Njorku is a technology based platform for career and recruitment in Africa. Njorku helps job seekers to find jobs that are posted from all media(web, print, etc) in Africa an easy to use interface presented on mobile and web via m.njorku.com and njorku.com
Njorku also offers job seekers tools to help them find jobs even while they are away from computers and the internet on njorku.com/candidate
Njorku offers amazing solutions for employers and recruiters to help find the right candidate easy, fast and reliable on njorku.com/employer.
Here is what the CEO , Churchill Mambe Nanje told us.
What is new at Njorku?
Njorku recently launched the internationalization engine (i18n) which enables our website to be served in many different languages. Before our site was only in English but right now the site can be used in French. So we have launched a French interface for Njorku.
Why the changes?
At Njorku we have a culture of continous iteration hence we had the overall system design from day one and we started with small sprints and modules such that as people use the platforms we will fine tune our overall system and create a 100% customised platform that fits well into the African context. So the changes are just what our users have made us realise they need.
Our most recent improvement which was developing the French interface for Njorku njorku.com/?lang=fr came as a result of the fact that most of francophone Africa were not served by Njorku due to the English language only interface we had.
Right now most people in Douala, Libreville are actively using the platform.
Who are its founders?
Njorku was founded by myself along with a few other professionals across the world with diverse backgrounds.
What inspired you to find it?
Njorku came to me as a solution to a problem I was facing trying to find the right candidates and also replace them fast enough to ensure my company stays stable as most Africa software developers move alot 😉
The other reason I build Njorku is because alot of job sites out there and many Africans don’t have alot of access to the internet so giving them a system that can help them find jobs with the minimum access they have is a good thing. Like now a job seekers can take 5mins everyday online and search for accounting jobs in Nairobi,Kenya and apply to 3 of them then go home. Or they can setup email alerts for jobs in Nairobi and whenever they have access they get online and see emails on jobs from Nairobi all in their email so they don’t miss the jobs posted while they were away from the computer.
How does it work?
Njorku works like every other vertical search engine. It crawls the internet finding web pages that contain African jobs and indexes them with respect to their location and later provides this in form of a keyword and location based search engine for candidates to track jobs easy and fast.
Take us through your features
Njorku offers the following features:
1) A job search platform found on njorku.com that lets job seekers key in their keywords and specify their locations and within seconds we bring them the most relevant jobs posted on the internet within the past 1month by default. They can then drill down and say give me jobs posted only within the past hour or past 24hrs or past year.
2) Alerts: we offer candidates email and sms alerts njorku.com/alerts where in candidates can setup an alert to get notified when web design jobs in Nairobi are advertised. Njorku handles the task and sends the candidate email or sms alerts notifying them when the jobs occur and they get no notifications when there are no jobs. This way Njorku does the job searching for them while they sleep or do other things
3) Candidate platform: Njorku offers candidates a platform njorku.com/candidate where they can create a profile, upload their CV and other relevant information and we take this information and push to employers all for free.
4) Employer platform: Njorku offers companies, employers and recruiters tools to help them find the best candidates in Africa or willing to work in Africa. Employers register, we review and approve their accounts for security purposes and they can then use our tools to find their candidates… right now all our employer tools are free but overtime some of them will be premium
Platforms, web? Android? iOS etc?
Njorku offers all its tools right now via the web on our website njorku.com but we also offer a basic mobile web site on m.njorku.com . we are currently engineering our mobile experience that will define how our services work on mobile web and mobile apps. Expect mobile solutions next year as the team is on the drawing board and I like what I am hearing and the features they are reviewing already.
What has been your most biggest achievement so far?
Well our biggest achievement was crossing the 1000+daily unique users mark and signing up over 600,000+ users that have used our services from when we started.
What problem do you solve?
We are helping African job seekers find jobs easy and faster. Rather than scanning tens of websites they can visit njorku and we help them visit only the relevant web pages on the job boards around Africa hence making their life easy and helping them maximise their resources
Any partnerships?
Yes we are working on strong partnerships with some companies in the middle east, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon for now. We are piloting our partner programs and once they do well in these test markets we will then roll out to all African countries
How many users so far and how many have you helped employ?
Well all I can say is over 600,000+ job seekers in Africa have used our tools so far. A few people have told us they found their job via njorku and others are happy with our daily aggregated alerts which makes them smile every morning.
What is your business model?
Our business model will be offering FREEMIUM services and some sort of marketing and advertisement solutions for recruiters and companies
Competition?
Well there is no business without competition but if four job search engines are thriving in USA then a couple can thrive in Africa.
How unique are you from the competition?
We have built our whole system from the ground up. We have technologies on Njorku that we can proudly say we haven’t seen or heard of from other platforms out there. In say 4yrs we will reveal some of these technologies for the general public but for now we keep it as our competitive advantage. We are also undergoing active development and research and development with alot of concepts that will help African job seekers find jobs easy, fast, affordably and reliably… If we do this then we can say nobody has done this before. For instance we are trying to see how we can help an Africa job seeker that doesn’t even know how to use computers or phone get a job via njorku
Any funding yet?
Yes we have had seed funding from two angel investors based in Canada and France and currently talking with VCs
Challenges?
Njorku’s major challenge is developing the technologies and coming up with the perfect formula to achieve our goals. Also we have some issues raising capital to expand as fast as we would love but its all good as the more time the better product we will have to market
Future plans/expansion etc?
We plan to expand into every African country serving millions of job seekers and thousands of employers daily.