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These courses will add to the existing 3,000 that Inspire already offers.

“We are steadily increasing our access. We are now investing in another learning management system, that gives our people more options and opportunities for professional development,” Myles told the Compass.

If a career path an Inspire attendee is interested in pursuing isn’t among those thousands of options, Myles says he’ll track one down that suits.

“If they are thinking about it, I can find an online platform for them,” he said. “We’re doing everything from IT, human resources, accounting, business entrepreneurship, education, healthcare.

“We want to make sure that whatever a person wants to do, we can get them a programme. Just about anything you want to do in professional development, there is a qualification.”

Among the establishments Inspire Cayman is working with is the Canadian Securities Institute, with which it recently signed up for at least 40 courses in banking, finance and insurance.

Working on the premise that Caymanians can no longer expect to walk into employment positions like they may have been able to do in the past, Myles says the members of the local workforce need to realise that they are competing for jobs with a global population.

“People need to be able to compete,” he said. “That is what we are trying to do. There is no more entitlement in Cayman, there has to be a level of competition for our people.

“We have to make sure our Caymanians are sufficiently educated. That doesn’t necessarily mean going to college. It means you need to get some level of training. That could be a 10-15 minute course, or ones that last days or weeks or months. It all depends on where you want to start.”

Each of the module-based courses can be built on, like building blocks, Myles explains. A short introductory course could be the first step in a course that eventually will secure a professional qualification that could all the difference in being the person chosen from among the job interviewees.

Through a partnership with the government’s Workforce Opportunities and Residency Cayman, known as WORC, some 60 Caymanians are trained each quarter in a wide variety of areas, from learning how to use heavy machinery though simulation programmes, to construction skills, accountancy and many others.

‘Soft skills’

But much of the learning done at Inspire involves what Myles refers to as “soft skills” – the kind of skills that can help young, or even much older, persons get their foot in the door of an employer’s office, secure, and then, importantly, keep a job.

WORC provides professional development scholarships for people they refer to Inspire’s Ready2Work programme, in which participants learn “job readiness”, such as interview and communication skills, how to prepare a resume, the importance of punctuality, and “mental toughness”, he says.

The strong and ever-growing bank of online courses being offered at Inspire Cayman finds its roots in the COVID crisis, where people could not attend work or classes. Before COVID, Inspire was only offering in-person courses.

“I started looking long term,” Myles said. “We had to be more flexible.”

Even with lockdowns and social distances becoming distant memories, there are still plenty of people who find it almost impossible to attend classes in person, like single parents or people in jobs who can’t get time off to study.

“They don’t have two or three hours, or a whole day for training, but maybe they can do weekends,” Myles said.

The online courses make that possible for them, he explained.