Speaking during the ‘Mind the gap: skills shortage’ panel at the CasinoBeats Malta Digital event, Steven Williams, senior manager of people and change advisory services with KPMG Malta, explained that in his experience the willingness to recruit outside of the industry depended on the size of the company.

He said: “My perspective is that there is room for improvement in the industry.

“You have the larger operators and smaller firms. The larger operators tend to go for people within the gaming industry. However, the smaller firms might be more open because they need to sell their story and their brand.

“I feel there is definitely room for all operators to start opening up their interest. After all, if you’re hiring people that are coming from similar sectors to gaming then they have transferable skills that should add value.”

Omar Bitar, senior HR business partner at the Stars Group, explained that although there is a rich pool of industry talent in Malta, he worries it is not large enough to cope with the increased demand of new businesses and start-ups.

“We need to look externally but then you have the issues that go with that,” commented Bitar. "Getting permits for third country nationals is a challenge, and then there are issues with those who also have families.

“While locating talent is a big challenge, more often than not the main difficulty is making people move all the way to Malta.”