One of the most unexpected challenges facing Highland Jobs has nothing to do with finding applicants, attracting employers or building a recruitment platform for the Highlands.
It is convincing some people that £39 is a genuine price.
Over the past few months a curious conversation has started to repeat itself whenever Highland Jobs comes up in discussion with employers across the Highlands and Islands, because the moment people hear that a vacancy can be advertised for £39 the questions begin almost immediately.
There must be a catch.
There must be hidden costs.
It cannot possibly reach enough people.
A few people have even joked that it sounds too good to be true.
The reaction is fascinating because it says less about Highland Jobs than it does about the world we now live in.
Somewhere along the way we seem to have accepted the idea that expensive automatically means effective and that if something costs less than expected there must be something wrong with it.
Recruitment is perhaps one of the best examples of this way of thinking.
For years employers have been told that filling a vacancy requires complicated systems, account managers, sales teams, premium upgrades and price tags that often stretch well beyond £100 for a single role.
After hearing the same message often enough, a sensible price begins to look suspicious.
Yet nobody thinks a local café is a scam because it serves a reasonably priced breakfast.
Nobody questions a tradesman because they solve a problem without charging a fortune.
Nobody assumes a business is less capable simply because it chooses not to overcharge.
And yet recruitment somehow became different.
Highland Jobs was built on a simple belief that employers across the Highlands do not need more complexity, more jargon or more layers between themselves and potential applicants, they simply need local people to see local jobs, which is why the platform was built specifically for the Highlands and Islands and why it sits within The Highland Times network, connecting employers with an audience that already lives, works and engages across the region every day.
The intention was never to create another national recruitment website competing to see who could charge the most or add the most bells and whistles, it was to create something straightforward, useful and affordable that genuinely helps local employers fill vacancies and helps local people find work closer to home.
Perhaps that is why the £39 price point creates such curiosity, because we have become so accustomed to recruitment being expensive that a sensible price now feels unusual, and what began as a way of helping employers save money has unexpectedly become a lesson in how people judge value.
Maybe the real question is not why Highland Jobs costs £39 at all, but why so many of us have been persuaded that it should cost significantly more.
If you have a vacancy to fill, maybe the real risk is not spending £39 and being disappointed, but spending considerably more and getting exactly the same result.
