“70 % of positions available on the labour market are in software”

Castille is an international network specialising in the recruitment of talents. How do you differentiate yourself from traditional recruitment agencies?

Castille is a professional network in Tech and Financial talent, leading in Malta but with a growing brand presence in two other strategic markets: Poland and Mauritius. Our internal people boast genuine expert insight into skills, technologies and sectors, making us a reliable partner to professionals throughout their careers as candidates or hiring managers. Castille provides specialist recruitment, scalable staffing solutions, technical training and digital employer branding. We tend to take a very-longterm perspective on all our relationships. Castille is so much more than a traditional recruitment agency. We strive to be a new generation professional network which supports Tech and Finance professionals as candidates and hiring managers over the long term. This is echoed by many of our long-standing clients, some of whom have been working with Castille for over 10 years. We have built a reputation for delivering optimised working solutions ranging from placing recommended talent into key positions to providing specialist hybrid teams with onsite, near shore and offshore elements. We also provide over 700 professionals each year with learning opportunities by practicing experts. Our youngest service line is that of providing candidates and clients with a powerful employer branding digital platform. All we do serves to reinforce our specialisation in Tech and Financial talent, aiming for a peer-to-peer relationship with professionals in our network. 

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Castille has been operating in Mauritius for more than five years. How do you position yourself here?

Our clients’ pain point is a simple one, a massive and unprecedented shortage of strong talent. Although accentuated in Malta due to the size of their workforce, this is an international phenomena caused mainly by the world going complex and digital too quickly for the workforce and education systems to align. So in many markets, it has become structural. Castille is making strategic investments in countries where we feel there are favourable demographics, strong education and the right attitude towards client centricity and professional development. We also look at local market dynamics, sizing up competition to ensure our ability to build our employer brand in the local market. In Mauritius, we are growing our brand for Tech and Financial careers and we are building the same position in the East part of Poland. From a Malta perspective, we are committed to deliver local clients and international investors with a solution which works in practice. We encourage clients to go beyond the “bums on seats mentality” where Castille can place their core team locally in Malta and then complement this capacity with onsite, nearshore and offshore specialist teams of specialists. I have a personal connection with Mauritius but beyond that, I believe there was a sound business case. The country is small enough for Castille to build a strong brand. Our strategy is to grow internationally but grow deep. I believe we can achieve this in Mauritius. 

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In Mauritius, skills mismatch remains a major issue. What is your take on this?

Indeed, there is a mismatch in skills. Our specialisation is in tech and finance and there is clear unbalance between supply and demand. In fact, the issue is not a Mauritian one in many different countries across the world. However, the problem is further compounded by the working population base and the limited volume of international business we attract. 

Youth unemployment is at 24%. How do we bring down this figure?

It depends on the discipline. If you look at IT and accounting field, most of the graduates are employed on the basis of internship with a number of big firms. On the Tech side, we have big international software houses, which have quite extensive internship programmes targetting those who are relatively good and with employment opportunities. So, the market is a bit use up at that end, or at the junior end, but I would say that there are still a lot of opportunities for people within tech and finance. We are not well placed to comment because we focus on those skills only. However, there could be areas, pockets of graduates who do not find jobs right away. 

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What are the skills in high demand on the labour market?

70% of positions are in software. We talk about java developers, quality assurance and so on. Those areas are in clearly high demand and the volumes are big. Companies need a lot of people and they need a lot of people with the right technical skills. We thought that this create a right pressure on supply. When you look at the finance industry , they need accountancy.

How will the labour market evolve as the Mauritian economy embraces the digital era?

There are a few challenges in areas like financial services. The country is positioning itself to be the gateway to India and Africa and this is a work in progress. In the long term, the governance structures, the quality of the people and their skills will be advantageous for the investors coming in. Artificial intelligence is a huge opportunity which is making job more sustainable. The challenge could be that it should be running automation. It will transition workforces from one sector to the others.