I always try and eat where the local workers eat when I’m on assignment overseas recruiting. It’s not always possible, but when I can it’s a great way to talk in a relaxed atmosphere. And just be another person around the table, all eating the same thing, no airs, and no graces. We’re all human and we all have to eat.

Yesterday it was Paella for lunch, and as anyone that’s spent time in Spain eating at traditional places workers eat will tell you, every Thursday it’s usually Paella as the menu del día (the cheap menu of the day), but I never knew why..

So on Thursday I got schooled by three #Caterpillar technicians on every possible reason why Thursday is Paella day.

The stories and myths ranged from in the old days fish was landed at the ports on a Monday and the catch sellers slowly worked their way through the countryside not getting to many places till mid/late week, and fish paella was served Thursday for this reason.

Through to, no, no, it was because the restaurants always used to buy their stock on a Friday ready for the Friday night and weekends, so they used everything they had left in the paella on Thursday so nothing was wasted.

It made for a very interesting lunchtime, I love my work, just love it.

For the record my Spanish is hopeless, fluent in French and spannerspeak but Spanish, er no. So it’s a good job there are Caterpillar Field Service Technicians in Spain that are fluent in English then huh.

Don’t recruit just Cat trained technicians.

Recruit PEOPLE that are Cat trained technicians.

Most people applying for work in Australia from overseas just want a job, any job..

We find out who they are as people, what drives them, what are their needs.

Then we find the right job for them and it’s never about money, if you can find people the role that they really want, in my experience the last question they ask me is “how much is the pay?”.

Everyone knows that the pays going to be good, but it’s never been a deciding factor with the recruitment I’ve been involved with.

International recruitment of Caterpillar Field Service Technicians done right.