South Africa has the highest youth unemployment rate in the world. This company wants to change that -

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After months of being ignored by recruiters in her dwelling nation of South Africa, the economics graduate started utilizing a recruitment web site referred to as Giraffe. Compared to the expertise of being “ghosted” by different recruiters, Zondani says getting steering each step of the approach was like “a breath of fresh air,” and he or she ultimately landed a job with an insurance coverage company.

Zondani is aware of she is one among the fortunate ones in the present financial local weather. South Africa was already in recession and combating record-high unemployment earlier than the pandemic. In 2019, it had the world’s highest youth unemployment rate, at 56%, and Covid-19 has led to much more job losses.

But Giraffe believes it will probably assist these hit the hardest: unskilled and fewer educated staff. Founded in 2015 by Anish Shivdasani and Shafin Anwarsha, Giraffe has automated the recruitment course of, from sourcing candidates to screening them.

Where jobseekers would often apply for positions on paper or in particular person, they’ll now add their résumé to the on-line platform, and an algorithm will match them with related jobs.

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Giraffe was constructed for cell gadgets, which is how most South Africans primarily entry the web, explains Shivdasani. Smartphone penetration in the nation has doubled from 2016 to 91% in 2019. Of these with web entry, round 60% use a cell system.

While different job portals and recruitment companies typically goal high-skilled jobseekers, Shivdasani says Giraffe’s focus is totally on entry to mid-level jobs.

“We really target the mass segment of the market,” Shivdasani tells CNN Business. “We define it as salaries between 3,000 and 25,000 rand ($177 to $1,470) a month.”

This revenue vary represents about two-thirds of the complete South African workforce, he provides.

Shivdasani and Anwarsha met whereas working as technique consultants in the telecoms business. Shivdasani says he had all the time dreamed of constructing a platform to resolve social issues in South Africa. In brainstorming the place to begin, he realized that unemployment was at the core of a lot of them. “We felt that unemployment is probably the biggest problem in South Africa,” he says.

Left, Giraffe co-founder Shafin Anwarsha.

Giraffe is totally free for jobseekers, explains Shivdasani, and as a substitute fees companies to submit jobs on its platform.

It has labored with about 3,000 companies and at present has a million jobseekers registered on its platform. Shivdasani estimates Giraffe reaches roughly 10 million jobseekers by means of partnerships with Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG).

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Giraffe has even developed a voice observe perform that lets corporations pay attention to candidates answering questions earlier than inviting them to interview. “It’s a combination of matching, screening and voice clips, which sets us apart from other platforms,” Shivdasani says.

This yr the company acquired a grant from UNICEF, which it’s going to use to construct a content material portal to arm jobseekers with profession recommendation. Giraffe declined to disclose the quantity of funding it acquired.

South Africa’s structural challenges

As South Africa slowly opens up from one among the world’s strictest lockdowns, unemployment is spiking and inequality is widening. A current UNDP report estimates it’s going to take at the least 5 years to get better to pre-coronavirus ranges of financial development and employment.

Vimal Ranchhod, an economics professor at the University of Cape Town, says expertise improvement with the assist of platforms like Giraffe is a technique to help younger individuals.

However, he cautions that will probably be arduous to deal with structural challenges in the labor market or training, a lot of that are tied to the nation’s apartheid previous. “Given the scale and nature of the problem, it requires a large-scale and long-term intervention from the government,” he says. “This does not mean that individual groups should not help if and when they can, because every little bit can help.”

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South Africa has the highest youth unemployment rate in the world. This company wants to change that

South Africa’s structural challenges

By newslivenation

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