From the road: the Pays de la Loire, France, July 2022 — early on the same European swing that later produced the Spain and Maranello pieces.
It’s never boring working in migration — that’s what they told me when I came out of retirement (again) and re-joined the team at Skilled Migration Group. I just keep telling myself it could be worse: I’m going to be in the UK next week. At least the food’s good here in France. And the wine. And the cheese. And the, and the, and the …
So where are we sourcing, interviewing and recruiting today? Alors tu parles français ? Bien sûr ! Which roughly translates to: so, you speak French? Of course!
France — the beautiful Pays de la Loire, to be specific — recruiting Caterpillar field service technicians and maintenance specialists for New Caledonia, which runs on French. Really nice region: mainly dairy farms (we counted 83 on the drive today), but dotted with rock quarries. Nothing on an Australian mining scale, but they run similar gear to New Caledonia — smaller rigid trucks like the 775E, ADTs from the 725 through to the 735, and at this afternoon’s quarry a reasonably sized excavator, a Cat 374F in pretty good nick.
A really decent bunch of Cat mechanical tradespeople today. They couldn’t quite believe we turned up and met them at a lovely little Les Routiers roadside café. “It’s true,” they said. “You’re really Australians?” Bloody oath, mate! Then they were amazed we spoke French — which was funny until someone pointed out it’s English the Aussies struggle with. Very drôle. But we paid it.
And the standards of work? Couldn’t fault them. Their processes, their knowledge of contamination control, the way they walked through each step of a component change-out and stripping down a 3508 — no issues with them understanding us, or us understanding them.
It was also good to see the diversity of tradespeople and operators in France. They clearly get it: it’s not only men who can swing spanners and operate heavy equipment.
Thanks for a top day — it’s not every day we get invited onto a French quarry.
There’s international recruitment.
And then there’s the right international recruitment.
The places in these stories are real. We meet every candidate face to face, in their home country — here’s how our interviews work, and here’s the map.