previous episodes, is the fact that when a job board starts, starts off. So let's say total jobs or anything like that much notice and what other people are doing, but they build their platform generally for the marketplace at that particular moment in time. And a lot depend initially on Google visibility less. So ad spend once they get rocking and rolling. But then as the visibility starts to win and the ad spend has to increase and increase, in the end, you've got no visibility organically, and everything's via digital ads. The problem being is the way the whole online space in particular search is evolving and the lack of visit, of lack of flexibility for something once it's built to change. And the benefit to this system that skills provision utilize and this will become very powerful. Touch on it. Now, because I was going to touch on in the next section in post the job is we're going to open our international job board up to employers to come in to post jobs, but it will not be as a traditional job board system, it will look similar, but when you, when it comes to the production of the adverts, it will be completely different because the, it's the end point. Now, if you want to give a basic summary of this or to attempt to, if you want something to be visible on search or let's say a and e engineering need five transmission lines, a task in the Netherlands and they produce an advert on a job board. Now the elements of that will be how powerful is the job board itself that you post on to the visibility and how strong does search because they, because the job board won't pay for individual ad space, advertising for your position. That much is almost certain is. And these are some, some of these job boards have got hundreds of thousands of entries in there at any one time. How does it perform? How does it rank, how visible is it? Now, all of this comes down to the construction of how it's made in the first place. I took a job description or an advert from somewhere else, changed a few lines, copied and pasted, or an advert that we previously used lots and lots of times and just pasted it in. So it's duplicate content, it's bot derived content, it's low scoring content. I pasted it in there. We only got three applicants. Why has anyone sold the ad? So what we do is we, it's almost like we have a technically strong SEO derived job board where we don't follow the status quo, we generate very powerful ads. Now, the downside to that is it can take a bit of time, but that's nothing compared to when you're generating 500 applicants for three positions you want to fill. And out of those, 30 are absolutely fantastic. So you can actually employ them later or different projects or keep in contact with them. Is like, this is absolutely goldust online, this is what we're going to produce and this is what we. But it's all based around, almost like the university student that's just chat GPT in their project and someone, and get in the way of it and someone that handballed everything, learnt it all, did it all perfectly as they were supposed to, who's going to be the best person down the road with the, with the knowledge, the skill, all this. So it's almost like there's always a price to be paid for taking shortcuts. You can get quick wins, of course. I mean, the online is all about quick wins for most people, but longevity, and this all comes down to the employment network as well. If you do it well and do it right and there's quality attached to it from the very start. Title of the advert, the title of the supplementary video to the main body, to the syndication outlets, the whole thing. Then if done well, a relatively small, obscure minute organization can, can outrank total jobs. Haze Reed, Adeco, Glassdoor and you know, indeed, as I said, indeed, you can. All of them by purely using strong fundamentals and some of them are not known. So some of them, it's specific skills that my team have that we can, that we can produce this. And it's online. It is crazy powerful that we can produce pages on fully Veno because I've mentioned it for this podcast, Peru, and then have pages for multiple keywords related, strong keywords and we're in the top one, two, three of Google is because we're not cheating. We're doing everything correctly and cleanly. With the downs, with the downside of it takes time. That's, that's the. Yes. Not sure if that answered your question. No. I think it's just a good, it's a good illustration for people that the reasoning and justification behind why certain actions are positive and other actions that carried out by others are not. Yeah, I think that's the downside to my on and a few people I work with, methodology and thought process is it took time to the people that were taking the shortcuts, the copy and paste brigade, the bots dwellers and all this kind of stuff, they were winning for a long time. For years they were winning the copy of the job description and whack it out there and all this kind. They were well ahead. And people like me and my team were struggling because we were doing it correctly, but it was slow. The results we were producing were good, on par with the chiefs. But the belief was that the evolvement of search primarily would favor us because in the end they would need to be, they would need to follow the quality guideline for their own benefit. It's also twin to their own pay per click systems themselves. So a strong belief in where it was going to end up. So predictive type assessment, which took years to unravel and now it's absolutely perfect where you've, like, indeed are like their own analytics are like imploding because they're now able to charge for so many different things where like. Because it's. They haven't got the visit at one time. Indeed, we're getting Astral as Google now. Now they're not featuring on page one for millions and millions of keywords. Why? It's almost like because the game's over for them as a business. They'll, they'll just have to take their licks and take the money they've made and off they go. And it's happened so many times. Yell. But the same with their business directory. And there's been so many academy prior to LinkedIn and all this kind of stuff where it's almost like you ride in the crest of the wave, of the wave that's there at that particular moment in time, but when it ends, there is. There's nothing there. It's like you can't, you can't do anything. And we're not playing that game. Job boards now will be dependent on the paper. Click. That's it. The digital ads that they're probably having to spend for the whole borders, the sections within the board, the small boxes within a job board, which could be 10,000, 5000, that kind of number, they're having to digital ad spend on those to bring the whole strength of it in to generate the business. But then what happens, and you'll know yourself, is once you've made a post on, say, twitter two days later, like, no one can see it's gone. Like. So the relevance is there, I'd say the volume, the volume of content that goes out now and how quickly stuff gets moved through is crazy. Yeah. And if you can produce, you imagine, like, if, if total jobs, indeed. Glassdoor. Glassdoor. Not too bad, actually. They're different. Here's Reed. If they could turn the clock back, produce job boards that were powerful, technically prolific in strength, where they were generating features, snippets for their hands, they'd be like, we're going to be. We're unbeatable because everyone's going to come to them, you know what I mean? And this is where, like, if you can dominate the top of search through clean ways, how can you be beaten? Because those behind you, they've never been clean. They've only ever done you. Shortcuts, scraping bots. It's like they're not going to start work. And even if they did, it's like they can't because they've infected themselves too much. It's a very fascinating subject, one that people may out there may be grasping, may not be, maybe just waffling the same technical stuff where I waffle to my own team, but I can validate the results. I can probably do that on one of the podcasts, Francesca, where we will generate 1020, 30, 40, 50 sets of keywords and people can type them into the computers and see for themselves. And it's actually the case where we are dominating search in the employment sphere. No, absolutely. And so this area now we're talking about future things we've touched on, poster job, other areas that we're looking to expand or other ways. Something else you've kind of touched on is within our country, pages of adding additional information and potentially additional services. So looking for providers perhaps of other employment related activities. So that could be english language courses, qualifications, other qualification courses, qualification assessments. What's the right word? I'm looking for a testing of qualifications or verification of qualifications, reference checking, visas, work permits, flights. I don't know, maybe even that when it comes down to. Or accommodation, people or various other things that it could be to do when it comes to employment, that was one other area that I was wanting to just note in terms of other areas of things that we're looking to expand upon. And I also think the further utilization of video in the engagement of people, because what you're saying about how Twitter moves through so quickly is that the way in which people consume content, us using video adverts to further support, it's just another way that. Not to say no one's doing it, but I don't see so much of people doing it at the scale at which we're doing it. They're not. We have a totally unique way of operating that one is suited to us because that's the way the fundamentals we put in place soon as it's probably not suitable to other people because they have a totally different way of doing it and the numbers they're working on and all this kind of stuff. So it's. It's unique to us. I've got a list here of if you touched on, you've stolen a few of them, I would say Francesca, but I'll go through my list of future and discount poster job, which was at the top, which is coming soon before Christmas. Got the international directory, courses targeted, Jobseeker support. We've got a new profile system going live this weekend, which we've not discussed, but we may do it. We'll probably do a podcast specifically on that in the coming weeks. Profile integration, that's a massive one that I don't discuss with anyone really. International discussion forums, we've touched on that which won't become a bonfire and any kind of social he ha where we can start generating our own spam on a global scale. Job applications via QR or countries covered, and international advertising opportunities, which we're also going to move into, which won't be paid links or anything like that, but fantastic opportunity for businesses out there to expand their global reach while utilizing our very strong profile job structured pages. So there we go. That's the end of my list. I was gonna say, I don't think overall, yeah, I was gonna say I don't think I've got anything else to add now without giving too much away and. And also see how things progress, because that's our list at the moment. But we know how quickly things can change, don't we, Pete? So, yeah, that's why we have some things, obviously, that have not been covered on the list for obvious reasons. Absolutely. And that's why I would advise anyone who is listening that wants to know more about the journey, make sure you're subscribing, liking sharing the podcast with those that you think could be interested. And once again, just wanted to take this opportunity to remind employers out there, if you are struggling with your search for suitable manpower for your business, do not hesitate to get in contact. One of the recruitment team will be happy to process your inquiry. Explain exactly how skills provision can support your business through a demonstration. So you can book into that today by visiting either the homepage and going into the inquiry section or going to the employer section, reading a bit more about us and then placing an inquiry from one of the pages there. Equally, if you're a job seeker and you're wanting to apply for any positions, please do visit our job board and register to apply. And as Pete touched on, if you're wanting to create a profile and have your skill set seen, those new changes are coming live soon. So, perfect opportunity to create what we call and I don't want it to make this to do a disservice. So, Pete, to tell me if I am, but we think it's a really nice shop window for job seekers to be able to showcase their skills professionally to on looking employers globally, as we do get a lot of inquiry specifically about profiles that have been found, so your skill sets will be seen. So from my side, Francesca, it's. Thank you. Thank you for listening and we'll catch you on the next one. Yeah, I'm from me, Pete and Willow, who's now decided to wake up, and he's now clambering all over me. It's. Have a nice day. Thank you very much for listening. Take care, everyone.