South African businesses have a bright new platform to help them recruit skilled graduates, interns and apprentices and, in the process, invest in developing South Africa’s bright young talent.
The Economist’s Pocket World in Figures claims that South Africa has the highest rate of unemployment among young people in the world. The percentage of youth between the ages of 15 and 34 years who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) has risen to 38.9%, according to Statistics SA. The challenge is compounded by a low economic growth rate, which is predicted to be only 1.3% in 2019.
It is against this backdrop that President Cyril Ramaphosa and the South African government hopes to create 13 million new jobs by 2030, as part of the National Development Plan. This is supported by various tax incentives, such as rebates on the compulsory skills levy for youth training and by forward-thinking programmes such as YES4Youth, which seek to give as many trained and untrained youths job experience by placing them at businesses across South Africa.
The problem on the ground, especially for SMMEs, is finding these graduates.
Imagine a website where small business owners have their very own space to meet to pinpoint skilled, qualified graduates without going through the hassle of sifting through thousands of applications. That’s what inspired Phillipa Geard, founder of the award-winning RecruitMyMom platform, to build a whole new platform to connect graduates with SMMEs in particular.
“Modern recruitment practices and mega-online job portals are valuable tools for mainstream job placements, but its brute force approach can be inefficient for smaller businesses and first-time job seekers,” says Geard.
It is in this fertile space that RecruitAGraduate will offer its range of services. On the one hand, it will assist businesses that want to employ young talent but cannot afford expensive, graduate recruitment campaigns and which equally cannot risk a wrong placement.
On the other hand, it will exclusively help new academic and vocational graduates who need to find meaningful work and position themselves for a successful career amid the noise and seemingly insurmountable obstacles they face in the current South African job market.
RecruitMyMom focuses on skilled, flexible and part-time placements for women wanting to integrate their careers and family commitments. This platform was created by Geard in 2012 and won her the title of Job Creator of the Year® at the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.
“At RecruitAGraduate, prospective employers can choose from a self-service option, with a small listing fee, or an affordable, professional recruitment service, where one of our team members will help them find and place the right candidate. For the latter, payment is only made when we make a successful placement, and we offer a three-month warranty.
“At the same time, we help graduates by exclusively focusing on them. Our platform is geared to present graduates, interns and apprentices in the best possible light through our online help and CV template service,” says Geard.
The problem on the ground, especially for SMMEs, is finding these graduates.
By offering an easy-to-use platform with low fees and a targeted approach, RecruitAGraduate will help forward-thinking businesses to invest in hiring graduates, interns and apprentices thereby simultaneously addressing the challenges of youth unemployment in South Africa, which is the highest in the world. Graduate youth employment integrates with existing governmental tax and B-BBEE incentives and dovetails with foundational programmes such as Youth Unemployment Services (YES).
The RecruitMyMom platform has grown to a community of nearly 60 000 skilled moms and other career flexi-workers and has garnered many entrepreneurial and business awards. Given the exponential growth of the digital world and the fact that digital is becoming the first port of call for most people across all facets of their lives, it is easy to imagine that RecruitAGraduate could easily match or surpass the success of Geard’s first startup.
Critical for the growth of any business, Geard has utilised her seven years of learning and experimenting while developing RecruitMyMom into a sustainable business, and this development should help to power RecruitAGraduate to new heights while driving their mission to inspire the future and cut down on South Africa’s unemployment stats.
This article was published in UChief Magazine. Find the original article here.
