TomSelect Dropdown UX Issues - Placeholder and Search Visibility

[01Kuzma]

I'm implementing TomSelect dropdowns in my Joomla site with Convert Forms. I have two dropdowns with the following configuration:

new TomSelect(el, {
    maxItems: null,
    hideSelected: false, 
    closeAfterSelect: false,
    allowEmptyOption: false,
    plugins: ['remove_button'],
    placeholder: "- Pasirinkite paslaugą -", 
    onInitialize: function() {
        this.clear();
        this.removeOption("");
    },
    onChange: function(value) {
        if (value.length === 0) {
            this.clear();
        }
    },
    render: {
        item: function(data, escape) {
            return '<div>' + escape(data.text) + '</div>';
        }
    }
});

// Cities Dropdown (Single Selection)
new TomSelect(el, {
    maxItems: 1,
    sortField: 'text',
    searchField: ['text'],
    allowEmptyOption: true,
    placeholder: "Miestas *",
    onInitialize: function() {
        this.clear();
        this.removeOption("");
    }
});

I have two UX issues I'd like to resolve:

In the Services dropdown (multiple selection), the placeholder "Pasirinkite paslaugą" remains visible even after selecting items. How can I make it disappear once selections are made?

For the Cities dropdown, while the search functionality works, it's not very obvious to users that they can type to search. How can I make the search feature more prominent/visible to users?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!