Howard Izundu, an 18 year-old developer has launched Yolpe.com, an online recruitment platform for members only, that he say will change the way firms hire in Nigeria and Africa.
Izundu told TechMoran, “Some times last year, we started development on a platform that we hoped would transform the future of the job industry and the lives of so many people. We created after months of work what I feel would impact the lives of lots of people.”
Izundu added, “Our service makes finding an employee dead easy and simple for employers/recruiting managers. When utilized, it effectively eliminates job ads, applicant tracking systems, company recruitment portals and the system of applying for jobs by emailing resumes (all which are normally the biggest banes to Hiring), thereby speeding up the employment process. Probably, if you have ever worked as a hiring
manager you would immediately see the glaring need/use of this service.”
He says, traditionally, the recruitment process takes from 3 weeks to more than 2 months before completion but with Yolpe, it can effectively be done in at most 2 weeks depending on volume, finding and sourcing already taken care of, by them.
Yolpe is a medium people where job seekers sign up to connect to firm with job openings or get referrals based on their qualifications, relevance, specialization, company fit and talents. Users get access to job openings anytime, anywhere. He says that because most jobs are not advertised traditionally and most employed job seekers do not apply for jobs, Yolpe will help employers recruit the best talent in the market.
“I became interested in recruitment when my dad lost his job. For the past one year, I have had a roller-coaster ride testing out different platforms e.g. an internet job marketing site (hirepuss.com), social networks for employees to discuss, service for employees to complain about their jobs and warn off prospective companies e.t.c,” said Izundu.
“Then at my internet job marketing site I discovered something. As incredible as this may sound, Job seekers were hardly applying at recruitment portals of small companies nor sent quality resumes. This showed that job seekers were hardly interested in small S.M.Es who were my major clients. In contrast, bigger organizations usually had a surplus on every single job opening which they hate and an interesting number are
usually under-qualified. So there is a surplus on one side and a deficit on the other,” he added.
“Another issue is that you would publish a job opening on The Guardian or on job boards without knowing if you would even get a response or if your application qualified. That’s why if you look closely, you would see companies doing re-runs of their ads especially on
newspaper.”
He then said he discovered that firms did not usually have multiple positions open at once so they usually hire one or two persons to fill the vacancy immediately and mostly through referrals. That’s why he thought Yolpe can help connect users to jobs just as friends do at the work place.
Yolpe.com aspires to solve this problem with a simple solution. Connect job seekers with employers, remove all the middlemen and create pent up demands on both ends and sell it to both sides of the table. Easily.
“At its core, it’s kind of like a dating site (marketplace) for employers and those looking for work, having a noble mission: “To make Job seekers’ information easily accessible Online, enabling employers find them faster, speeding up the Employment process”. The difference with LinkedIn.com is that LinkedIn is for professional networking but Nigerians need jobs fast not networking,” he said.
He says he is ready to take on his competitors who include TheLadders.com, Bizreach.com, RegionUP.com and all Job-boards in Nigeria and LinkedIn in general.