You can get a job online

Jun 28, 2009

A COUPLE of weeks ago, university finalists hit the streets hunting for jobs.<br>According to the Ministry of Public Service, the national unemployment rate is 3.2%. This has been made worse by the global financial crisis. Demand for goods and services h

By Jacobs Odongo

A COUPLE of weeks ago, university finalists hit the streets hunting for jobs.
According to the Ministry of Public Service, the national unemployment rate is 3.2%. This has been made worse by the global financial crisis. Demand for goods and services has dropped, while many companies have frozen recruitments or laid off people to cope with the crisis.

Statistics from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics and the Uganda Investment Authority presented to Parliament in November last year indicate that 400,000 Ugandans join the labour force every year but only 18,000 new jobs are created. That means every available job has more than 20 applicants, leaving at least 382,000 unemployed. Those struggling to find jobs include more than 20,000 university graduates each year as well as those who come out of another 325 institutions of higher education.

In its report to Parliament for July 2007 to 2008, the Public Service Commission, which recruits government workers, reported that Uganda’s job market can only absorb half of university graduates (10,000). The commission noted that employment opportunities in the public sector had not grown in tandem with the increased school enrolment. The report put the national unemployment rate at 3.2% and that of the youth at 22.3%.

In Kampala, the youth unemployment rate is above 32.2%, while the one for university graduates is 36%, the report said. At least seven million youth are employable, meaning that about 1.5 million are unemployed.

Although looking for a job is not a pleasant experience even in good times, online job advertisements are providing a glimmer of hope.

With the Internet, Nandanan Kannanpulakkal of Future Options, a human resource (HR) consultancy firm, says people’s professional lives have been transformed.

He says the Internet enables job-seekers to list their professional skills and accomplishments for prospective employers.

However, online job advertisements are not limited to HR consultancy firms. While many websites also advertise jobs, others like reliefweb.com are designed for job advertisements.

Reliefweb.com has jobs from allover the world. Sometimes, those job adverts are used as a bait to get people to visit the sites. Also, some organisations like United Nations agencies and other companies advertise their jobs online. Currently, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is searching for a chief corporate communications and multi-media manager.

For Salim, it was a ‘big leap of luck,’ as he calls it, when a friend e-mailed him a job advertisement at the World Food Programme (WFP). He applied and got the job in which he has been for the last two years. That job pays more than the previous one at uganda telecom.
Fred Masagazi had sat so many fruitless interviews in Kampala that he decided to apply for an overseas job. The actuarial scientist is now happily-employed in India.

At Future Options, at least 10,000 hits are registered daily. When The New Vision visited their information technology (IT) department, there were 5,600 hits by noon.

In May and April, the company registered 330,000 and 320,000 hits respectively. Though it was not possible to access the IT departments of other firms, statistics at Future Options justify the conclusion that online job hunting is at its peak.

Kannanpulakkal says because the Internet is organised with links and data bases, online job hunting is less stressful.

“The Internet receives many applications and tabulating is automatic. This makes it easy to shortlist. It is also fast and flexible for the job-seeker who will have time to concentrate on other things,” Kannanpulakkal says.

Online job hunting tremendously reduces costs of professional HR firms. Most job-seekers are broke, yet with traditional recruitment modes, one is expected to print copies of their resume, cover letter and photocopy their academic certificates and professional certificates. Sending the bulky envelopes to different HR offices is costly. But online, one just registers and attaches scanned copies of their documents.

Other times, the applicant is required to send a written application since the portal was only a means of reaching the job-seeker but not to search for him or her.

However, job-seekers need to be careful since there are crooks who post fake job adverts online. These adverts dupe job-hunters into divulging personal and financial information that lets the crooks steal money upfront or assume the job-seekers’ identities to steal the money. Other job advertisements ask for application fees.

Thousands of desperate job-seekers could have lost millions of shillings in a well-orchestrated scam by a bogus organisation. The group, calling itself the Uganda Women Rights Group Commission, last November placed advertisements in the newspapers inviting applications for 52 vacancies for receptionists across the country. The quarter page advert said successful applicants would earn a monthly salary of sh600,500 and sh5,000 daily allowance.

However, the applicants were required to first deposit a non-refundable fee of sh30,000 on a Barclays Bank account number 6000420482. The deposit slip had to bear the same name as that on the applicant’s curriculum vitae. It was supposed to be submitted with the application letter and other supporting documents. The victims later realised it was a grand rip-off.

When 96 people from China arrived at Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei after paying hundreds of dollars to compete in a music contest offering big cash prizes, they discovered they had been swindled.

A con artist had faked invitations from the city of Taipei, pocketed the contest entry fees and abandoned the “contestants” at the airport when they arrived in mid-February. Some of the musicians were so angry that they refused to return home. If a potentail employer asks you for money, he/she may not be genuine.

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