South Africa Has The Highest Youth Unemployment Rate In The World. This Company Wants To Change That

After months of being ignored by recruiters in her dwelling nation of South Africa, the economics graduate started utilizing a recruitment web site known as Giraffe. In comparison with the expertise of being “ghosted” by different recruiters, Zondani says getting steerage each step of the best way was like “a breath of recent air,” and he or she finally landed a job with an insurance coverage firm.

Zondani is aware of she is likely one of the fortunate ones within 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 price, at 56%, and Covid-19 has led to even more job losses.

However Giraffe believes it could actually assist these hit the toughest: unskilled and fewer educated employees. Based in 2015 by Anish Shivdasani and Shafin Anwarsha, Giraffe has automated the recruitment course of, from sourcing candidates to screening them.

The place jobseekers would often apply for positions on paper or in individual, they’ll now add their résumé to the web platform, and an algorithm will match them with related jobs.

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

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

“We actually goal the mass phase of the market,” Shivdasani tells CNN Enterprise. “We outline it as salaries between 3,000 and 25,000 rand ($177 to $1,470) a month.”

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

Shivdasani and Anwarsha met whereas working as technique consultants within the telecoms trade. Shivdasani says he had at all times dreamed of constructing a platform to resolve social issues in South Africa. In brainstorming the place to begin, he realized that unemployment was on the core of lots of them. “We felt that unemployment might be the largest drawback in South Africa,” he says.

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 presently has a million jobseekers registered on its platform. Shivdasani estimates Giraffe reaches roughly 10 million jobseekers by partnerships with Fb (FB) and Google (GOOG).

Giraffe has even developed a voice notice operate that lets firms hearken to candidates answering questions earlier than inviting them to interview. “It is a mixture of matching, screening and voice clips, which units us aside from different platforms,” Shivdasani says.

This yr the corporate obtained a grant from UNICEF, which it is going to use to construct a content material portal to arm jobseekers with profession recommendation. Giraffe declined to reveal the quantity of funding it obtained.

South Africa’s structural challenges

As South Africa slowly opens up from one of many world’s strictest lockdowns, unemployment is spiking and inequality is widening. A current UNDP report estimates it is going to take not less than 5 years to get well to pre-coronavirus ranges of financial progress and employment.

Vimal Ranchhod, an economics professor on the College of Cape City, says abilities improvement with the assistance of platforms like Giraffe is one strategy to help younger individuals.

Nonetheless, he cautions that will probably be onerous to deal with structural challenges within the labor market or training, lots of that are tied to the nation’s apartheid past. “Given the size and nature of the issue, it requires a large-scale and long-term intervention from the federal government,” he says. “This doesn’t imply that particular person teams mustn’t assist if and after they can, as a result of each little bit will help.”

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