The podcast for global marketers to hear experts talk about opportunities and challenges in increasing multilingual lead gen and revenue. Explore the highs and lows and then delve into best practices for strategies, technologies, processes and quality for translation, transcreation, localization and more.
Episodes
Wednesday Dec 21, 2022
Wednesday Dec 21, 2022
Kael Campbell, President of Red Seal Recruiting Solutions, is all about family, kids, business, enjoying life and water! In this episode the theme of water permeates our discussion of language, travel, his recruiting company, and translation.
As the sponsor of the podcast, Rapport International, provided an appropriate tidbit to launch the episode. Did you know that both Finland and Sweden have a word to describe that beautiful long reflection of the moon’s light on a lake?!
In Finnish, the word is “kuunsilta” (Google Translate defines it as “moon bridge” even though we don’t have a meaning for that in English) and in Swedish, the word is “mångata” (which Google Translate inaccurately defines as “many”).
As an avid fisherman (see his YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@fmb-fishingmeansbusiness), free diver, and lover of all things water, that was an appropriate tibdit to launch Kael’s episode. Even though we didn’t discuss where his company got the name Red Seal – I would guess that it has something to do with water. Red Seal Recruiting specializes in recruiting for manufacturing, mining, and construction industries for management, engineering, trades and technical roles. With a shortage in hiring around the world for these positions, he leverages his cultural and language knowledge to help people who may not speak the local language fluently, or at all, to find professional jobs to leverage their experience. He has intentionally hired a diverse team that speaks 7 languages to help recruit expats, immigrants, and even second generation immigrants who might be more comfortable speaking in their home language.
He notes that currently, Toyota in Toronto is recruiting and interviewing in five languages to attract good employees. If employers can understand a person who speaks with a heavy accent or build systems to accommodate non-English speakers, they have a huge advantage in recruiting qualified and experienced employees, particularly in the fields his company focuses on.
Currently, with the influx of refugees from the Ukraine, he is helping highly trained people find new jobs in Canada and the US. He talks of a Ukrainian woman with limited English skills who was the lead materials engineer for the largest Ukrainian construction company. As he tried to figure out her experience, she showed him pictures of the work she did and they used Google Translate to navigate the discussion. She has tremendous experience and technical abilities to share with local engineers. He is confident that he will find her a good job.
As for employers, we spoke about their interest in hiring non-English speakers and their tolerance for language issues. He asks at the beginning of each engagement about their willingness to hire people trained outside of Canada or the US since many are underemployed or underpaid. He said that 95% of the employers are open to diversity and many company leaders may have come from another country or travel extensively. And, many executives started with international assignments so they have connections and appreciation for people’s skills from around the world.
Plus, companies in his target industries struggle to find good people, so they are open to new sources of good employees.
If he notices any hesitation or discriminatory practices in the discussion about working together, he does not work with the company as he knows they won’t be a good fit.
Of course, in a discussion about no or limited English skills, the topic of translation arose.
He said that after 18 years in business, they should have a fully translated website that is optimized for search engines. Yet when I asked why he hasn’t. He had a simple answer, “Squirrel.” It’s a common characteristic of entrepreneurs – “squirrel brain” means that you have lots of things to do and you get distracted as you focus on the many areas. He is excited about the new recruitement manager he hired from Latin America that speaks Spanish and his leaderships teams adoption of EOS. EOS is short for Entrepreneurial Operating System which builds a process into your business to make it run smoother.
He and his team meet quarterly to set the upcoming goals. If the team decides this is a priority, he knows that he could get his website translated and optimized in a quarter. (We first connected because his marketing manager reached out to Rapport International to discuss translating their website.)
We dove deeper into the strategy for his website translation. Even though it seems logical to translate content for the job seekers journey through the website, he explained that with all the bilingual managers looking to hire, it also makes sense to translate content for the employers.
We talked about options:
- Translating the whole website, which can be expensive.
- Developing a microsite with 5-10 pages of key content.
- Having a landing page that is search engine optimized.
He recognizes that even if he does a landing page in 5-10 languages and spends $300-500 per language, it would be of great value to the company.
As Kael reflects upon translation, he mentions that even MrBeast translates his videos into Spanish! (MrBeast is a YouTube sensation that does random videos that get lots of followers.)
He also talks about how important good translation is – one word can drastically change the meaning. For example, in English a cabinet maker makes cabinets whereas in Russia a furniture maker makes cabinets. With the help of pictures, he helped a Russian furniture maker look for cabinet maker jobs!
Getting people the jobs is the first step, I asked about his clients and how they fare after building a multicultural team – what do they do to be inclusive. That may be a future episode on the Global Marketing Show podcast.
His final recommendations –
- Keep the dialog going with non-English speakers to find hidden talent.
- Go beyond the resumes of your current employees to find experiences they may not have shared about their international experience to help with engaging your teams.
- Share your vision as a leader of building diverse teams.
His favorite foreign word – “Nuance”, the name of his Toastmaster Chapter. Nuance means the same thing in three languages – English, French, and maybe Spanish. (I looked it up on Google after the episode and learned that nuance is a word in many languages such as Albanian, Danish, Dutch, German, Irish, Portuguese and maybe more.)
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/@fmb-fishingmeansbusiness
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Connect with Kael - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaelcampbell/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
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