EP 127: TalentMatch Africa - How to Deliver Values to Clients

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All In recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our YouTube and Spotify channels to stay tuned for our weekly episodes.

My name is Lydia, and joining us today is Gerard Holland, CEO of Talent Match Africa. A pleasure to have you with us, Gerard.

Gerard: It’s a pleasure to be here, Lydia. Thank you for having me.

Solving the Experience Paradox for Job Seekers

Lydia: So tell us what inspired the creation of TalentMatch Africa, Gerard.

Gerard: I'm Australian-born and I've spent time in the UK but most of my time in Australia. Now, I have a business that's running out of Africa. So it's not the normal path that someone would take, or it's definitely not a path that even six or seven years ago I thought I would have taken. But my story is, like anyone in business, I suppose, it takes a journey of its own without you in the meeting once you get into business, which is part of the fun and the excitement.

But in 2016, I started a business to help international students get jobs. I was an outsourced CFO. One of my clients was in international education, and I got a bit of a taste of what the experience was like for international students in Australia. There are a lot of Malaysian students who actually come to Melbourne for education, and I realized that the universities were generally more focused on providing a degree and not on providing a job. My view was that if you were going to spend $80,000–$100,000 to get a degree, you're doing it because you want to get a job in that field so you can have a better life. The ultimate outcome you want is career-related employment, not a certificate. The certificate is a means to an end, and the end is a job but the universities just weren't focused on that, and I don't think they were going to change.

So I thought, “Well, why don't I do something about it?” So I quit my nice corporate job and started a business to help international students get career-related employment. I realized I needed to solve this little paradox of: How do I get experience if no one will give me experience? Getting into the system is the hardest thing, and I'm sure your listeners who are in recruitment know it's very hard to place grads. It's much easier to place a React developer with seven years of experience than someone who's just finished a computer science degree and doesn't have real-world experience yet.

So getting that first bit of experience was critical. Once you're in the system, you stay in the system. To solve that paradox, we started focusing on internship placements. If we could put more international students into internships, then they would go into the experience bucket instead of the no-experience bucket because people always gravitate toward people with experience.

So we started doing that, and things started to grow. The universities became our clients. We went all over Australia, then into the UK, and then into Canada. Then, in January 2020, I met Zondwa Mandela, the grandson of Nelson and Winnie Mandela. Zondwa just asked me flat out: “Why the hell are we not in Africa? Why are we helping people in developed countries like Australia get jobs, and why aren't we where we're needed most, which is on the African continent?”

At this stage, I'd never been to Africa, and I didn't have an answer for him. But six weeks later, the pandemic happened and changed everything. Remote work became a thing. It's never going to go away. The way people work and look at global resourcing has changed. At the same time, the digital skills shortage started accelerating because businesses needed to digitalize what would have taken 10 years in 18 months. So we needed people with more digital skills and tech capability.

The third thing, which has always been there, is an abundance of talent on the African continent. I got to experience that firsthand when our borders opened up. Within a week, I was on a plane, starting in Ethiopia and working my way down to South Africa, through Kenya and Rwanda, and I was blown away by the quality of the talent. I just could not believe how good these people were but completely overlooked by the rest of the world.

So I made a decision on that trip, as I left, I was going to reorganize my business to make Africa a focus and to connect people from the African continent, university-qualified people, into remote jobs with the USA, Australia, Canada, and the UK. We placed someone in China last week, someone in France.

And so, before I die, I'd like to create a million jobs on the African continent. That's my personal mission, and that's how we've ended up with an African business unit that's now our fastest-growing part of the business.

Lydia: So what's happened to the internship placement or that platform? Was it a platform, or was it a program that you created?

Gerard: Both. It is a tech-enabled business and it still runs. I've brought another gentleman in, Tom Jamieson, to run that part of the business. Yes, we built a tech platform to be able to facilitate internship placements. So that still runs, growing, and doing really well. Then we have the second business unit, which is now TalentMatch Africa, which I'm now investing more of my time into.

Lydia: So do the two businesses connect at any point?

Gerard: We could go and talk to a business today, and they might want to take one of our international students from RMIT into their business as an on-site, and they might want to take one of our talent from South Africa at the same time. So we've got many clients to say, well, I need this role done on-site, but this role can be done remotely. So we engage the African part and our local part and we bring it together. And to be honest, that's the best type of placements we do, is when we can blend the two models.

Africa’s Workforce is Ready and Eager

Lydia: You spoke about the abundance of opportunities, and it seems as though you've got the impression that it's completely underserved the African talent pool. So what unique challenges or opportunities, do you think characterize the African talent market space today?

Gerard: Yes, so on the challenges side, the biggest one is people's perceptions of Africa. I was in this bucket before I actually got on a plane and spent time on the continent. My vision in my head was from the movies and from World Vision ads, and I'm ashamed of it now because it is completely different from what reality is. You're walking into cities that have skyscrapers everywhere and just an abundance of activity and prosperity. You don't think of that until you've been to Africa, because the news has painted this picture of us. So, I think the biggest challenge is changing the perception of what Africa is.

In terms of opportunities, there's an enormous amount. So, you think about English capability, which is really strong. There are some countries that are French-speaking but look at countries like South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. They speak better English than I do, without my Australian accent.

Africans have really outgoing personalities. So, they're not shy people. They're full of energy, and they're vibrant in their natural personalities. They're not order takers, so they're very much critical thinkers. It's not just sitting back and waiting to say nothing if something's wrong; they will speak up, which is a really important characteristic.

And I think the most important one is, by nature, they're curious. I think curiosity is the most important attribute of any staff member. If you're naturally curious, you want to dig into things, you want to understand things, you might go and find out the latest AI tool and spend the weekend going down a rabbit hole to learn about how that could help the business challenge the status quo. So, that all comes quite naturally to people from the continent.

And the big one too is that they want to work. They know that opportunities are scarce. We haven’t had the same experience yet in Africa that happened in, say, the Philippines, where there's an abundance of jobs that have gone to the Philippines. So, right now, it's very immature in these African countries. To get an opportunity for a job, they're going to grab it with both hands, and they're going to do everything they can to keep it.

Lydia: Looking at the talent and the vibrancy of the talent pool within the African continent, and matching that with your business and talking to your clients about placing them elsewhere. I mean, what are some challenges that you may have faced in terms of conveying that value to your clients?

Gerard: So, it was really difficult to begin with because it's hard to change perception.

We made a strategic move to create videos for all of our talent. We hired professional videographers in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kigali, and Addis. So, when we talk to our clients about the type of talent, we actually show them a two-minute video, and you can see the change on people's faces.

It's like, "What? These are the people we can access?" It's actually become the best-selling tool we've ever had because that one video or, we might show them multiple talents, completely changes the narrative to the point where I've been on a call before, and I was doing my pitch to a company in Chicago, and Jill, the lady, said, "Look, Gerard, you can stop. I've watched all your videos over a glass of wine. I want to interview Ludo, Kingsley, Faith, and someone else." So, the video has completely changed their perception. That's been a really great tool for us to overcome the pushback.

Lydia: In terms of sectors and showing the strongest demand, which sectors are having the strongest demand for African talent in the global market right now?

Gerard: So, we're getting really good traction with customer-facing roles and communication-based roles because English is so natural. The ability to build rapport comes naturally, and people are able to have conversations in a vibrant and friendly way, with energy and enthusiasm. So, those have been really good roles for us.

Then, there are all the tech and data roles. I think that's just a symptom of the world in general—people need tech people and they need data people. So, there's naturally a draw. There are some really strong tech people, and a lot of data people out of Kenya and South Africa, ranging from data engineering to data visualization to running CRM systems.

Finance and accounting roles have been popular too. We've actually placed quite a few financial controllers in Kenya, and there are really good finance and accounting people coming out of South Africa. Their accounting systems and bodies are quite similar.

Another popular area has been business operations. We're finding that a lot of people come to us saying, "I want an EA." I don't believe companies need EAs anymore. The world has moved on from 15 years ago when I was a grad and the partners at the firm I worked at all had EAs, and they would mainly manage their calendars and inboxes. We've got these phones now, right? Where everything's on the go. People are flicking through their emails on a train, clearing stuff, managing their calendars.

So, what people really need are business operations specialists who can help drive performance in the business and give capacity back to the people they're working with. I see it as a role that's not quite a chief of staff, but it's also not an EA—sitting in between. We're getting a lot of good traction with those types of roles. People with a commerce degree, a business degree, or even an economics degree—coming from that business background—are entering businesses and doing things like stakeholder management and ensuring that things are being delivered on time. This could be sales support, but ultimately it's about giving capacity to the people they're working for. It's been very popular and very effective.

Africa’s Tech Rise Will Happen Faster Than India’s

Lydia: Where do you see the greatest growth opportunities for African talent in the global marketplace?

Gerard: If you look at Africa as a whole, the numbers are quite mind-blowing. By 2050, 2 billion people will live on the continent, which is a third of the world's population. So, just think about that in context. Think of China, India, and these big economies and then you have Africa, with a third of all people. The average age of people on the continent right now is 19 years old. So, you've got a market to trade with. It's not just a market for resourcing, right? It's a market to trade with.

In an economy that big, growing quickly, with a lot of great universities and a huge number of people who are university-qualified, there is absolutely no shortage of talent. There's an abundance of it, with such a diverse range of skills.

So, I think the growth in Africa is going to be huge. If we think about what happened in India over the past 40 years and how India became a tech powerhouse, I think this will happen in Africa in 20 years—it'll happen twice as fast. As the rest of the world starts to realize the quality of the talent, obviously, there's a price point difference in a lot of these African markets, with the cost of living being so low.

As the global resourcing managers realize just how affordable and how good the talent is, there's going to be a huge push over the next 20 years into resourcing from the continent

Lydia: What metrics do you use to measure successful placements and maybe even satisfaction?

Gerard: So, we're pretty hands-on. Our model is that we do all the payroll, and everyone works from our office buildings too. It's not a work-from-home model. I don't think, I don't believe work from home works in developing countries. So, we've gone and procured office space in those hubs I mentioned before, and in those office spaces, we provide technical mentors, development coaches, and career coaches. We've got industrial psychologists on staff, as well as wellness coaches and initiatives. So, there's very much a wraparound service. It's not just grab someone, put them in a job, cross our fingers, and hope for the best.

Our performance is measured by how long we keep someone in a job with that company—12 months minimum. My view is, if I can get someone to 13 months, they have a job for life. As we all know, companies want to keep people. Once you can get them there for long enough, they become very valuable to the business with the intellectual property that they develop. So, long-term longevity is really important.

We've also mapped all our roles against the SFIA framework, Skills for the Information Age. We assess talent coming into our process and programs are all assessed against the SFIA framework. Then we use SFIA to manage progress. So, we look at someone moving into years 1, 2, 3, and 4 of a job, and use SFIA to map their growth and their competency level.

A Job Offer That Impacts More Than One Life

Lydia: Experiencing Africa, entering the new market, and having all these new perceptions of a huge talent pool that hasn't been really served, what might be your most favorite or most memorable moment in recruitment when it comes to your experience here?

Gerard: There's lots. There's no greater joy I get in my life now than telling someone they've been offered a job. It's just a magical moment. And, you know, we've had people cry when we do that. The reason being, in places like Africa, we haven't just helped that one person. We've helped a whole lot of people behind them—brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, cousins, and communities, right? When you're putting someone into employment, particularly with an international company where they have a higher income-earning potential, the stats show there's an amplified effect on females, because females give back to the community more than males do.

So, I've got many great memories of doing that, but I think, funnily enough, it's often the first one that is the most memorable. I still remember Bruno, a gentleman in Kenya. He was the first-ever placement we did from someone in Africa with a company in Adelaide, Australia. I still remember Corn, who actually facilitated that placement in our team. I was in the boardroom with a few other people, and Corn came through almost crying and just announced, "Bruno just got offered a role!" We all cheered, high-fived, and, you know, it was a really memorable moment for us because it was the first placement from Africa.

I mean, it wasn't the first placement in the whole business, but out of Africa, that was the first placement. So, I'll never forget Bruno, who's still in our program, still working, doing a great job, and is a real success story. But, yeah, I just remember the look on Corn's face, the tears in her eyes, because she was so proud that she changed the life of this young man, who's now doing Africa proud.

Finding Talent to Solve Evolving Problems

Lydia: For someone who's starting out in the recruitment space today, Gerard, what advice would you give them?

Gerard: So, the world's changing, as we all know, and the way we work is changing. You know, you can't go all day without hearing about AI and how AI is going to steal our jobs. The same rhetoric has been said about the internet, but the way we work after the internet is different from the way we worked before the internet. I think with AI tools, the same thing is happening. I think it creates an enormous amount of opportunity. I don't think it's going to take people's jobs. It will make people more efficient, so the people who aren't using the right tools will be the ones that get left behind. All of a sudden, one person can do the role of three, but what we do changes.

For someone coming into recruitment, I think it's never been more important to understand what a business's problems are. So, sitting down with a business and understanding where their pain points are—spending 45 minutes and just digging as deep as you can into that business and understanding where their blockages are, where their pain points are—and then being able to recommend the right type of person to help unblock that.

Now, a lot of the time, it could be how to use AI tools to create automation inside a business, for example. Or it could be figuring out what role is being done that could be done more efficiently. I think traditional roles maybe aren't exactly the right fit anymore. Once you understand what the problems in a business are, then you start thinking about, "Okay, what skills do we need talent to have to help plug those problems, but solve them in a different way than was probably done before?" I think that is only going to accelerate well.

Lydia: Thank you very much, Gerard for your insights and also your time today. So for those who are listening in, who might be curious to pick up a point or two of what you've just shared, where can they contact you?

Gerard: LinkedIn is the best. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So, it’s Gerard Holland is my LinkedIn handle. I’m more than happy to connect.

Lydia: Thanks again, Gerard. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show, and for all your insights that you've shared with the audience today.

We have been in conversation with Gerard Holland, CEO of TalentMatch Africa. Thank you for joining us, and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All In Recruitment.