Tom Brunskill

Just the result of globalization and living in a more connected world means that

people have so much more choice and our academic institutions haven't really kind of caught up with that reality.

So people just are very arbitrarily choosing where to start their careers through a bit of blind luck.

And that's where we think that we can play a really important role, which is

How do you create an experience where people can kind of try before they buy across a bunch of different industries and potential careers without having to commit yourself to like three months of testing out a particular career?

And so that's exactly what our programs are designed to do.

Yeah, I mean, it's a loaded question, but the way we think about it and what's core to what we do at Forage is how do you connect companies to new pools of talent?

I mean, I'm sure everyone has heard that horrible statistic, and I actually don't know if it still holds true, but there are more people named Peter on Forage

boards of ASX listed companies than women, right?

And one thing that we're focused on doing with our corporate partners is how do you build workforces which truly reflect all that is great about the diversity of society?

And what we challenge our corporate partners to do is like when you look at your workforce, do you see society looking back at you?

Like, do you see Australia looking back at you?

Do you see America looking back at you?

And historically, that's just not been the case.

So when we think about like what HR teams are focused on at the moment, it's like doing things differently because if you do things the same way, you're going to end up with the same teams, the same workforces.

Things aren't going to change.

Like in some respects, you do need to find ways to quite dramatically kind of blow up the system.

And if you keep fishing from the same pond, you're going to get the same fish.

So, you know, you mentioned soft skills there.

I think like what a lot of our corporate partners are focused on is looking for signals beyond your WAM or GPA and what school you went to, like what university you went to.