In 2010, two Nigerian brothers Andrew Eze who is now the CTO and President and his brother Paul Eze, the CEO co-founded Ngcareers.com while still on campus to help everyone get the jobs they deserve.
Andrew says Ngcareers started (like every other pioneer job site in Nigeria) as a blog listing daily vacancies that the owner could find. While in school 2009, Andrew just got interested in the possibilities of the internet and started a job blog to try and collate information on job openings so people can easily find them in one place. His brother, Paul joined him later on and they registered Ngcareers as a company in 2010. Ngcareers was first registered under the Corporate Affairs Commission in 2010 and was later incorporated in its present form in March 2013. At the the moment, the firm has over 23,000 jobs listed and is averaging 14,000 daily unique visits (around 400,000 monthly uniques).
The site didn’t just take off after launching but the two had to go through several frustrating moments and near acquisition just like any other startup.
“While it was gradually gaining reputation among jobseekers and some employers from 2010 Ngcareers really took off as a major job site in 2012 when we started giving it more attention after we were done with school and could afford more time. Late 2012 saw us involved in an acquisition offer from a major competitor. In 2013 after talks broke down we realised we could have a shot at redefining the job industry in Nigeria,” Andrew tells TechMoran.
They wanted to give career users choice ratehr than just post the jobs as a blog, so they incorporated Ngcareers and started building a proper startup company.
“The couple of years prior to 2013 actually served to let us understand how much more we could do by setting things up properly,” Andrew says.
Now with just 5 team members, the firm operates from its office in the highbrow Independence Layout in Enugu, Nigeria and has over 200,000 registered users and more than 2000 employers/recruiters who use the site to advertise jobs and attract candidates. The team says the limited financial resources available to them have forced them to think out of the box to grow the startup to this level without external funding. The team says their key has been creative problem solving, perserverance and willingness to try ideas.
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The firm aims to have its cut from recruitment solutions (job advertising and candidate search), advertising and some value added services which they are testing.The firm is says its at a stage where it needs to focus on rigorous implementation of the revenue models. They have also talked to a couple of investors and are also engaging with a few angel investors to raise funding but they have a target customer base and product development timeline then start aggressively monetising.
There are hundreds of job sites in Nigeria, but just what makes them unique?
“One unique thing about Ngcareers as a job site is the fact that we give users access to find and engage on relevant career information (not just job vacancies only) to enhance their career decision making process. Briefly put we help users get access to jobs based on their interests and relevant work information to make better career choices,” Andrew says.
The firm also says it receives hundreds of company reviews submitted anonymously by past and present employees of organisations and employers in Nigeria to help jobseekers can make better informed decisions. They aims to make their platform a place jobseekers get answers to any career question they may have. No other job site gives users these options.
In the next one year, Ngcareers aims to make it easier to find work related information on a prospective organisation such as job openings they have at any time, what their relative pay for a job position is, their employment conditions, people you can reach out to that have worked or are working there among others. The site says it wants to democratise workplace information and job search in Nigeria.
