Nigerian trio celebrated as owners of biggest online job site
06.Sep.2014




RONKE SANYA writes on how British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) celebrated the achievement of giants of Nigeria’s number one online recruitment website, Jobberman, started by the trio of Ayodeji Adewunmi, Olalekan Olude and Opeyemi Awoyemi, then as undergraduates, now, they own a multi-million naira business that has achieved so much feat and is still growing.

At a time a lot of youths resorted to using the internet for fraudulent activities, duping innocent victims of their hard-earned money, Ayodeji Adewunmi, Olalekan Olude and Opeyemi Awoyemi, all graduates of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State, decided to create jobs for the teeming jobless youth and helped them find their dream jobs.

Their success journey started August 16, 2009, when university lecturers in Nigeria embarked on Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, the three young undergraduates, who shared a burning desire to recreate and redefine job sourcing and recruitment in Nigeria and beyond, made the best use of the ASUU strike to start the recruitment website, Jobberman.

Primarily, sources jobs directly from companies and recruiting agencies and broadcasts them via the website, blog, email, partner websites and social networks. Job seekers search and apply for jobs by either visiting the website directly or through partner portals. Recently, has been described by Forbes as West Africa’s most popular job search engine and aggregator.

was set up to bridge the gap between opportunity and talent, creating a marketplace, where job seekers and employers in Nigeria can find one another quickly, easily, and cost-effectively.

Five years down the line, Jobberman, has today grown to become Nigeria’s No.1 recruitment website.

In recognition of this feat, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) captures the story of the founders in a documentary interview, on September 2, 2014, narrating the trio’s success story as a dream that started “from slow summer to massive start-up,” describing “a dream that started during a strike to become a multi-million dollar worth business estate, employing 125 people, and is still growing.”

According to BBC, “while Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, it still has massive unemployment problems, in particular among young people, who are also more likely to be connected to the internet. Jobberman has become the single largest job placement website in sub-Saharan Africa, helping over 35,000 people find jobs within the last two years.

The number of companies using the site to find employees has grown from about 40 in 2009, to some 35,000, today.

Carrying between 500 and 1,000 jobs on the site everyday, the founders estimate that there are about 1,000 active users searching for a job at any given time.

Speaking with BBC in an interview, co-founder of Jobberman, Olalekan Olude said: “The growth has been tremendous, it is at rocket speed. One of the biggest challenges has been to keep up with the volume of work.”

Speaking on ways of overcoming fraud fears, Olude stated that there have been other challenges along the way.

“In the beginning, a lot of people did not trust an internet-based business because at that time, a lot of people were using the internet to perpetrate fraud here in Nigeria,” he says.

However, as other online businesses thrived and became trusted, so did Jobberman. Olude added that, “companies would dip their toe in the water with one or two postings and then when they trusted the site they would come back.”

In 2012, some of Jobberman’s clients wanted to use the site to find workers in Ghana and so the company took its first work outside Nigeria. Two years later, Jobberman is said to be the biggest online job site in Ghana, as well as Nigeria.

The company is now expanding its reach to Kenya with a partner called Brighter Monday. The partnership also gives it a footprint in Uganda and Tanzania.

BBC revealed further that some people actually find a job through the site without actually applying for one.

Amarachi Apakama, while narrating her story said she uploaded her details and was approached by a company to take the position of executive assistant at a mobile phone content company.

“That really changed my life,” she said. “It was a morale booster. It helped my confidence, the fact that my interests and my experience put together such a good job that I didn’t have to apply for.”

The BBC’s business teams across Africa also spoke with the founder, Ayodeji Adewunmi, who says: “It is incredibly fulfilling, helping people to become economically-empowered by getting job placements via Jobberman.

“One company recruited more than 80 per cent of their employees through the site. Another time, a director was able to hire a former colleague in the United States to come and work for his company here in Lagos. All amazing stories.”

Olude says: If you put food on the table by virtue of getting a job for someone, that person also fends for a mother or a brother and you create a multiplier effect within that household.

“Anytime we get to hear of such stories, we are very, very happy. It motivates us, it makes us look forward into the future and try and get more people to get more jobs.”

IGBOSON1: Congrats to them!

Shows hard work and initiative pays.......instead of sitting on your arsse waiting for handouts!!

berem: Kudos to them! They should keep putting smiles on the faces of unemployed youths with their hardwork and making Nigeria proud.

God bless their hustle.

docsholz: if this thread no go tribal make I..........

Gbawe:

Only sad fools will take any ethnic connotation from the thread. Nigerian youths, the 'switched on' ones from every ethnic group, do this all the time. It is for all Nigerian youths to shun frivolity and pettiness to face what matters. Doing so will mean they can become the solutions to their own problems instead of waiting for some omnipotent messiah to come out of the cloud.

deeptechcool: Jobberman s a penalty well-taken in a tough game.

docsholz: if this thread no go tribal make I..........

J12: Wow. So these are the guys behind the company? Jobberman is probably the most successful online venture in nigeria. Their branding and marketing strategies are topnotch.

Ayekotoo:
I agree with you especially the bolded but some braggarts will disagree with you

sandijey:



It cannot go tribal because the boys come from an ethnic group that does not brag. How about that.........

sandijey:


Exactly....... the part of Nigeria they come from do not brag anyway.

OkijaAmaka: because their lies have been busted long time ago

Gbawe:

I like how you put issues wittily. Seriously, the same Nigeria we curse is the same nation foreigners still flock to for the purpose of taking advantage of unique opportunities virtually no other nation of the world offers. We need to open our eyes to the opportunities around us and realise that nothing stops us from delivering solutions to our own problems.

I am currently doing something linking the tourism and hospitality drive of Osun State with the target market in the West i.e UK, Europe, USA et al and I was shocked to note no one had thought of it before or approached the State with similar. Anyway, spending time on personal development makes individuals more productive, more innovative and more visionary.

Gbawe:


Indeed. There is so much to do in Nigeria for innovative young minds. Instead, all some Nigerian youths want to do is accumulate degrees upon degrees and seek a white collar/bank job that enables them to prance around in suit and tie all day feeling self-righteously important. Meanwhile, innovative and brave foreigners are still arriving Nigeria daily to identify opportunities and 'niche markets' they eventually take advantage of to make themselves very rich and successful.