 Welcome to JSA TV Europe together with the green data movement for these courses live event focused on European Digital Infrastructure Sustainability. I'm Dromarch Lim and joining me today is Steve Brown, CEO of the leading head hunter recruiter in the data center and cloud infrastructure sectors worldwide, data center people. Steve, welcome on JSA. I guess the only things that you know better than data centers are the people that work in them. Your old tagline which has always resonated very well. Talking about talents, I mean when we look at the data center space we're always talking about shortages and how things are going but there's so much demand but we can't find people etc and we're going to get into it but what what is the role of sustainability in the data center talent space today? So thanks for the introduction Jao, thank you for the invite that there are two aspects to this as we all know sustainability has become central to data center development and operations. This has come about as a result of ever-increasing awareness of the the energy and environmental impact that data centers have as well as a more eco-friendly approach being demanded by customers especially the big corporations that now take sustainability extremely seriously. So in turn this has had a consequential impact on hiring with roles being created to focus specifically on sustainability. We as a head hunter and recruiter first saw sustainability being highlighted back in the mid 2010s around 2014-2015 we noticed it coming up initially in electrical and mechanical design type roles where clients would when we were discussing a search brief would express to us a desire to hire engineering talent that had some exposure to to sustainability practices in their design work. Now things have developed at pace since then and we are seeing roles dedicated specifically to the sustainability subject because managing sustainability in a data center requires a lot of specialist expertise. So we've handled in the last few years we've handled searches around energy procurement, energy management, environmental compliance and sustainability management where the remit is to lead on the wider sustainability piece at organizational level. We're also seeing specialist roles being created particularly by the larger operators where those roles focus on very specific aspects of sustainability such as heat export. With the smaller to medium sized operators then sustainability particularly at the more senior level operational management roles sustainability is a part of the responsibilities of the role and we the searches that we take on we're being instructed to hunt for candidates that can take on a position where sustainability is a part of the role and candidates that have experience around the sustainability piece. I'm also seeing sustainability coming up in other areas such as sales and marketing. Just the other day I was instructed by an operator client on a search for a head of sales and the client made the comment that the person that they are hiring should have sufficient knowledge to be able to discuss topics such as heat reuse with prospective clients particularly prospective hyperscale clients. So that's that's one angle to it. The the other side of sustainability in in hiring is about making hiring processes hiring practices more sustainable. So we all know that there's a huge shortage of skilled data center talent. Across the industry everyone is chasing the same people. That's pushing up salaries which to some extent is is good news for the candidates. Candidates need to be careful they don't price themselves out of the market but it's not sustainable for the companies that are doing the hiring. So there's there's a need to devise more sustainable hiring practices. There's there's a lot of talk now about bringing data center operations engineers in from other mission critical industries not just the obvious ones such as the military nuclear or the offshore industries but any industry where downtime can be caused by mechanical or electrical system failure. That's the place where we need to go hunting for the engineers that the data center industry needs. So resolving the skills shortage is is a key to sustainability to keep stealing from your competitors is not it's just not sustainable but then you've got to look at how you make once you've got your people you've got to look at how you make their employment more sustainable. And for that for me that's about making sure that the employee is is trained that they develop the skills to enable them to undertake their role in in the most sustainable way. It's also about providing the the job challenge the satisfaction the learning the progression all of the things that we look for as an integral part to enjoying our work and that will make for a longer term opportunity for the individual that will cut down on on staff turnover and in turn will make that the the the whole environment much more sustainable. Get all that right and that's no mean feat and you're a long way to having a set of really sustainable hiring and employment practices in place. It is a combination of factors which which you've described very well from the pre-hiring to the hiring to the keeping the hire in the business and I think your point arounds keep stealing from competitors it's no longer sustainable I think that's very true and that's something that we're seeing a lot more especially in newer markets where new companies are emerging from from the ground up where the where CEOs are literally people they used to work in energy companies or financial firms or deal with energy form within a financial firm. It's going to be a shift in skills that we are seeing in new businesses popping up in newer markets across Europe but before we go into those markets those markets are always very interesting of course we mentioned how sustainability is changing talent recruitment but what would you say are still the main challenges within recruitment in the space today in a more general term not just within sustainable sustainability? That's an interesting question we've we we've noticed that in the past 15 to 18 months the counter offers have become much much more prevalent so pre-covid you would see this at more senior levels and we've we've got a we've we've got techniques that we use to handle this with a candidate at the point when they're they're going into to resign from their their current role but there's two things in the past 15 months or so that we've picked up on with regard specifically with regard to counter offers firstly it's the fact that it's not happening now just at the more senior levels it's happening at all levels so we're having to if you like council the the companies that we work with on hiring to prepare themselves for for this the other thing that we've noticed about it that pre-covid the counter offer might be perhaps in the region of of a 10 to 15 increase on the individual's salary now it it's gone higher 20 to 25 percent and depending on the level of individual there can be sweeteners thrown in such as equity and and that's that that's that's making the hiring process a lot more challenging that that's that's really the the the number one quite apart from all the issues around finding the talent in the first place and encouraging them to sit down at the table and engage in discussion about a new opportunity that the battle isn't over by any means we are just at the beginning of this battle exactly yes yes and and perhaps we'll never have an end to it either because it's this evolving thing skills are an evolving thing it's not it's not an A to Z race it's an A to the infinite because skills will have to change as the market and the business changes as well over the next years and decades to ensure the future we sorry and that's a good point it's it's not just about the skills changing it's about companies thinking laterally about the type of skills that are relevant to a particular role and also where they're going to find those skills and that's that's where we can help we can provide advice and guidance we'll also we'll sit with our clients and we'll challenge them they'll hand us a job description and it'll have perhaps eight or ten bullet points on it about the skills and experience they they want so we'll work through that is that really necessary do you need ten years of that what about this and and we'll encourage them to if you like re-engineer reshape the job description given our knowledge of the marketplace and and how successful we think they're going to be in in attracting talent into that specific position and I think there's another very good point because sometimes businesses are so stuck in the old ways and you just copy and paste there's no no need for change when there is a lot of need for change and actually what you just said it's not applicable just to recruitment and job descriptions there's a lot of other aspects of the business that happen like that from marketing to other elements of the company there's so many so many times more often than not it's just copy and paste from previous days and it's no longer free for purpose but I was just going to ask you sorry now go I was going to ask you because we've already kind of touched on the the the newer markets as well I just wanted to kind of gather your the demand that you're getting from newer markets let's put it that way are you seeing a lot more a lot more demand from tier one tier two tier three regions across Europe we are for sure so in terms of the tier one markets what we've noticed particularly this year perhaps perhaps it started towards the end of last year as the embargo in in Amsterdam was lifted we've noticed a lot more activity in the Netherlands in terms of our our search work in terms of the tier two markets then it's Spain it's Portugal it's Italy it's also Eastern Europe and one of the things that we've noticed there is that pre-covid those particular locations it was it was a lot easier for us to to get into those locations target talent and convince them pretty easily about an opportunity that could involve relocation to to say the Netherlands to Germany to the Nordics now post-covid where those particular markets are seeing real growth it's becoming more difficult to convince target candidates that they should be thinking about not just about a move but a relocation to to a different country we've we've noticed so that's Europe we've we've noticed increasing activity in the Middle East Saudi Arabia also in the North Africa certainly discussions from people looking to get into markets the North African market and and Egypt in the Americas it's it's Canada Mexico and Chile where if you could define them as as tier two markets and then in APAC it's it's been Indonesia Malaysia and and the Philippines so so this issue of newer markets coming up then it's very much a global thing it's it's happening it's happening pretty much everywhere which is exciting I mean as you were mentioning the different countries in my head was like yep this company that company that company that company because every market is so active there's so many new names going on going into those places that's very easy to think that they need like 100 200 300 people just out of the blue in any of those regions and that's per company as well so I'm sure it's very busy that isn't the people and then speaking of which I mean so how are you going to cope with all that demand what's the plan for the next 12 18 months around that is of talents recruitment so we as a business we're we're we're doing one of the things we're doing is is investing in training to make sure that our recruitment research and delivery teams really understand the the industry that is that's absolutely key we we want to be more than than just a a recruitment company we we we really want to to be seen as a niche data center recruitment company but but where the people that you engage with really get what your business involves they understand the type of roles that you're hiring into or as a candidate they understand the type of the type of job that that you undertake and the type of moves that might interest you so we we're taking on so that's one particular aspect the training most of our work is undertaken on an exclusive basis and and that means that there's pressure on us as a business to deliver but it also means that for the client we're able to utilize techniques that increase the likelihood of us getting the so-called passive candidates to the table to discuss opportunities rather than becoming embroiled in a a cv race which is what happens when companies instruct multiple recruiters on a requirement that actually doesn't benefit the hiring company and it most certainly doesn't benefit the candidates so we're also there's there's work going on we've got planned over the next 12 to 18 months work around if you like constantly improving our business model so Dave Brailsford referred to it as marginal gains that's that's something we're very much focused on and and it's about making sure that we've got the capability as a business to meet the demand for our services and and and watching with interest to see which are the markets we're going to be asked to recruit into next yeah well speaking of next i was going to ask if one of our viewers wants to to to increase your workload pile how can they get in touch so through LinkedIn otherwise datacenterpeople.com or they can email me steve.brown at datacenterpeople.com okay sounds good well Steve as always is a pleasure speaking to you i think what's happening is that it's in the space as a as a whole is always very exciting to to get through but then when we go into niche areas of the the sector like this one in around recruitment and skills which is so so paramount to the success of the long-term success of the entire sector i think it's always very interesting so thank you so much for coming on board as for you watching at home thinking for tuning into jsa tv live don't forget to check our social channels for more content and until next time happy networking thanks