We talk to Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit, about how digitizing skilled trade workers would affect hiring speed and quality, why construction jobs are resistant to AI displacement, and what new data reveals about women entering the trades and pay equity. Practical AI supports recruiters and workers without removing humans from high-stakes decisions.

•Diagnosing labor shortage as an access and data problem
• Founder’s journey from journeyman carpenter to tech builder
• Fuilding data-rich worker profiles and semantic search
• Privacy-preserving eligibility checks via co‑pilot outreach
• Scale and demand for data center and energy projects
• Worker-friendly onboarding designed for deskless realities
• Rigorous screening and trade assessments as skill signals
• Women in trades data, faster ramp, smaller pay gap
• Why construction resists automation and offshoring
• AI for scheduling and sourcing with humans in the loop
• Focus on US now with future global expansion