"We are inundated with requests from individuals who are desperate to find work," says Johan Nel, Country Manager of Gumtree South Africa. "But many of them aren't work-ready. They may lack communication skills, or numeracy and literacy skills, or simply aren't familiar with technology that can assist them with their job search. Harambee fills those gaps and we were interested in partnering with them to assist our community."
Gumtree has over 60,000 jobs listed on the site at any given moment, as well as the opportunity for individuals to create their own job seeker ad advertising their skills. Harambee offers a free opportunity for these young people that have a matric, are unemployed and have been looking for work unsuccessfully for over 6 months. They are a youth employment accelerator - helping thousands of young people get the skills required to get and keep their first job. And their free work readiness programmes focus on preparing talented, unemployed young people get the skills to fit into their first job - and succeed at it! Applicants have an opportunity to be placed at organisations in many different industries including retail, hospitality, call centres and financial services.
The two organisations will work together to connect job seekers with employers, as well as to empower candidates to use the Internet as a powerful job search tool. "We work with young first time work-seekers that are locked out of the formal economy and do not have the social networks to break into work, they need a network to help them enter the job market," explains Maryana Iskander, Harambee CEO. "We are excited to parter with Gumtree to bring more rigour to the power of the web as a job search tool. Gumtree reaches a huge market, including employers looking for staff, who can now tap into the Harambee talent pool."
