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Berlin-Based Job Listings Site Everjobs Expands In Africa

Berlin-Based Job Listings Site Everjobs Expands In Africa

Berlin-based Rocket Internet’s job-listings website, Everjobs, is expanding in Africa, and now available in Ethiopia as part of a first-mover strategy into frontier markets that still have low Internet penetration.

Launched in April 2015, Everjobs is active in Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Myanmar in Asia, AfricaInternetGroup reported in June.

Ethiopia has a growing number of private and public-sector opportunities in engineering, manufacturing, services, NGOs and others, according to Eric Lauer, co-founder and managing director at Everjobs Africa. Lauer spoke at a press conference in Addis Ababa, ITNewsAfrica reported.

“Even though agriculture remains the highest employer of labor in the country, we are seeing a growing number of opportunities in the services sector,” Lauer said. Services contribute about 40 percent to Ethiopia’s gross domestic product, according to Lauer.

Lauer said the goal of the website is to simplify the job search and hiring process by connecting professionals with employers, and redirect Ethiopia’s best talent to international companies as well as small local enterprises.

There are about 300 jobs available at 100 companies in Ethiopia — mostly in Addis Ababa — but also in Bahir Dar, Dire Dawa, Nazret, Debrezeit, Hawassa and Mekelle, Lauer told reporters.

Everjobs says it will check the authenticity of every resume — something human resource directors say they need.

“When we spoke to heads of HR they consistently told us the same thing – that the enormous numbers of paper-based CVs they receive everyday are becoming problematic,” Lauer said, highlighting the risk of counterfeit CVs and the need for a service to check the authenticity of applicants, according to ITNewsAfrica.

Rocket Internet decided to take on job listings after the success of its site Work.com.mm, which began operating in Myanmar in 2014, Telecrunch reported in March.

Everjobs plans to enter frontier markets, or countries where Internet penetration is still very low, as a first mover, said Everjobs co-founder Ronald Schuurs. Everjobs says it plans to follow a similar expansion to other Rocket Internet companies including real-estate listings site Lamudi and car classifieds platform Carmudi.

The site plans to differentiate itself by going beyond help-wanted ads with a strategy similar to Glassdoor in the U.S. Job hunters will get additional information about company culture, as well as articles and other content about career issues to draw them back to the site even after they find employment, according to Telecrunch.

The site also has tools such as direct messaging — important, Schuurs said, because many people in emerging markets prefer to use text-message alternatives such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger instead of email.

Everjobs knows what it’s doing in frontier markets, Schuur said. “If you look at the tech side of things … you don’t want to have a very complicated website that takes up a lot of broadband. We can do this well, because we’ve been doing it for a while.”